Remnant Trust Documents
at West Texas A&M University for the 2012/13 Academic Year These rare books and documents are available through December 2012. Documents are on exhibit in the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum (PPHM) Research Center, 3rd floor. For general information on Remnant Trust programs and exhibits, contact Dr. David Baum, director, The Remnant Trust at WTAMU: dbaum@wtamu.edu or 806-651-2040. For an individual or group appointment, contact Warren Stricker, Research Center director, at wstricker@pphm.wtamu.edu or 806-651-2254.
West Texas A&M Fall Display Start date: 08/08/2012 End date: 12/31/2012 ID #: 0006 Title and Date: Parliament Stamp Act - 1766 The author administers a public scolding for the undutiful and disobedient behavior of Britain's children abroad. He admonishes the colonists for ingratitude: “While the colonies were under any apprehensions from the encroachments of the French and Indians, they submitted to the British legislature without reluctance.” Now that the danger had passed, the Americans thought they won the War all by themselves by the reduction , in a couple of short days, by a couple of little cannons, of a little island hardly discernible in a map, called Cape-Breton.” Contending for the absolute supremacy of Parliament, The author endorses the assistance rendered them by the Mother Country. “This is, in truth, a most fiery politician, and his pamphlet a mere firebrand. In the reply to the objections of the colonists to a standing army, he says that they have need of the gentlemen of the blade, to polish and refine their manners, to rub off the rust of Puritanism.” ID #: 0027 Title and Date: Politiques - 1598 Author: Aristotle In Aristotle's Politics (eight books), the good of the individual is identified with the good of the city-state. The study of human good is thus a political inquiry, as it is in Plato. Aristotle discusses different types of government, finally preferring monarchy, an aristocracy of men of virtue, or constitutional government of the majority. Slavery is considered natural in Aristotle's politics, because some men are adapted by nature to be the physical instruments of others. Aristotle's Rhetoric treats methods of persuasion; the Poetics is his great contribution to literary criticism. Called by Dante the master of those who know, Aristotle mastered every field of learning known to the Greeks. His influence on St. Thomas Aquinas and the medieval world, through the translation of the Arabic scholar Averroes, was profound and enduring. Aristotle maintained that all human knowledge originates in sensible experiences, out of which the soul perceives the universal. In Politics the good of the individual is identified with the good of the city-state. Thus, the study of human good is a political inquiry much like Plato. Called by Dante the master of those who know,” Aristotle mastered every field of learning known to the Greeks. His influence on St. Thomas Aquinas and the medieval world was profound and enduring." ID#: 0029 Title and Date: Citie of God - 1610 Author: Augustine of Hippo "Early Christian church father and philosopher. Received his early training primarily in Latin literature and earned his living as a teacher of rhetoric in Carthage, Rome and Milan. He joined the Manichaeans for a number of years but became disillusioned and was converted to Christianity. His Confessions vividly record his spiritual experiences and development during this period. For the remainder of his life, he preached and wrote prolifically, defining points of Christian doctrine and engaging in theoretical controversy with the Manichaeans, the Donatists, and the Pelagians. He maintained the importance of a single, unified Church and developed a theory of sin, grace and predestination that not only became basic to the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church but later was also used as the justification for the tenets of Calvin, Luther, and the Jansenists. City of God is an apology for Christianity against the accusation that the Church was responsible for the decline of the Roman Empire. It interprets human history as a conflict between the City of God, which includes the body of Christians belonging to the Church, and the Earthly City, composed of pagans and heretical Christians. Augustine foresees that, through the will of God, the people of the City of God will eventually win immortality, those in the Earthly City destruction." ID#: 0038 Title and Date: Illustrated Bible - 1791 "The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments: with the Apocrypha. Translated out of the original tongues, and with the former translations diligently compared and revised, by the special command of King James I of England. The first folio Bible printed in America was also the first to be illustrated and is considered the most distinguished Bible produced in the country during the 18th century. The printer, Isaiah Thomas, was called the Baskerville of America by Benjamin Franklin, himself an astute judge of typography. The text was carefully considered, Thomas having consulted thirty different editions of the King James version to prepare the most correct copy. Proofs were examined by two clergymen of Worcester, the reverends Aaron Bancroft and Samuel Austin, who compared the settings with eight editions of the Bible. Fifty copperplate engravings are interspersed throughout. Several of the most noted American engravers were engaged for the project: Samuel Hill, John Norman, Joseph Seymour and Amos Doolittle. Each book begins with an ornamental initial, and there are woodcuts at the beginnings of the Old and New Testaments and the Apocrypha." ID #: 0048 Title and Date: Reflections on the Revolution in France bound with Three Responses - 1790 Author: Burke, Edmund "Reflections on the Revolution in France marks the pinnacle of Burke's political career. In it he treats the social and political issues underlying the events of 1789 and at the same time he condemns the actions of the early revolutionaries and the ensuing chaos brought on by anarchy and mob violence. Fearing that the social and political revolution running rampant in France might infect a susceptible English populous, Burke denounced the Perfectibilitarians argument for reform by stating that any revolution that did not bring real liberty, which comes from the administration of justice under a settled constitution