Archive · After 1783: the Berrien farm and the law of slavery
Engraved 1835; letter written May 25, 1840
“Am I Not a Woman and a Sister,” engraved by Patrick Henry Reason, on a letter sent to South Carolina
The kneeling-woman emblem shown on Board 3, on the sheet of letter paper it was printed for. A Black engraver in New York made the image; an Ohio man used it to write to a slaveholder in South Carolina.
What it says, in plain language
The top of the sheet is a printed engraving of an enslaved woman in chains, kneeling, with the line that it was engraved by P. Reason, a young Black man of New York City, in 1835. Below it, Thomas Wall of Granville, Ohio, wrote to a slaveholder in Salisbury, South Carolina, in 1840: if this is how you treat enslaved people, free them; you and they will all answer to God; let them go and do your own work. The back has the address and a post office note that the letter was advertised as uncollected on July 1.
The story behind it
The engraver. Under the image is the line “Engraved by P. Reason, A Colored Young Man of the City of New-York. 1835.” Patrick Henry Reason (1816 to 1898) was about nineteen. He had trained at the African Free School in New York and became one of the first Black professional engravers in the United States. Signing his race into the plate was a statement in itself: the most widely used image of an enslaved woman pleading for freedom was here made by a Black artist.
The image. British abolitionists adapted Josiah Wedgwood’s 1787 emblem of a kneeling man, “Am I not a man and a brother?,” into a kneeling woman in the 1820s, and American women abolitionists took it up. Printed at the head of blank letter paper, it turned every letter into an antislavery message. Reason made this plate in 1835, when Isabella, Harriet, and Ess, who left Samuel Berrien’s farm in 1805, would have been about fifty. It is an emblem, not a picture of them.
The letter. On May 25, 1840, Thomas Wall of Granville, Ohio, used this sheet to write to a man in Salisbury, South Carolina, whose name the cataloguers read as S. T. Haulk: “is this the Way you treat Slaves if so you had better set them free.” He warned that the slaveholder and his slaves would all be judged “at the Bar of god” and ended, “Let the Slave go free … Do you Work yourself.”
Did it arrive? The back carries the address, a red postmark, and the note “Advertised July 1st.” Post offices listed letters no one had collected in the newspaper, so the note suggests the letter sat unclaimed in Salisbury. Who S. T. Haulk was is not known from this sheet.
Front: engraving and letter
Tap the page to see it full size.
Transcription
[Front, printed under the engraving] Engraved by P. Reason, A Colored Young Man of the City of New-York. 1835.
[Front, the letter, in Thomas Wall’s hand]
Granville Ohio May 25 1840
Dear Sir is this the Way you th treat Slaves if so you had better set them fee [free] an Let them go the load be upon your head at the bar of god then god Juge all you an your slaves must com Befor god an then Be Juge at the Bar of god Set the [illegible] fee [free] an Let the a go
Thos Wall
Let the Slave go fee [free] / free an [illegible] / Do you Work yourself
[Back, address panel] Mr S. T. Haulk [reading uncertain] / Salsbury [Salisbury] / South Carolina
[Back, left panel] Advertised / July 1st
[Back] Red circular postmark, partly legible; red wax seals.
Spelling as written. The Library Company’s catalogue reads the closing lines slightly differently; uncertain words are marked.
Transcribed from the manuscript images for this project, checked against Founders Online where a text is published there. Original spelling and punctuation kept.