- The Slavery Collection contains correspondence and legal and financial documents related to the North American slave trade, slave ownership, abolition, and political issues pertinent to slavery. The Slavery Collection is called an "artificial" collection because unrelated items with different provenance have been grouped together according to subject matter. Highlights of the collection include the records of Samuel and William Vernon, business partners involved in the triangular trade, 1756-1799; the Rhode Island slave trading firm of Gardner and Dean, 1771-1787; material relating to slavery in Kentucky, 1785-1864; the records of E.H. Stokes, slave trader in Richmond, Va., 1859-1862; manifests of slave ships, 1812-1855; and birth certificates of children born into slavery in New York, 1800-1818.
- The first edition of the French code noir regulating slavery in the Antilles, and one of only two copies in the United States. "Edit du roy ... pour l’établissement du conseil souverain & de quatre siéges royaux dans la coste de l’isle de Saint-Domingue en l’Amerique. Du mois d’aoust 1685"--Page 12-14. Signatures: A-B⁴. Leaf B4 blank., New-York Historical Society
- Title page of an early appeal against slavery by a signer of the Declaration of Independence and noted physician. The pamphlet will be digitized in full at a future date. Published anonymously. Rush acknowledged authorship in the preface to his Essays, 1798. Signatures: [A]⁴ B-D⁴. References: Evans 12990; Sabin 74202; ESTC W5139., New-York Historical Society
- 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
- John Clarkson (1764-1828) was an English abolitionist, agent for the Sierra Leone Company, and lieutenant in the British Royal Navy. The collection consists of Clarkson's manuscripts, written in journal form, of his involvement with the settlement of free African-American loyalists from Nova Scotia to Sierra Leone, Africa. The loyalists had been evacuated from New York when the British pulled out at the end of the Revolutionary War and initially settled in Nova Scotia. Volume 1, entitled "Clarkson's Mission to America," covers August 6, 1791-March 18, 1792 as Clarkson arranged for the transportation of the settlers; it provides a detailed account of his activities in Nova Scotia, persons he met there, and the problems fitting out the ships. Volume 2, entitled "Clarksons Mission to Africa," covers March 19, 1792-August 4, 1792. Clarkson's account of the founding and first months of Free Town, Sierra Leone gives numerous details of the difficulties met, relations with the native population, attitudes of the Nova Scotia settlers, and supplies.
- This booklet contains birth records and deeds of manumission for African American children in the town of Castleton, Staten Island, N.Y. between 1799 and 1827. Castleton is a former town located in the northeastern part of Staten Island, prior to the incorporation of Staten Island into New York City in 1898., New-York Historical Society
- A broadside that graphically illustrates the brutalities of the life of enslaved people in the hope of effecting a boycott of the West Indian trade in enslaved people. Wood-engraving at upper left signed: A.A. [Alexander Anderson]. Samuel Wood is listed at this address in New York City directories from 1805-1808. The text and illustrations in this broadside also appear in the following work, first issued by Wood in 1807: The mirror of misery, or, Tyranny exposed. Not in Shaw & Shoemaker. Not in Lib. Company. Afro-Americana. New-York Historical copy: wood engraving at upper left is not signed; wood engraving at middle right is signed: "A"., New-York Historical Society
- First page of Vol. I, no. 3 (March 30, 1827) of the first newspaper published by African Americans in the United States. Weekly. Published: Vol. 1, no. 1 (March 16, 1827)-v. 2, no. 27 (September 26, 1828) ; v. 2, whole no. 80 (October 3, 1828)-v. 2, whole no. 104 (March 28, 1829). Issues for April 11, 1828-September 26, 1828 called also whole no. 55-whole no. 79. New-York Historical holds scattered issues. Freedom's journal has been digitized in its entirety from microfilm by the Wisconsin Historical Society, and is available on its website, https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Article/CS4415., New-York Historical Society
- James F. Brown (1793-1868) was the gardener of the Verplanck family at Mount Gulian, Fishkill, New York. Brown had been enslaved in Maryland before running away, and the Verplancks purchased his time after he was found by his enslaver. The collection consists of 8 diaries, 1829-1866, during which time Brown was gardener for the Verplanck family; 1 receipt book, 1832-1857, recording some personal and household expenses, although most entries are unspecified; and 1 memorandum book, 1827-1843. Entries in the diaries are brief, with little elaboration, and pertain to such matters as the weather, local deaths, his gardening activities, the passage of boats on the Hudson, etc. The diaries are not entirely chronological, as in several instances the entries for a year have been copied into a later volume.
- The Association for the Benefit of Colored Orphans was founded in 1836 and was originally located on Fifth Avenue between 43rd and 44th Streets in Manhattan. The Colored Orphan Asylum was among the earliest organizations in the country to provide housing, training, and employment specifically for African American orphans. During the Draft Riots of July 14, 1863, the Colored Orphan Asylum was attacked by a mob. At that time, it housed some 600 to 800 homeless children in a large four story building surrounded by grounds and gardens. The crowd plundered the Asylum, then set fire to the first floor. While the children were evacuated, the building burned to the ground. The records of the Colored Orphan Asylum document the activities of the institution from 1836 to 1972, with the bulk of the records falling between 1850 and 1936.
- Daguerreotype. Portrait of an African-American male figure, three quarters-length, front view, holding a staff or a shovel (?) in his right hand, wearing a white collar, dark foulard, and checked waistcoat. A note taped to the back of the case identifies the sitter and sitter's history: "born a slave of Van R. Nicoll, son of William, in 1737 at Bethlehem, N.Y., where he died in 1852, the last slave to die in the North.”, New-York Historical Society
- Frontispiece portrait of Sojourner Truth from the New York, 1853 edition of her published memoir. Johns Hopkins University Sheridan Libraries has digitized its copy of this book and made it available via the Internet Archive at https://archive.org/details/narrativeofsojour00gilb. New-York Historical copy has imprint date on cover: 1855., New-York Historical Society
- Charles Sumner (1811-1874) was a United States senator from Massachusetts and a campaigner against slavery. This is a draft of a version of the speech delivered in New York on May 9, 1855, and published that year under the title "The anti-slavery enterprise." Internal evidence indicates that it was to be delivered to a Boston audience, probably on May 15, 1855. The digital collection includes the draft along with the published version (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1855).
- Undated petition, probably circa 1862, to United States President Abraham Lincoln from citizens of New York requesting that the governor of New York be authorized to raise a number of regiments composed wholly or partly of African American troops, including the signatures and addresses of petitioners. In scroll form, approximately 25 feet long., Mss Collection - BV Petitions, New-York Historical Society
- Souvenir copy of Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, with autograph signatures of Lincoln, William Seward, Secretary of State, and John Nicolay, Private Secretary to the President. This is known as the Leland-Boker edition of the Emancipation Proclamation, after the two men who arranged for its printing by Frederick Leypoldt and subsequent sale at the Philadelphia Great Central Sanitary Fair of June 7-29, 1864. The Sanitary Fairs were created to raise money for sick and wounded soldiers, and to improve conditions in military camps., New-York Historical Society
- Typescript of a series of seven poems by Langston Hughes, the African American poet and playwright. The title page is inscribed by Hughes to Earl Jones and dated 1939. Robert Earl Jones was an American actor and prizefighter and a figure in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s, having worked with Langston Hughes early in his career., New-York Historical Society