without bias from the mob, was not liberty.” The book won immediate acclaim in England and throughout Europe with 11 editions exhausted in little over a year. Upon its publication, honors were heaped upon the author from members of Europe's most prestigious royal houses including Catherine of Russia and King George who is reported to have had a number of copies elegantly bound for distribution among his friends.” Reflections… is a fascinating commentary on the historical, social and political mechanics driving revolutionary upheaval; it is a true masterwork of political philosophy. First edition (published on November 1, 1790), as distinguished by William Todd attending to press-figure differences – from the several other, very similar impressions of the same month. It is noted that the variations in the six impressions (three editions) published between the 1st and the 17th of November, 1790, were the result of a tremendous contemporary demand for the copies.” Bound with Thomas Paine's famous response to the Reflections, The Rights of Man(fifth edition), and with two other works by Burke's great polemic: Joseph Priestley, Letters to … Burke (third corrected edition) and Brooke Boothby A Letter to Burke." ID #: 0049 Title and Date: Invictissimi Imperatoris Commentaria - 1511 Author: Caesar, Julius Caesar, Caius Julius (102-44 B.C.), the great Roman soldier and statesman, was born on the 12th of July 102 B.C. His family was of patrician rank and traced a legendary descent from Ilulus, the founder of Alba. Seven books appear to have been written in 51 B.C. and carry the narrative of the Gallic campaigns down to the close of the previous year (the eighty book, written by A. Hirtius, is a supplement relating the events of 51-50 B.C.), while the three books “De bello civili record the struggle between Caesar and Pompey. The verdict of historians on Caesar has always been colored by their political sympathies. Few men, indeed, have partaken as freely of the inspiration of genius as Julius Caesar, few have suffered more disastrously from its illusions. ID #: 0100 Title and Date: Declaration of Independence - 1776 Author: Congress "One of three known copies. The only one in private hands. This is the third Dunlop printing. John Dunlop, as one of the leading printers in Philadelphia, produced numerous pieces both for the Continental Congress and the state of Pennsylvania. Only one complete set of the eight parts of the Journals survives, at the Library Company of Philadelphia. The Library Company also possesses the only other copy of this individual part, the most extensive of the eight, comprising pp.29-56. Thus, this is the only copy in private hands, with two copies in one institution, for a total of three known-considerably rarer than the infamous first broadside printing, of which there are 31, but from the same printer and press." ID #: 0108 Title and Date: My Bondage & My Freedom - 1855 Author: Frederick Douglass American abolitionist, orator, and journalist. The son of a slave and a white father, Douglass escaped to the North in 1838. A speech he delivered at an antislavery convention in Nantucket in 1841 made such an impression that he was soon in great demand as a speaker. Mobbed and beaten because of his views, he described his experiences in an outspoken Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. After a two-year stay in Great Britain, where he earned enough money to buy his freedom, he founded The North Star, a newspaper he published for seventeen years, advocating the use of black troops during the Civil War and civil rights for freedmen. ID #: 0114 Title and Date: Emancipation Proclamation - 1862 Author: Abraham Lincoln First printing, Illinois broadside A proclamation issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, declaring that all slaves in areas still in rebellion against the U.S. were henceforth to be free. The proclamation did not affect slaves in the border states nor in territory under U.S. military occupation. A preliminary proclamation had been issued on September 22, 1862, after the Union success at Antietam had bolstered the likelihood of ultimate victory over the Confederacy. Slavery was not completely abolished until the adoption of the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution in 1865. ID #: 0116 Title and Date: Waldo Essays - 1841 Author: Ralph Emerson This important collection of twelve essays includes his famous essay on self-reliance, as well as essays on intellect, history, love, friendship, heroism, art, compensation, and other subjects. ""Timeless, and without a trace of `dating,' these essays are as readable, and to a considerable extent as much read, today as a hundred years ago. Their ethical inspiration and stimulation, their occasional startling phrase, their individualistic idealism, which stirred renascent Yankee New England to its depths, speaks with the same simple power and force in the midst of modern complexities."" It is Emerson's essay on self-reliance, in which he strongly advocates standing alone behind one's own principles against the tides of conformity and society, which is perhaps his most famous: ""Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist... Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our own mind... No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature... the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it... What I must do, is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness... A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines... To be great is to be misunderstood... Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumphof principles. ID #: 0120 Title and Date: The Praise of Folly - 1549 Author: Desiderius Erasmus “This world as it is being lived just now has become a complete absurdity,” was all Erasmus intended to convey. “Allow me, therefore, my friends, to call upon the Goddess of Folly to explain to you how our religious, political, and social fabric has now assumed proportions of such grotesque stupidity and imbecility that only a complete fool can any longer hope to be happy while living under this kind of dispensation. Erasmus lived long enough to welcome more than forty editions of his Praise of Folly. Nor did he have to wait long for his foreign translations. The first of these, a French one, appeared in 1517. Then in rapid succession came others in German, Dutch, Flemish, and English... For these kind of Men that are so given up to the study of Wisdome are generally most unfortunate, but chiefly in their Children; Nature, it seems, so providently ordering it, lest this mischief of Wisdome should spread farther among mankind. For which reason itis manifest why Cicero's Son was so degenerate, and that wise Socrates' Children, as one has well observed, were more like their Mother than their Father, that is to say, Fools." ID #: 0121 Title and Date: The Federalist - 1788 Author: Federalist This is the most famous and influential American political work. When Hamilton invited his fellow New Yorker Jay and Madison, from Virginia, to join him in writing the series of essays published as The Federalist, it was to meet the immediate need of convincing the reluctant New York State electorate of the necessity of ratifying the newly proposed Constitution of the United States. The eighty-five essays, under the pseudonym Publius, were designed as political propaganda, not as a treatise of political philosophy. In spite of this The Federalist survives as one of the new nation's most important contributions to the theory of government. The Federalist exerted a powerful influence in procuring the adoption of the Federal Constitution, not only in New York but also in the other states. There is probably no work in so small a compass that contains so much valuable political information. The true principles of a republican form of government are here unfolded with great clearness and simplicity. ID #: 0163 Title and Date: Leviathan - 1651 Author: Thomas Hobbes ""A PECULIAR RELEVANCE FOR THE AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARIES... A POWERFUL INFLUENCE ON THE FRAMERS OF THE CONSTITUTION"": RARE FIRST ISSUE OF HOBBES' LANDMARK LEVIATHAN. First edition ""Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan... had a peculiar relevance for the American Revolutionaries... Hobbes had a fundamentally pessimistic view of human nature... [which] had a powerful influence on the framers of the Constitution... During the early years of the Revolutionary period, American leaders found Locke's revolutionary compact ideas more useful than Hobbes' view of the unlimited authority of the state. But as the political and social experience of the 1780s seemed to bear out Hobbes's pessimistic view that men are essentially self-interested, the Hobbesian outlook became more relevant. When John Adams wrote that `he who would found a state, and make proper laws for the government of it, must presume that all men are bad by nature,' he was expressing an idea that was derived at once from Hobbes"". ""Pepys, in his Diary, remarks on the scarcity of this work `because the Bishops will not let it be printed again.' Few books have caused more or fiercer controversy than this one... The system he constructed is the most profound materialistic system of modern times"". Hobbes's conclusion that an individual should, unless his life is threatened, submit to the State, because any government is better than anarchy, ""produced a fermentation in English thought not surpassed until the advent of Darwinism"". Leviathan was among the `Pernicious Books and Damnable Doctrines' proscribed by the University of Oxford and ordered to be burnt. It was also placed on the Index in 1703. Later philosophical emphasis on the rights of the individual led to a decline in Hobbes' influence, but the growth of utilitarianism led to his reassessment as ""the most original political philosopher of his time" ID #: 0197 Title and Date: Gettysburg Address - 1863 Author: Abraham Lincoln Rare first book-form publication of ""one of the supreme utterances of the principles of democratic freedom,"" Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. The Gettysburg Address, a few short lines scrawled, according to tradition, on scratch-paper and the backs of envelopes, is one of the most cherished documents in the history of the United States. On November 19, 1863, Lincoln arose after Edward Everett's two-hour dedication of the cemetery at Gettysburg and ""delivered the `few appropriate remarks' requested of him, and in ten sentences did unforgettable justice to the thousands of young Americans who had struggled with incredible bravery...""." ID#: 0206 Title and Date: Two Treatises of Government - 1694 Author: John Locke The foundation of liberalism Two Treatises of Government, The foundation of the principles of democracy. English philosopher. Educated at Christ Church, Oxford, Locke was a lecturer in Greek, rhetoric, and philosophy at that university and apparently practiced medicine, though he never received a medical degree. He became confidential secretary to the Earl of Shaftesbury, who, as one of the proprietors of Carolina, induced Locke to write a well-known constitution for the colony in 1669. Suspected of complicity in Shaftesbury's plot against the government, Locke was forced to leave England, and he lived in the Netherlands from 1684 to 1689. He returned to England at the accession of William and Mary and was appointed commissioner of appeals. Locke's influence on political theory was enormous. His Two Treatises on Government, written in defense of the Glorious Revolution, revealed his belief in the natural goodness and cooperative spirit of man and his theory that the state should operate according to natural laws of reason and tolerance. He advocated religious tolerance and rights to personal property. The American Declaration of Independence, in particular, echoes his contention that government rests on popular consent and that rebellion is permissible when government subverts the ends – the protection of life, liberty, and property – for which it is established." ID #: 0218 Title and Date: The Prince - 1640 Author: Niccolo Machiavelli Hitherto political speculation had tended to be a rhetorical exercise based on the implicit assumption of Church or Empire. Machiavelli founded the science of modern politics on the study of mankind... Politics was a science to be divorced entirely from ethics, and nothing must stand in the way of its machinery"". ""Niccolo Machiavelli, is a popular symbol for the... completely unprincipled, and unscrupulous politician whose whole philosophy is that the end justifies the means. The highest law to Machiavelli, it is universally believed, was political expediency... From a comparative reading of [The Discourses and The Prince], one must come to