TO THE PEOPLE OF THE 27TH CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
Washington: H. Polkinhorn, Printer, 1861. 15, [1 blank] pp, uncut, untrimmed. Caption title [as issued]. Light tanning. Short closed tear in blank margin of first leaf. Signed in type: Alfred Wells, Washington, January 8, Very Good.
Republican Congressman Wells, representing the people of the Ithaca area in his first and only term in Congress, explains the crisis of the Union: "Two causes render the happening of the present crisis inevitable. One is the slow but certain exhaustion of the capacity of the soil to produce when it is cultivated by the stupid and coerced labor of the slave. The other is the fact that the slave population increases in number with much greater rapidity than the free. The exhaustion of the soil by slave labor requires constant accession of territory. With the increase of the proportion of the servile population, and with their gradual advancement in civilization...increases also the desire and the chance of a successful servile insurrection."
OCLC 10685438 [8]. Not in Sabin, Bartlett. Item #22565
Price: $175.00