Twasinta's Seminoles: Or, Rape of Florida

Second edition of the long narrative poem by an African American poet born into slavery. 97 pp. Bound in publisher's dark green cloth, stamped in blind and lettered in gilt, yellow coated endpapers. Very Good with moderate wear and soiling to cloth, 2 stains to textblock edges slightly impinging on margins, and soiling to endpapers. Hinges tender, some thumbing and smudging throughout. Penciled gift inscription dated 1887 to front free endpaper, child's penciled scribbling to rear endpapers. Albery Allson Whitman (1851 - 1901) was enslaved for the first twelve years of his life, but he insists in the preface to this revised edition of his poem that although he was in bondage, he was never a slave: "The infamous laws of a savage despotism took my substance - what of that? Many a man has lost all he had, except his manhood." As a free man, Whitman studied and worked at Wilberforce University and became an African Methodist Episcopal pastor; his poetry helped to fund Wilberforce's endowment. The romantic epic Twasinta's Seminoles recounts the dispossession of the Floridian Seminole tribe, formed in the 18th century by Creek refugees and runaway slaves. They fiercely resisted the United States government's attempt to relocate them to Oklahoma after the passage of the 1830 Indian Removal Act. 30 years and two wars later, 300 or so Seminole remained in Florida, living quietly in the Everglades and reemerging at the end of the century. Their story of defiance and betrayal (Chief Osceola was captured under a flag of truce) inspired numerous writers, but few knew the meaning of loss and liberty as much as Whitman: "There is a time when speech is all too frail, There is a place where silence speaks the most: What is the word to paint a human wail, Or how heroic, speak when all is lost!".…