The Brotherhood of Thieves, or A True Picture of the American Church and Clergy: A letter to Nathaniel Barney of Nantucket by FOSTER, Stephen S - 1884

Concord, NH: Parker Pillsbury, 1884. Twenty-First Thousand. Paperback. Famously provocative pamphlet by the New Hampshire radical abolitionist and suffragist, cited as "one of the most vitriolic works of the anti-slavery era" (DAB). Foster condemns the American church and clergy as a body as "...thieves, adulterers, man-stealers, pirates, and murderers..." and calls out the Methodist Episcopal Church in particular as "...more corrupt and profligate than any house of ill fame in the city of New-York...the Southern ministers of that body desirous of perpetuating Slavery for the purpose of supplying themselves with concubines from among its hapless victims..." The pamphlet went into more than twenty printings and had a predictably inflammatory effect, creating deep divisions within the New England abolitionist community and even spawning a riot on the island of Nantucket. See LCP/HSP Afro-Americana 3768-3772 for other editions. 12mo (18cm); publisher's pink wrappers printed within decorative border; 75pp. Faint uneven faded, spine chipped, shallow loss along bottom edge of upper cover not approaching tet, else Good to Very Good overall.