LEAP YEAR

Well ... this year we have an extra day in February, which we can put to use in the Bullis Room working on our various projects, hoping to "catch up" a bit. It also means one more "official" day of our Black History Month and Presidents' Day display in the case outside the Bullis Room.

Then ... tomorrow officially begins another month and the display case will feature Bullis books by women authors in recognition of Women's History Month.

So ... we invite you to stop by the Bullis Room in March to view the display case and remember some of the great women authors of the past.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

As part of our Black History month, volunteers looked this researched Bullis books on the subject of the Sixteenth President of the United States and his role in the abolishment of slavery in this country. One document in the collection that immediately caught our eye is:

Memorial Address on the

Life and Character of Abraham Lincoln:

Delivered, at the request of both houses of the

congress of America, before them,

in the House of Representatives at Washington, 

on the 12th of February, 1866

by George Bancroft (1800-1891)

Published by Washington Government Printing Office, 1866

Here is a quote from  this message delivered 150 years ago yesterday:

"Jefferson and the leading statesmen of his day held fast to the idea that the enslavement of the African was socially, morally and politically wrong. The new school was founded exactly upon the opposite idea; and they resolved, first to distract the democratic party, for which the Supreme Court had furnished the means, and then to establish a new government, with negro slavery for its corner-stone as socially, morally and politically right.

The storm rose to a whirlwind; who should allay its wrath? The most experienced statesmen of the country had failed;  there was no hope from those who were great after the flesh; ... could relief come from one whose wisdom was like the wisdom of little children?

"The choice of America fell on a man born west of the Alleghenies in the cabin of poor people of Hardin County, Kentucky  -- Abraham Lincoln." (pages 15 and 16)

When you're in MPL this week, we suggest you take a closer look at this document.  We think you'll find it an interesting and informative read.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS

If you haven't read Frederick Douglass's book, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas, an American Slave,  we urge you to:

A) Stop by the Bullis Room and take a look at the collection's copy published in 1847 in Boston at the Anti-slavery office; and,
B) Get a copy (through PLS or your friendly online bookseller) and sit down for a good read.

This is a book that will grab your interest from the very beginning. In fact, a letter from the abolitionist Wendell Phillips, dated April 22, 1845, is printed in the Preface. In it, Phillips declares:

"I was glad to learn, in your story, how early the most neglected of God's children waken to a sense of their rights, and of the injustice done them. Experience is a keen teacher; and long before you had mastered your A B C, or knew where the 'white sails' of the Chesapeake were bound, you began, I see, to gauge the wretchedness of the slave, not by his hunger and want, not by his lashes and toil, but by the cruel and blighting death which gathers over his soul.

"In connection with this, there is one circumstance which makes your recollections peculiarly valuable, and renders your early insight the more remarkable. You come from that part of the country where we are told slavery appears with its fairest features. Let us hear, then, what it is at its best estate—gaze on its bright side, if it has one; and then imagination may task her powers to add dark lines to the picture, as she travels southward to that (for the colored man) Valley of the Shadow of Death, where the Mississippi sweeps along.

"Again, we have known you long, and can put the most entire confidence in your truth, candor, and sincerity. Every one who has heard you speak has felt, and, I am confident, every one who reads your book will feel, persuaded that you give them a fair specimen of the whole truth. No one-sided portrait,—no wholesale complaints,—but strict justice done, whenever individual kindliness has neutralized, for a moment, the deadly system with which it was strangely allied. You have been with us, too, some years, and can fairly compare the twilight of rights, which your race enjoy at the North, with that "noon of night" under which they labor south of Mason and Dixon's line. Tell us whether, after all, the half-free colored man of Massachusetts is worse off than the pampered slave of the rice swamps!"

Again, we strongly suggest you spend some time with Frederick Douglass's book which, according to the abolitionist Phillips, is written with truth, candor and sincerity.