1857 H. R. HELPER. The Impending Crisis of the South. As Influential as Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Very rare first edition, fourth thousand of Hinton R. Helper’s classic and highly influential text from the run-up to the Civil War. Hinton R. Helper, himself a southerner, believed the truest friends of the southern states were the anti-slavery abolitionists in the population, that slavery was both a moral and economic curse to the land. His meticulously argued text was found so threatening, its distribution was banned in the south immediately after its publication. It vied for popularity with Uncle Tom’s Cabin [Howes], the two forming a potent dual-pronged narrative and didactic pair. The Dictionary of American Biography indicates that its contemporary influence was actually greater than Uncle Tom’s Cabin and that it contributed significantly toward the outbreak of the Civil War. The second edition [1859] and third edition [1860] appear more often at auction with the 1857 being rather rare, especially in this condition. Chapters cover the comparison between free and slave states, imm