An exceptional sermon and artifact, entirely devoted to the Emancipation Proclamation, delivered on January 4, 1863, just three days after President Abraham Lincoln’s issuance.

John Weiss had long been an active abolitionist and an advocate of women’s rights and suffrage. Indeed, his commitment to keep the plight of the enslaved before Christians as a moral urgency had cost him his previous pastorate. The moment brings out his intensity, in both directions. For the nation and the slave, he is jubilant. But toward those who continue to support slavery, and to professed Christians who have supported slavery in the bast, he is ruthless and unsparing. The whole is an oratory volcano. 

Rare on the market, it has not been offered at auction since 1907 and we trace none in the trade at the time of cataloging. An example is held in the Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Pamphlet Collection at Cornell University Library, one of the premier archives of abolitionist literature.

"A New-Year's gift of three million souls is presented to the Nation. In these forms without comeliness, which are branded with a word of popular derision, the sparks of divine life have smouldered, waiting for some breath to pass over them with kindling power. . . It is as if a fabulous fleet touched yesterday our coast with a whole people escaping by emigrating from some place that had been laid under a monstrous spell. There is room enough in this country, and enough work, for millions more, whoever they may be, or under what-ever earth-demon of want and hopelessness they may be languishing." 

[Emancipation Proclamation] Weiss, John. The Four Necessities. A New-Year's Sermon, by Rev. John Weiss. Delivered at Watertown, January 4, 1863. Boston. Walker, Wise, and Company. 1863. 21pp.

Good + in original colored paper wraps, rear wrap lacking; solidly sewn and very clean otherwise.