the startling conclusion that Machiavelli was a convinced republican. He had no liking for despotism, and considered a combination of popular and monarchical government best. No ruler was safe without the favor of his people. The most stable states are those ruled by princes checked by constitutional limitations... His ideal government was the old Roman republic, and he constantly harked back to it in the Discourses... It is hardly disputable that no man previous to Karl Marx has had as revolutionary an impact on political thought as Machiavelli"". ""[He] more than any other political thinker created the meaning that has been attached to the state in modern political usage"". As Lord Acton noted, "The authentic interpreter of Machiavelli is the whole of later history.” ID #: 0241 Title and Date: On Liberty - 1859 Author: John Stuart Mill "ONE OF THE CLASSIC DEFENSES OF FREEDOM IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. The essay On Liberty was probably Mill's only abiding work on politics... comparable to Milton's Areopagitica... as one of the classical defenses of freedom in the English language... The argument of his essay went far beyond a merely utilitarian defense of liberty. When he said that all mankind has no right to silence one dissenter... he was claiming the right to think, to investigate, and to know as moral attributes inseparable from the dignity of a rational being"". ""Mill's On Liberty remains his most widely read book. It represents the final stage in the growth of Utilitarian doctrine... Mill realized that the `greatest good' of the community is inseparable from the liberty of the individual... [declaring that] `the sole end for which mankind is justified in interfering with liberty of action is self-protection'... Many of Mill's ideas are now the ommonplaces of democracy. His arguments for freedom of every kind of thought or speech have never been improved on. He was the first to recognize the tendency of a democratically elected majority to tyrannize over a minority.""" ID#: 0247 Title and Date: Areopagitica - 1644 Author: John Milton ""HE WHO DESTROYS A BOOK, KILLS REASON ITSELF"": EXCEPTIONALLY RARE 1644 FIRST EDITION OF MILTON'S AREOPAGITICA, THE MOST FAMOUS OF ALL DEFENSES OF FREEDOM OF THE PRESS. The extraordinarily rare first edition of the greatest of Milton's prose works and the most famous of all defenses of freedom of the press. Milton wrote his Areopagitica in direct response to the clerical outrage-- and attempt to revive the censorship laws-- that had greeted his Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce the year before, and this work is in effect a protest against an ordinance of Parliament, which sought to license all printing. Areopagitica was printed in open defiance of the law, without license, and the printer of Areopagitica might have been rather less courageous than its author, as he has never been identified. ""The vulgar reaction to his English-language book on divorce made Milton wish he had written it in Latin and he gave Greek titles to his next pamphlets. The meaning of Areopagitica would be clear enough to the readers he wanted to reach. Named after Areopagus, the hill near the Acropolis where the governing council of ancient Athens met, it was cast as an oration… Milton pleaded for reform in England to liberate the book: ""For books are not absolutely dead things, but… do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous Dragon's teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet on the other hand unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good Book; who kills a Man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good Book, kills reason itself, kills the Image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the Earth; but a good Book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life."" Despite Milton's eloquence the licensing act was not repealed. But the issue remained alive and Milton's plea became an endless refrain. ""Jefferson made Milton one of his heroes and always put the Areopagitica on his reading list for young disciples"". "What we owe to Milton first and foremost is the isolation of the freedom of the press from all other forms of toleration, especially religious tolerations, disputed and advocated at the time; it is this, and the vigor of the matchless prose in which it was advocated, that give Milton's works their life today""." ID #: 0269 Title and Date: Common Sense - 1776 Author: Thomas Paine Printed in England, first issue with rare general half-title for Common Sense and Chalmer's Plain Truth. Contained many hiatuses where passages occurred casting reflection upon the Crown and government.' ID #: 0349 Title and Date: A Yankee in Canada - 1866 Author: Henry David Thoreau This essay is ``the classic of individualism in its inevitable conflict with government, but again, implies a state based upon laws in conformity with Thoreau's conception of what is noblest and most worthily human.''" ID #: 0367 Title and Date: Vindication of the Rights of Men - 1790 Author: Mary Wollstonecraft English author. Wollstonecraft is best known for Vindication of the Rights of Woman, the first great feminist manifesto. In 1797 she married William Godwin and died when their daughter, Mary, later Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, was born. ID#: 0368 Title and Date: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - 1792 Author: Mary Wollstonecraft "WOLLSTONECRAFT ADVOCATES LIBERTY AND EQUALITY FOR ALL HUMANITY... THE KEY TO FREEDOM LIES IN THE REASONING INDIVIDUAL CONSCIENCE, NOT IN LAWS OR DOGMA"": Classic work on freedom, equality, and education. ""Wollstonecraft's major work caused an outcry when it was published and is hailed as a cornerstone of feminism.... The central theme of the work on women's rights was that they should be educated to carry a responsibility in society equal to that of men. In disagreement with Rousseau... Wollstonecraft urged `rational fellowship instead of slavish obedience'"". Vindication of the Rights of Woman was written in a ""plain and direct style, and it was this as well as the idea of writing a book on the subject at all, which caused the outcry that ensued... she argued for equality of education for both sexes... and co-education. It was a rational plea for a rational basis to the relation between the sexes... Its chief object was to show that women were not the playthings