Angela M. Leonard
Published: 1992
Total Pages: 118
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This bibliography was assembled by a history and Afro-American studies class at Bowdoin College (Maine). The document emphasizes primary sources on antislavery from the manuscript collection of the college. The guide lists 38 graduates of the college including well known figures such as Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, as well as John Brown Russwurm, the first black person to graduate from the college. The listings include letters by such prominent blacks as Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and Booker T. Washington. The work is divided into informative sections covering: (1) Bowdoin resource facilities, (2) Bowdoin alumni, (3) Bowdoin student organizations, (4) Bowdoin overseers, trustees, and presidents, (5) Bowdoin faculty and administrators, (6) Maine antislavers, and (7) major figures in antislavery. Three appendixes list individual collections. The first includes a list of general holdings dealing with Bowdoin and Maine Antislavers. This section lists reformers who cannot be linked to antislavery by primary documents available in the college's special collections. Secondary references denote their antislavery ties, but it is not clear whether materials that are still in circulation would make the connection. Biographical sketches of the authors of letters and other materials are offered, along with reproductions of portraits and photographs when available. The second appendix lists first editions of rare antislavery literature including journals, church and society reports and monographs. Journals in the collection range from about 1825 through 1866. The final appendix consists of correspondence between William Pitt Fessenden and Samuel Fessenden relating to the slave issue. (DK)