"New York Observer" Reports on Slaves' Rights to Read the Bible

An issue of the "New York Observer" with an article on slaves' rights to own a Bible. 4pp, measuring 22" x 27.75", New York, dated March 14, 1846. An issue of "New York Observer", Volume XXIV, No. 11, Whole No. 1192. Printed by Sidney E. Morse & Company, Editors. The newspaper has flattened folds and creasing throughout, along with tears, chipping, and small areas of paper loss at the edges and cross folds. The left edge is rough from removal from a larger volume. Light edge toning. Very good overall.

Featuring an article titled "Right of the Slave to the Bible", written by "Philanthropos", which outlines the "inalienable right" that enslaved persons had to read and possess a Bible. The issue also includes articles on marriage, the religious history of Wabash College, the teaching of deaf patients to speak, and much more. 

Highlights from the "Right of the Slave to the Bible" article are as follows:
"(1) The slave, as an immortal and accountable being, has an inalienable right to all the means of instruction necessary to a competent knowledge of Divine truth. God has seen proper to embody all his permanent revelations to man in a book. Free access to its pages is the only effectual preservative against superstition and fatal error…(2) God intended the Scriptures for universal perusal. If this is not true, the right to peruse the Bible, and consequently to interpret it, was confided to some particular class or classes of men. Those to whom the reading of the Bible is denied must necessarily receive the knowledge of its contents, and the interpretation of those contents from others. However small this excluded class may be, the universal right of private judgement is destroyed, and the foundations of Protestantism overthrown. Those who practice upon the principle, that oral instruction is sufficient for the slave and withhold from him all means of testing the accuracy of their teachings by a personal examination of the Bible assume the prerogative of interpreting it for them, and stand between them and the direct communication of God's truth. The poison of Romanism thus circulates in the veins of slavery and subjects it to condemnation with the Man of Sin…The Bible condemns slavery, because it cannot be perpetuated without disobedience to its precepts."

Fearing that black literacy would prove a threat to a slave system that relied on slaves' dependence on masters, early colonies (later states) instituted laws forbidding slaves to learn to read or write and making it a crime for others to teach them. As a result, it was also not uncommon for white slave masters to selectively teach things in the Bible that would justify what they were doing and would even fabricate passages to read to the slaves.

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

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