Children's abolition magazine: The Slave's Friend (1836-1838)
TO SUPPORT THE ABOLITION of slavery, the American Anti-Slavery Society issued four publications soon after its 1833 founding: a newspaper, Human Rights; two magazines for adults, Anti-Slavery Record and Emancipator; and a sixteen-page, monthly children’s magazine, The Slave’s Friend. Letters from Arthur Tappan, a founder of the society, edited the latter from the organization’s New York offices from its first issue in 1836 to its last, only two years later.
Each issue of The Slave’s Friend included short stories, poems, and wood engravings—all designed to show the terrible conditions of slavery in the United States. The magazine portrays slaveholders as cruel and evil, while slaves are noble but abused. Time and again, in melodramatic and sentimental tales, the magazine’s writers drew on Christian piety to excoriate the nation for the sin and shame of slavery. Editors of The Slave’s Friend imagined children as political actors, calling on them to save their pennies, and those of their parents, for the abolitionists’ cause. An 1837 issue of The Slave’s Friend asks readers to form their own juvenile anti-slavery societies.
The small-format publication cost one cent per issue, though few were sold. Instead, the society distributed the magazine through the mail free of charge. Most readers were children from Northern states; few issues made it to the South, because postmasters there were reluctant to allow delivery of abolitionist propaganda.
The cover of issue number 5 depicts a Christian gentleman teaching black children. The scriptural reference, a common feature of the magazine, reads: “The lips of the wise disperse knowledge” (Proverbs 15:7). The same engraving and reference appeared on the cover of numerous issues. The opening of issue number 2 shows a chained black man praying on one knee over the caption: “O my great massa in heaven, pity and bless me a poor slave.” Opposite is the “Child’s Creed,” intended to teach youngsters that God is the father of all children, free or slave, and “that God loves a colored child as well as a white child.” Readers likely were expected to recite the portion of the creed that states, “I believe that it is right to be kind to the poor slaves, to pray for them, and to try to persuade slaveholders to give them their liberty; that it is wicked to buy and sell men, women, and children, and that it is very wicked to say that slavery is a dreadful sin, and that it is a dreadful sin to buy and sell men, women, and children.”
The Newberry purchased multiple issues of The Slave’s Friend in 1999. The periodical supplements a number of collection strengths, including abolitionist materials and children’s literature. The issues at the Newberry are particularly notable because they include their covers as issued. -- David Spadafora; originally published in The Newberry 125: Stories of Our Collection (Newberry Library: 2012).
View The Slave's Friend at Newberry Digital Collections
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