Folio, ca. 30,5x20,5 cm (12 x 7 ¾ in). 4 p., approx. 1000 words. Brown ink on laid paper. Old fold lines and bleak stains along the folds, but very good and legible.

Historically interesting autograph manuscript letter, documenting pre-Civil War feelings of the member of general public of the North about the legendary resistance to enslavement, mentioning 3 Illinois citizens in Missouri State Prison, sentenced to 12 years each for ‘assisting negroes’.

Extract from the letter: "The anti-slavery principles are gaining favor with the people here and also throughout the state. They have a new society in this township of about forty members. I take in company with a neighbor an interesting liberty paper published at Chicago called the Western Citizen. Will forward some of them to you occasionally ... There is a Liberty Track through this state a few miles east of this leading from the Southern States to Canada and traveled by those who wouldn't have their freedom if it was give to them perhaps! Altho the laws of the state make it a crime to harbor, feed, or assist in any way a runaway slave' yet it is regarded as a dead letter by many who don't choose to be white slaves to the south, any longer. Missouri has three citizens of Illinois within her state prison walls for 12 years each for assisting negroes away, yet it only proves that she is justified of her children ... Certain slave captures in this region has tended to awaken the people and led them to examine the subject and ascertain whether they are really free men or white slaves to the South. Many have determined on the latter position and also concluded to be so no longer."

Western Citizen newspaper mentioned was a Chicago-based weekly antislavery paper, that ran in 1842-1852, one of the two black-owned newspapers in Illinois at the time. In this part of the letter Pearl also mentions his friend ‘Patrick’ who supplies him with ‘interesting papers’, suggesting some other anti-slavery reading materials.

Pearl goes on to describe his closest neighbor, a former Connecticut tavern-keeper, now a farmer, ‘the only genuine Yankee neighbor we have’ and ‘also a good Abolitionist’, continues with anti-Southern sentiment: ‘There is also some here who call themselves yankees, born in VT or NY and rasied in Ohio or Inidana, but I tell you they are not the pure ‘Jonathan’. Many others are Southerners and of course apologists for the Patriarchal Institution and attempt to build it up on the Bible’.

He goes on to mention Theodore Dwight Weld’s ‘Bible argument’ (likely his work 'The Bible Against Slavery', published in 1838), saying that ‘it makes bad work with their [Southerners’] schemes’.

The letter also describes family issues, illnesses, growing crops and an optimistic outlook for price.

Warren County is in western Illinois, near Galesburg and across the Mississippi River from Burlington, lowa; an online site map for Underground Railroad stops in Illinois show a number up the western part of the state, with one in Galesburg being the closest to that described here.   

Overall, historically interesting manuscript letter from an Illinois abolitionist on progressive and conservative sentiments in the region, mentioning the Underground Railroad stop and other business, related to anti-slavery movement.