of men but ought to be their equal partners, which they could be only if they were educated in the same way"". ""She was the first woman to articulate publicly a request for women's suffrage and coequal education... Although Wollstonecraft is best known as a feminist thinker, her philosophies are not limited to women's issues... Wollstonecraft advocates liberty and equality for all humanity. Advancing arguments for political rights, she argues for the removal of traditional injustices of rank, property, class, and gender... The key to freedom lies in the reasoning individual conscience, not in laws or dogma... Wollstonecraft adamantly asserts that education inculcating reason will eventually emancipate all humankind from all forms of servitude (political, sexual, religious, or economic)""." ID#: 0375 Title and Date: Lincoln & Douglas Debates - 1860 Author: Abraham Lincoln Political debates between Honorable Abraham Lincoln and Honorable Stephen A. Douglas in the celebrated campaign of 1858, in Illinois including the preceding speeches of each at Chicago, Springfield etc; also the two great speeches of Mr. Lincoln in Ohio in 1859 as carefully prepared by the reporters of each party, and published at the times of their delivery. ID#: 0427 Title and Date: On The Dignity Of Man - 1530 Author: Pico della Mirandola Giovanni First separate edition of Pico's most widely known work, in which he unfolds his philosophy of human nature and argues that the root of man's excellence and dignity lies in the fact that man is the maker of his own nature. May be what he wishes to be; he makes himself what he chooses. Pico originally intended it as his opening address to the public debate over his Conclusiones scheduled for Ephiphany 1478, but the debate was suspended by order of Pope Innocent VIII. It achieved the title by which it is known today in Jakob Wimpfeling's edition of the Opera (Strasbourg 1504)." ID#: 0448 Title and Date: Progress of the Human Spirit - 1795 Author: Nicholas Condorcet First edition, published posthumously, of Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet, known as Nicholas de Condorcet's (1743-1794) greatest work, often considered the culmination of characteristically eighteenth-century philosophy. In its emphasis on the idea of progress, the book also established the dominant idiom of nineteenth-century thought. In fact, the Esquisse, written in the last month of Condorcet's life, while he was in hiding during the Terror, was intended only as the introduction to a larger book on the history of science in society, which Condorcet had been planning for some years. Only fragments of the unfinished work exist, though some of these, for instance the one containing a project for a universal language of the sciences, are of considerable interest. The aim of the Esquisse was to demonstrate man's progressive emancipation, first from the arbitrary domination of his physical environment and then from the historical bondage of his own making. By linking the question of human progress with that of population, Condorcet also anticipated the work of Malthus." ID#: 0499 Title and Date: Appeal of One Half of the Human Race, Women - 1825 Author: William Thompson Appeal of one half of the human race, women, against the pretensions of the other half, men, to retain them in political, and thence in civil and domestic slavery; in reply to a paragraph of Mr. Mill's celebrated ""Article on Government" ID#: 0500 Title and Date: Confessions of the Incomparable Doctour Augustine - 1620 Author: Augustine of Hippo The "Confessions" frank description of both emotional and intellectual problems, their acute psychological observations and analysis of complex sentiments, and at the same time their obvious sincerity and humility, account for their immediate and lasting influence. ID#: 0531 Title and Date: Meditations - 1635 Author: Marcus Aurelius Antoni The Roman emperor, His meditations concerning himself: treating of a natural man’s happiness; Where in it consisteth, and the meanes to attaine unto it. Stoic and practical moralist Marcus Aurelius here counsels wisdom, justice, fortitude, and temperance as the qualities most essential for co-existence; his writings represent an early and influential philosophy of humanism. ID#: 0544 Title and Date: Christiana & incosternata Reposio - 1521 Author: Luther, Martin Principibus & dominis Vvormatie Facta. Anno M V xxi Sexto die Aprilis. An Ivsta Ratione Martinus Lutherus reformationis Tragaediam mouerit, doctum, & eruditum cuiusdam idyllion. Very rare contemporary printing of Luther's speech to the Diet of Worms on the 18th April 1521, often regarded as a turning point in German and European history. Luther's appearance at the Imperial Diet was brought about by Leo X's demand that Charles V, the young Holy Roman Emperor, present to Luther a bull of excommunication. Luther's first appearance in front of the Diet was on the 17th September; he was asked whether he acknowledged authorship of the works to which the Pope objected. He replied that he did. He was then asked if he was ready to recant his errors. Rather than answering immediately, he asked for twenty-four hours to prepare a response. That response is what we have in the present work. Luther starts by dividing his writings into three different types. He had written simple works on the gospels, which he could not renounce, as to do so would condemn that truth on which friend and enemy alike agree. The second type of work was against the Papacy. Playing to his German audience, he asked what was wrong with these; it was hard to deny that the influence of the Papacy was harmful to Christendom in general and the great German nation in particular. Most of his speech, however, deals with the demands that he renounce the third type of work. ID#: 0588 Title and Date: Rhetoric, or the True principals and grounds of Oratory - 1686 Author: Aristotle Showing the Right Art of Pleading and Speaking in Assemblies and Courts of Judicature. The Rhetoric consists of three books. Book I offers a general overview, presenting the purposes of rhetoric and a working definition; it also offers a detailed discussion of the major contexts and types of rhetoric. Book II discusses in detail the three means of persuasion that an orator must rely on: those grounded in credibility (ethos), in the emotions and psychology of the audience (pathos), and in patterns of reasoning (logos). Book