"THE WHIP, THE GUN, OR PISTOLS, WERE COMPANIONS OF THE OVERSEER": FIRST SEPARATE EDITION OF NARRATIVE OF NEHEMIAH CAULKINS, 1849, RARE IN FRAGILE ORIGINAL SELF-WRAPPERS

CAULKINS, Nehemiah. Narrative of Nehemiah Caulkins, An Extract from "American Slavery, As It Is." New York: American And Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, 1849. Slim octavo, original printed self-wrappers, later marbled wrappers; pp. (i-iv), (5), 6-22 (2). $1600.

First separate edition of Caulkins' devastating Narrative documenting slavery's unrelenting brutality on a North Carolina plantation, exceptional in original self-wrappers.

In this still controversial work, the narrator writes of resistance by the enslaved, of those like Harry, who took to the woods when his owner was away: "to escape the cruel treatment of the overseer" while staying close to those he loved. "When he was caught, Henry was imprisoned in manacles and padlocks in "the stocks day and night for a week and flogged every morning." In describing the everyday fury aimed at men and women who labored in the cotton fields, Caulkins notes: "the whip and gun, or pistols, were companions of the overseer… scarcely a day passed while I was on the plantation, in which some of the slaves were not whipped. I do not mean that they were struck a few blows merely, but had a set flogging (emphasis in original). Whipping was so common "that it would be too great a repetition to state the many and severe floggings I have seen. They were flogged for not performing their tasks, for being careless, slow, or not in time, for going to the fire to warm &c." He bluntly documents, as well, the many deaths, including an enslaved man who "had run away" and survived in the "woods for a long time… till one day he was discovered by two men… they shot him and carried his head home."

The controversy over this Narrative is partly found in histories that still err in identifying the author as a freed or fugitive Black man. Caulkins (alt. Calkins) was, however, a white Connecticut carpenter who worked a number of winters on the plantation of North Carolina slaveowner John Swan. This chilling record of unending cruelty stands as evidence of slavery's brutality—yet, to many at the time of publication, its substantiation came from Caulkins' declared status in the text as a "white man." The Narrative can also be seen as revealing the hypocrisy of one who long witnessed the brutality, seemingly without intervening. In many ways, however unintentionally, it also exposes what scholarship increasingly documents as slavery's foundational role in fusing the financial interests of North and South, and ensuring the nation's territorial and economic growth. One result was slavery's dominance of the presidency, in which eight of the first twelve presidents owned slaves. In his conclusion Caulkins blames "our government for allowing Slavery to exist under its own jurisdiction. Second, the States, for enacting laws to secure their victims. Third, the slaveholder, for carrying out such enactments in horrid form enough to chill the blood. Fourth, every person who knows what slavery is, and does not raise his voice… by silence gives consent to its continuance" (emphasis in original). First separate edition: initially included in American Slavery As It Is (1839), edited by Theodore Dwight Weld, and Angelina and Sara Grimké. Sabin 11575 (variant). Dumond, 35.

Text generally fresh with faint soiling, mostly to self-wrappers, a very elusive near-fine copy.