- The collection includes three volumes, correspondence, and documents, 1768-1803, related to English abolitionist and reformer Granville Sharp (1735-1813). The first volume contains copies of letters and related documents, 1768-1773, sent to Granville Sharp, transcribed in his own handwriting and concerning such matters as slavery, the slave trade, its evils, legal and social aspects, etc. It includes letters from Joseph Banks, Anthony Benezet, William Blackstone, Jacob Bryant, John Fothergill, Francis Hargrave, Arthur Lee, Michael Lort, and Benjamin Rush. The second volume contains Granville Sharp's copy of proceedings in the Court of King's Bench, London, February and June, 1771, in the case of Thomas Lewis, an enslaved Black man, against his alleged owner, Robert Stapylton, along with John Maloney and Aaron Armstrong, for assault and imprisonment. Proceedings include transcripts of testimony given by Lewis and others. Also included are tipped-in copies of Granville Sharp's remarks on the case and transcripts of the 1st and 2nd motions for judgment against Stapylton. The third volume consists of Granville Sharp's copy of part of the court proceedings in the 1772 case of James Sommersett, an enslaved man from Virginia belonging to Charles Stewart. The case was heard in the Court of King's Bench, London, before Lord Chief Justice Mansfield and three other Justices. Granville Sharp involved himself in the case, and it was the subsequent decision of the court that enslaved people became free upon entering England. The volume contains the arguments for Sommersett of William Davy and John Glynn, and ends with Mansfield adjourning the proceedings to the following term. In addition, the collection includes miscellaneous documents and letters, 1772-1774 and 1784-1803, including extracts from letters of Anthony Benezet, and letters written by Granville Sharp to correspondents such as Benjamin Franklin, Campbell Haliburton, Rufus King, Joseph Reed, William White, and John Witherspoon.
- This engraving shows bodies packed into the cargo hold of a slave ship. First published in 1788 by the Plymouth Committee of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, it gestures toward the brutality of the Middle Passage from Africa to New World slave markets. By the end of the eighteenth century, the image had proliferated in British and American abolitionist propaganda in varied forms and with different accompanying texts. It remains today one of the most recognizable symbols of abolition and the transatlantic slave trade. The engraved illustration has caption: "Plan of an African ship’s lower deck, with Negroes, in the proportion of not quite one to a ton". Signed at end: By the Plymouth Committee, W. Elford, chairman. Printed as a broadside in Philadelphia, 1789 under title: Remarks on the slave trade., English short title catalogue T148326, New-York Historical Society