Anti-Slavery Issue and Childrens Magazines: 1820-1860 Essay -- Slavery

Anti-Slavery Issue and Childrens Magazines 1820-1860By the 1820s the issue of slavery in the southern states had become fraught with controversy. It was by no means a clear-cut difference between Northern and Southern states many Southerners were against it and many Northerners tolerated it, feeling it was a trouble that the South moldiness solve. Most early anti-slavery societies, though, arose in the North and many made efforts to spread their views by publishing. William Lloyd Garrisons Liberator, print weekly between 1831 and 1865, had a puerile Department the paper became the organ for the American Anti-Slavery Society which Garrison started in 1833. Among the earliest childrens magazines was the Juvenile Miscellany (hereafter JM), begun and edited by Lydia Maria Child, and published in Boston from 1826-1834. It included occasional pieces that dealt with the problem of slavery Child herself was an ardent abolitionist, but the slavery issue was inflammatory, and to keep her subscription base with the parents and grandparents who paid for it, the problem had to be treated with caution. Another early periodical, The Slaves Friend (hereafter TSF), appeared in 1836, published by the New York Anti-Slavery Society it was specifically addressed to schoolgirlish readers and included abolitionist fiction, poetry, and articles. Like the Liberator it was published not only for the already-converted, but also in hopes of influencing the lukewarm and undecided. There was no question of its single-minded intent. sequence TSF and JM had relatively brief runs, the Youths Companion (hereafter YC) ran for over a century, from 1827-1929, starting as a weekly family newspaper and later aimed strictly at the young. Its edito... ...New York Anti-Slavery Society, 1836-38. Youths Companion, ed. Nathaniel Willis, 1827-1929. Anonymous. Pictures and Stories from Uncle Toms Cabin. Boston John P. Jewett and Co., 1853. Secondary Sources MacLeod, Anne Scott. A Moral Tale Childre ns Fiction and American Culture, 1820-1860. Hamden Shoe trace Press-Archon, 1975. Taketani, Etsuko. The omnipresent aunt and the social child Lydia Maria Childs juvenile miscellany. Childrens Literature 27 (1999) 22-39. Yankee Doodles literary Sampler of Prose, Poetry, and Pictures, Being an Anthology of Diverse Works Published for the Edification and Entertainment of Young Readers in America Before 1900. Selected from the Rare Book Collections of the Library of congress and Introduced by Virginia Hamilton and Margaret N. Coughlan. NY Crowell, 1974.