Contraband Christmas. Boston: E.P. Dutton and Co., 1864.

16mo. Engraved frontispiece and additional plate. Original blue cloth gilt. FIRST EDITION. Sabin 16174 & 67381.

A scarce first edition of an important fugitive slave novel. The first edition offered here was published toward the end of the Civil War, then re-issued in 1865 immediately after the war's end.

The story recounts the first Christmas in the North celebrated by fugitive slaves and those liberated by the Emancipation Proclamation. Notably, it contains a rather extensive section in which the main black protagonist attempts to explain to her daughter that the word "n---er" is not a synonym for other words describing the color of her skin, but is a verbal counterpart to the whip and the chains of slavery and forced labor.

The passage, written in exaggerated vernacular, reads: "'I wish I'd brought my book home with me; there's a word I saw the other day that made me think of Chrismus; I can't think of it now. yes, I can! It's niger, and it means black. I guess they get ni---r from niger, and I thought when I found it that all that ni---r meant was only black man.' ''T a'n't all dey mean, Mass' Dave, when dey call us ni---r. 'Ole - black - ni---r,' dey say some folks, an' dey 'm t'inkin' o' somet'in' hard 'gin us. Doun in ole Car'lina I seen um say dem words wid a kick o' de boot, or a blow ob a stick, or anyt'ing handy' an' dem poor, mis'able trash doun in de village, hollerin' out 'naygur,' 'naygur,' - reckon dey never study Latin.'" 

One of the earliest attempts to discuss the uniquely negative character of the "N" word

[African Americana, African American History, Black History, Slavery, Enslavement, Abolition, Emancipation] [Pamphlets, Publications, Ephemera, Books, Rare Books, Tracts]

A bit shaken at the prelims, but generally solid, with a few spots of moderate brown spotting.