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Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation at Lauinger Library

This guide highlights the primary source documents at Lauinger Library that supports the goals of Georgetown University's Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation Initiative.

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The Booth Family Center for Special Collections is located on the 5th floor Lauinger. Its staff are available to discuss research projects and help users find materials relevant to their needs.

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Lauinger Library is committed to protecting its staff and patrons from COVID 19 and will update its policies as health conditions changed. Booth Family Center for Special Collections is open to faculty, registered students, and staff by appointment only. Hours are limited, masks are required, and social distancing is practiced. We cannot accommodate drop ins.

Rare Books - Introduction

Georgetown University's Rare Books collection originated with the founding of Georgetown College and includes books that influenced the early Jesuit missionaries, the administrators and instructors of the College, and its students. The Library has also collected some of well-known examples of slave narratives, antislavery literature, Civil War pamphlets, and ecclesiastical texts pertaining to race. A more complete bibliography is available upon request, of these wide-ranging printed materials.

Researchers can also discover materials by title, author, keyword or subject search in HoyaSearch (making sure to limit results by location to "GU Only").

Anti-Slavery and Pro-Slavery Books

Anti-Slavery

Anti-Slavery Manual : Containing a Collection of Facts and Arguments on American Slavery by La Roy Sunderland
Call Number: General LC E449 .S958
Publication Date: 1837
Constitution of the New England Anti-Slavery Society: with an address to the public by New England Anti-Slavery Society
Call Number: General 92A163
Publication Date: 1832
Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-1839 by Fanny Kemble
Call Number: General 86A715
Publication Date: 1863
A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin : Presenting the Original Facts and Documents Upon Which the Story Is Founded : Together with Corroborative Statements Verifying the Truth of the Work . Boston: J.P. Jewett and Company, 1853. by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Call Number: General 96A459
Publication Date: 1853
A Portraiture of Domestic Slavery, in the United States: With Proposing National Measures for the Education and Gradual Emancipation of the Slaves, Without Impairing the Legal Privileges of the Possessor; and a Project of a Colonial Asylum for Free Peo by Jesse Torrey
Call Number: General 92A147
Publication Date: 1818
Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Call Number: Shandelle 1853 .S75
Publication Date: 1853

Pro-Slavery

Eloquentia Libertatis Vindex : Oration Delivered before the Phileleutherian Society of Georgetown College on the 22d of February, 1838 by Perry S. Warfield, Jacob Gideon, and John E. Devlin
Call Number: General LC LD1961.G547 C38 1843
Publication Date: 1838
Evidence Against the View of the Abolitionists : Consisting of Physical and Moral Proofs, of the Natural Inferiority of the Negroes by Richard H. Colfax
Call Number: General 92A162
Publication Date: 1833
Speech of Mr. J. Barbour, of Virginia, on the Restriction of Slavery in Missouri. Washington by James Barbour
Call Number: General LC E449 .S958
Publication Date: 1837

Slave Trade

An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African: In Three Parts. Translated from a Latin Dissertation, Which Was Honored with the First Prize in the University of Cambridge, for the Year 1785 ... With Additions .. by Thomas Clarkson
Call Number: General 04A43
Publication Date: 1804
Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants : with an Inquiry into the Rise and Progress of the Slave Trade, Its Nature and Lamentable Effects by Anthony Benezet
Call Number: General 90A834
Publication Date: 1788

Abolitionist Narratives

Memoir of Benjamin Banneker : Read before the Maryland Historical Society, at the Monthly Meeting, May 1, 1845 by John H. Latrobe
Call Number: Shea E185.97 .B22 1845
Publication Date: 1845
Memoir of the Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy : Who Was Murdered in Defence of the Liberty of the Press, at Alton, Illinois, Nov. 7, 1837 by Joseph Cammet Lovejoy, Owen Lovejoy, and John Quincy Adams
Call Number: General 92A493
Publication Date: 1838
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave by Frederick Douglass
Call Number: General 76A482
Publication Date: 1846
Twelve Years a Slave : Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New-York, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in 1853, from a Cotton Plantation Near the Red River, in Louisiana by Solomon Northup
Call Number: General LC E444 .N87
Publication Date: 1853

Civil War Pamphlet Collection

This collection contains both anti-slavery and pro-slavery tracts, speeches and treatises regarding emancipation and Reconstruction, sermons, and battlefield remembrances.

To identify materials from this collection via HoyaSearch, type "Civil War Pamphlet Collection" (in quotation marks) in the search bar, and limit the results to "GU Only."

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