History of the General Assembly of North Carolina, January 9-March 15, 1895, inclusive. E.M. Uzzell, Raleigh, 1895. 160pp. Original wrappers. Front wrapper chipped. The pamphlet was printed on a cheap newsprint, which has not fared well over the years—hence the chipping and general fragility. The book is intact but if you turn the pages without care they will indeed tear. Provenance: Duke University sent this to the Library of Congress in 1932, with the LC releasing it 65 years later. There is a LC surplus stamp on rear cover. Not a pretty copy, but only 6 copies are located in WorldCat/OCLC, which was a surprising find. $125
Well, this title sounds as dry as the pamphlets dry and brittle pages, but this is not the case—the thing is well written, and done so in a narrative style, a bit breezy and familiar but still getting the story across.
There are some interesting finds in the daily comings and goings, several of which are truly remarkable. Take, for example the terrible entry entitled “The Douglass Infamy”—this discusses over a few pages the “humiliation of the white people of the south” caused by the General Assembly of the legislature adjourning out of respect for “the miscegentionist Fred. Douglass, whose death occurred during the session”. It gets worse, citing N.C. members of the NY Cotton Exchange being jeered the next day by other members over the action taken by the legislature. So deep was the disgust that it was reported that significant parties denied that it happened, and then tried to explain it away once the event was shown to be true. The was a significant amount of hateful nonsense in this entry, railing against Douglass, who in their view wrote terrible untruths about white people and who was “also guilty of miscegenation”, having married a white woman. “Republican domination meant, in one form or another, negro [sic]domination. The Douglass incident reveals the animus of that party and is a menace of its aims”.
“Thoughtful Democrats who have looked beyond the present moment and who have preferred to bear such party ills as they had, if such there were, rather than fly to others they knew not of, predicted that the fusion with Republicans of any considerable number of those who were formerly Democrats meant Republican domination, and that Republican domination meant, in one form or another, negro [sic] domination. The Douglas incident reveals the animus of that party and is a menace of its aims. (After the official declaration of the Fusionists, the General Assembly did not adjourn in honor of the birthday of Robert E. Lee, a legal holiday, but did adjourn out of respect for the memory of Frederick Douglas.)”
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