1857 Impending Crisis of the South Hilton Helper SLAVERY CIVIL WAR 1st Edition

  

The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It. Burdick, New York, 1857, 1st edition, "Fourth Thousand". Has dozens of tables with information on "free" and "slave" states.

Covers have staining, edge fraying and wear. Binding solid with no cracking. Former owner's name on front free end page. Pages good with occasional wear and foxing. The book was a strong attack on slavery as being both inefficient and creating a barrier to the economic advancement of whites.

The book was widely distributed by antislavery leaders, including Horace Greeley, and infuriated southerners. In the North it became arguably the most important antislavery book of the 1850s. Numerous tables cover the differences between slave and free states re: deaths, presidential votes, populations, illiteracy, newspapers, etc. Although the author was anti-slavery, he was not pro-Negro, believing they could not be integrated into a White society/nation.

Anger over this book due to the belief he was acting as an agent of the North attempting to split Southerners along class lines, led to Southern denunciations of'Helperism'.