III introduces the elements of style (word choice, metaphor, and sentence structure) and arrangement (organization). Some attention is paid to delivery, but generally the reader is referred to the Poetics for more information in that area. ID#: 0594 Title and Date: Imitation of Christ - 1497 Author: Thomas A. Kempis The beloved Imitation of Christ, an account of the soul's gradual progress away from the world toward Christian perfection and a union with God through contemplation, has been translate into many languages and has been embraced by many cultures because of its sincerity, its simplicity, and the universal quality of its religious teaching. The controversy over the work's authorship has persisted for centuries, the main contenders being the unworldly and mystical Augustinian monk Thomas a Kempis (born Thoman Hammerlein, 1380- 1471), from a humble family in Kempen (near Cologne), and Gerson (1363-1429), the French theologian, controversialist, and chancellor of Paris, long a favorite contender among French commentators. Although modern scholars are less likely to believe him to be the author (nor are they entirely certain it was Thomas), Gerson would have been a logical choice in his time, both because of his importance and because of the way he wrote and preached. He was one of the most prominent figures in the Church of the period, a spiritual writer of great reputation, and a major figure in the attempt to bring unity to the schismatized Church. His works include 27 extant treatises on the Church, more than 60 works on the spiritual life, and more than 100 sermons and addresses. Thought he was frequently chosen, because of his great reputation as an orator, to speak at great occasions and for noble audiences, he strove, especially in his informal works, to write in such a way as to bring problems within the grasp of even the least sophisticated of minds. Our edition gives an alternate title to the Imitatio Christi,”calling it De Contemptu Omnium Vanitatum Mundi, (On Contempt for all Worldly Vanities,), and our volume also contains a short treatise on the Meditation of the Heart, which is attributed, with less controversy, to Gerson. ID#: 0628 Title and Date: Crockett Almanac of 1839 - 1838 Author: David Crockett Containing adventures, exploits, sprees and scrapes in the west and life and manners in the backwoods. The fifth of the Crockett almanacs issued in Nashville. ID#: 0629 Title and Date: Crockett Almanac of 1842 - 1841 Author: David Crockett Containing rows, sprees and scrapes in the west; life and manners in the backwoods; and terrible adventures on the ocean. Compilation of the now famous stories ascribed to the personage of Davy Crockett. ID#: 0632 Title and Date: The Female Review, or Memoirs of an American Young Lady - 1797 Author: John Adams Vinton Whose life and character are peculiarly distinguished, being a continental soldier for nearly three years, in the late American war. During which time she performed the duties of every department, into which she was called with exactness, fidelity and honor and preserved her chastity inviolate by the most artful concealment of her sex. With an appendix containing characteristic traits, by different hands; her taste for economy, principles of domestic education etc. by a Citizen of Massachusetts. ID#: 0671 Title and Date: Magna Carta - 1350 Contains Magna Charta; Statues of the Realm; Register of Writs. First Issued in 1215 as a result of an angry encounter, on the plains of Runnymeade, between an assembly of Barons and King John over the right of the King to obtain funds from a few powerful families. It was this understanding of the Magna Charta as a declaration of the rights of "We the People" that fostered the charters written by the American colonies. The Magna Charta, the Great Charter of English liberties granted by King John in 1215 under threat of civil war, is one of the most influential documents ever published and its significance has grown immeasurably with the passage of time. The Magna Charta holds "a unique place in popular imagination; quite early in its history it became a symbol and battle cry against oppression, each successive generation reading into it a protection of their own threatened liberties." ID#: 0679 Title and Date: Nuremberg Chronicle - 1500 Author: Hartmann Schedel Das Burch der Croniken Under Geschichten - The Nuremberg Chronicle was the most ambitious illustrated book of the incunable period and a point in the evolution of humanistic history. The Nuremberg Chronicle is a pictorial history of the earth from creation to the 1490s published in 1493. Its structure follows the story of human history as related in the Bible while also including digressions on natural catastrophes, royal genealogies and the histories of a number of important Western cities. It is considered one of the most outstanding examples of early printing and is an excellent reflection of the spirit of its time. It simultaneously demonstrates the influence of the Renaissance humanism, and it shows a society in the process of transformation from medieval to modern, and from a scribal culture to a print culture. In 1493, the year the Chronicle was published, the city of Nuremburg was the most advanced among the German cities in the arts and crafts and commercial relations, and also the first city in Germany to make paper. The Chronicle contains 1809 prints, taken from 645 actual woodcuts. The Chronicle retains its splendor from a typographical perspective because the area and number of woodcuts are larger than in any other book of its century. ID#: 0682 Title and Date: Liber Primus Sententiarum - 1440 Author: Peter Lombard Peter Lombard (1100-1160), professor at school of Notre-Dame, was made famous by his Sentences. Accompanied here by a rare series of charming and imaginative historiated initials colorfully painted in water color washes, its marginal glosses and commentary warrant further study. Toward the thirteenth century, the books of the Sentences were divided into distinciones, a Latin work that first meant a pause in reading, then a division into chapters. The present manuscript contains the 48 Distinctiones of Book I, including its Prologue and Table. Book I deals with the evidences for the existence of God, including Trinity, on God's attributes, on providence, predestination, and evil. Numerous marginal commentaries and annotations on the Distinctions written by several