George W. Clark (b. 1812), compiler. The Liberty Minstrel. New York: Leavitt & Alden, 1845. 

12mo, 184, [3] pp. Original brown cloth with gilt titles to front board. Second Edition. Afro-Americana 2345A; Chamberlain, Bibliography, pp. 16-17; Chamberlain, "Uncollected Poems", pp. 42-43; Dumond p.39; Sabin 13289. 

Provenance: Rev. N.W. Everett (ownership inscription to front fly leaf); James J. Raide & Hattie Wheeler (ownership inscription dated 1858). 

A rather fine example of this early and influential abolitionist songbook, featuring texts by many of the leading poets of the day set to music by the compiler George Washington Clark (1811–1893). The work is unusual in that it includes both music and lyrics, many of the compositions written by Clark himself. The title refers to an earlier tradition of traveling singers, rather than to the 19th-century minstrel tradition.

Notably, the first edition, published the year before, contains the first book appearance of James Russell Lowell’s “Rouse Up, New England” (pp. 70–72), here credited to “a Yankee.” It was previously printed in the Boston Courier on 19 March 1844 under the title “A Rallying-Cry for New-England, Against the Annexation of Texas.” Lowell’s earlier poem “Are Ye Truly Free?” also appears on pages 126–127, properly credited.

Other poets represented include John Greenleaf Whittier, Henry W. Longfellow, and Lydia Sigourney. Two songs are by Jesse Hutchinson of the famed Hutchinson Family Singers, and two additional pieces are attributed to unnamed enslaved individuals: “Song of the Coffle Gang...Words by the Slaves” and “Stolen We Were, Words by a Colored Man.”

VERY RARE. Only two copies are recorded as having sold at auction since 1924.

[Civil War, Union, Confederate] [African Americana, African American History, Black History, Slavery, Enslavement, Abolition, Emancipation] [Books, Bibles, Soldiers' Bibles, Prayer Books, Ephemera, Pamphlets, Publications, Booklets, Memoirs] [Music, Hymnals, Sheet Music] 

Some fading and bumping, a few stains in margins.