scholars add to the interest of this manuscript. ID#: 0725 Title and Date: A Tramp Abroad - 1880 Author: Mark Twain Twain's account of traveling in Europe, A Tramp Abroad (1880) sparkles with the author's shrewd observations and highly opinionated comments on Old World culture, and showcases his unparalleled ability to integrate humorous sketches, autobiographical tidbits, and historical anecdotes in a consistently entertaining narrative. Cast in the form of a walking tour through Germany, Switzerland, France, and Italy, A Tramp Abroad includes among its adventures a voyage by raft down the Neckar and an ascent of Mont Blanc by telescope, as well as the author's attempts to study Art -- a wholly imagined activity Twain "authenticated" with his own wonderfully primitive pictures included in this volume. ID#: 0728 Title and Date: Congress First Connecticut Printing of the United States Constitution - 1788 A very rare printing (one of five known copies) of the first official printing done after the state ratified the Constitution on January 9, 1788. Connecticut was the fifth state to ratify the Constitution, putting it more than halfway toward the milestone of nine states needed for adoption. The ratifying convention opened on January 4, and among the delegates were Oliver Ellesworth, Oliver Wolcott, and Matthew Griswold (who served as president). One hundred twenty-eight delegates to the Connecticut ratifying convention approved the Constitution, while forty dissented. Connecticut did not ratify the Constitution subject to the addition of the bill of rights (as apposed to Massachusetts, South Carolina, New Hampshire, New York, and Virginia). In fact, Connecticut did not ratify the Bill of Rights for another 150 years, in 1939. ID#: 0741 Title: Massachusetts Magazine containing part I of "On the Equality of the Sexes" Date: March 1790 Author: Murray, Judith Sargent Using the pen name "Constantia, Judith Sargent Murray published this essay in the March and April 1790 issues. The Massachusetts Magazine was a highly respected periodical of its time. Its circulation included the entire American Eastern seaboard and also reached across the Atlantic to England. This essay predated by two years Mary Wollstonecraft's better known "Vindication of the Rights of Woman". ID#: 0745 Title and Date: A Disquisition on Government and a Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the United States - 1851 Author: Calhoun, John C. Always an immensely controversial character. He may also be the most important thinker to follow the Founders on matters of the Constitution and the Union. These are his two most significant works. They contain the corpus of Calhoun's mature reflections. One is theoretical and the other historical. They also contain his critique and commentary on the Federalist Papers. ID#: 0755 Title and Date:Verrine Orations Manuscript - 1476 Author: Cicero, Marcus Tullius The very basis of modern rhetorical strategies. This was the only cause in which Cicero was engaged as accuser instead of defender. Concerns the Sicilian's suit against former governor Gaius Verres who had embezzled funds and worse. Verres' defender Quintus Hortensius was so confounded by Cicero's prosecution, he was unable to make any defense. Cicero is the greatest name in Roman literature. ID#: 0788 Title and Date: Life of Crockett - 1844 Author: Ellis, Edward S. Ellis was a teacher, school administrator, journalist, and the author of hundreds of publications that he produced under his name as well as under a number of various pen names. Notable fiction stories by Ellisinclude The Huge Hunter, or the Steam Man of the Prairies and Seth Jones, or the Captives of the Frontier. Internationally, Edward S. Ellis is probably known best for his Deerhunter novels read widely by young boys until the 1950s. During the mid-1880s, after a fiction-writing career of some thirty years, Ellis eventually began composing more serious works of biography, history, and persuasive writing. One of which was “The Life of Colonel David Crockett", which had the mythical story of Davy Crockett giving a speech usually called "Not Yours To Give". It was a speech in opposition to awarding money to a Navy widow on the grounds that Congress had no Constitutional mandate to give charity. It was said to have been inspired by Crockett's meeting with a Horatio Bunce, a much quoted man in Libertarian circles, but one for whom historical evidence of is non-existent. ID#: 0790 Title and Date: Hebrew Torah - 16th Century The Torah (Translit.: torah Translated: doctrine, teaching) has been revered as the inspired word(s) of God, as it is said by tradition to have been revealed to Moses by Him. The Torah is sometimes referred to as the (written) Law or written Torah (unlike the oral Torah called Mishnah). The Torah is the first part of the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, and is made up of five books. For that reason it is also called the Pentateuch, Chumash, or "the Five Books of Moses". ID#: 0848 Title and Date: Communist Manifesto - 1848 Author: Marx, Karl Commissioned by the Communist League and written by communist theorists Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx, it laid out the League's purposes and program. The Manifesto suggested a course of action for a proletarian (working class) revolution to overthrow the bourgeois social order and to eventually bring about a classless and stateless society. ID#: 0897 Title: An Original Leaf From The First Bible Printed in English In America From a Limited Edition Aitken Bible, known as the “Bible of Revolution,” printed in Philadelphia from 1781 to 1783. There were only 1,000 copies printed. This particular leaf is a selection from the Book of Ezekiel, Chapter 42. The New Testament was printed in 1781, the Old Testament in 1782, and the Psalm of David in Metere in 1783; all by Robert Aitken, in his small printing shop in Philadelphia at Pope's Head, Three Doors above the Coffee House, in Market Street.” ID#: 0904 Title and Date: Select Pieces - 1758 Author: Franklin, Benjamin A compilation of several of the primary pieces written by Benjamin Franklin, printed as a “Literary Miscellany in 1758. A number of works, or selections of works, included are: The Preliminary Address to the Poor Richard's Almanac, Necessary Hints to those that Would Be Rich, Advice to Young Tradesman, An Economical Project, The Whistle, Morals of Chess, Observations of the Generally Prevailing Doctrines of Life & Death, Parable Against Persecution, and An Allegorical Dream. ID#: 0923 Title and Date: Voltaire (Francois Marie Candid, All For The Best Arouet) - 1759 Francois-Marie Arouet (21 November 1694 – 30 May 1778), better known by the pen name Voltaire, was a French Enlightenment writer, essayist, deist and philosopher known for his wit, philosophical sport, and defense of civil liberties, including freedom of religion. He was an outspoken supporter of social reform despite strict censorship laws and harsh penalties for those who broke them. A satirical polemicist, he frequently made use of his works to criticize Christian Church dogma and the French institutions of his day. He is best known today for his novel, Candide, ou l'Optimisme (Candide, or Optimism, 1759), which satirized the philosophy of optimism. Candide was also subject to censorship and Voltaire jokingly claimed that the actual author was a certain "Dr DeMad" in a letter, where he reaffirmed the main polemical stances of the text. Voltaire was one of several Enlightenment figures (along with John Locke and Thomas Hobbes) whose works and ideas influenced important thinkers of both the American and French Revolutions. ID#: 0933 Title and Date: Bonaventure Bible For The Poor - 1518 This Bible for the poor is very rare. It is attributed to Saint Bonaventura and takes the form of a Concordance "with practical advice for the sermon". No other examples of this book are found in the world's leading libraries and only a few are known to exist. ID#: 0939 Title and Date: On the Choice of a President - 1812 Author: Hamilton, Alexander A scarce, passionate, and bitter attack on DeWitt Clinton, President Madison's re-election opponent in 1812."Ambition and intrigue have ever been his prominent characteristics. Inherent in his nature, they have been strengthened by education, and confirmed by habit…A deep shade of deception is palpable in the whole course of Mr. Clinton's political life. His honor was educated amid the rank raciness of Orange. In that country he conned democracy from habitual converse with its rudest citizens. The licentiousness of anti-federalism taught him the wildest projects." ID#: 1009 Title and Date: Rights of Man - 1791 Author: Paine, Thomas Published 1791, Rights of Man, was written by Thomas Paine. This work is a second edition piece published in the same year as the first. Rights of Man suggested that popular political revolution is permissible when a government does not safeguard its people, their natural rights, and their national interests. Using these points as a base it defends the French Revolution against Edmund Burke's attack in Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). Rights of Man opposed the idea of hereditary government, the belief that dictatorial government is necessary because of man's corrupt essential nature. It criticized Burke's assertion of the nobility's inherent hereditary wisdom. Paine counters the allegation with a nation has not a right to form a Government for governing itself. He contests Burke's definition of Government as "a contrivance of human wisdom". Instead, Paine argues that Government is a contrivance of man. It follows hereditary succession and hereditary rights to govern that cannot compose a Government because the wisdom to govern cannot be inherited. The publication of Rights of Man caused uproar in England. It led Paine to be tried in absentia in court. He was convicted for seditious libel against the Crown, but he was unavailable for hanging, having departed England for France. ID#: 1043 Title and Date: Arithmetices euclideae Liber Primus 1564 Author: Euclid Presented to Daniel Rogers. This rare work consists of the text of Euclid with a commentary cast as dialogue between Philomathes (Lover of mathematical learning) an d Orthophronius (Right Thinker). Presented by the author/editor Johannes Stein (sthenius) to the eminent international scholar and diplomat Daniel Rogers (c. 1538 - 1591). Daniel Rogers was born in Wittenberg where his father was a protestant minister. His father, John Rogers, was burned at the stake in February 1555--the first of the Marian Martyyrs--"he, as one feeling no smart, washed his hands in the flame, as though it had been in cold water" (Foxe's Book of Martyrs). KVK & OCLC record copies at the British Library, Burndy Library (MIT), Oklahoma, Berlin and Dresden. ID#: 1059 Title: Stanton, Elizabeth Cady Address to the Legislature of 1854 New-York, Adopted By The State Woman's Rights Convention The Woman's Rights Convention was Stanton's audience for her Address; the Convention then cose it as its Address to the Legislature, and distributed it to legislators on February 20, 1854. This is the second issue of the first edition, located according to OCLC, only at AAS. OCLC records only microforms of the first issue; and according to Stanton's Selected Papers, copies of the first issue "have not been found". "It is not enough for us that by your laws we are permitted to live and breathe. We are persons, native, free-born citizens, property-holders, tax payers, yet are we denied the right of exercise of the elective franchise." "We are classed with idiots, lunatics, and negroes." Stanton denounces males' "inordinate love of power." The Woman's Rights Convention was Stanton's audience for her Address; the Convention then chose it as its Address to the Legislature, and distributed it to legislators on February 20, 1854. ID#: 1063 Title and Date: 1611 King James Bible "HE" Version - 1611 First Edition, First Printing King James Bible. Two editions of the Bible are recognized as having been produced in 1611. They are known as the "He" and "She" Bibles. They are distinguished by their rendering of Ruth 3:15; the first edition reading "he went into the city", where the second reads "she went into the city." However, Bibles in all the early editions were made up using sheets originating from several printers, and consequently there is very considerable variation within any one edition. There are fewer than two hundred of the original printings of 1611 "He" Bible known to exist of today. ID#: 1188 Title: Bible Vulgate In Latin, Illuminated Manuscript on Parchment. Northern France, Paris. The earliest examples of these portable Bibles were copied in Paris at the end of the 1220's or the early 1230's, and the format was adopted quickly throughout Europe. | 
