Description:

Slavery
Carlisle, PA, ca. 1792-1795
Jews & Slavery in Student Journal 1790s at Dickinson College, 400 Handwritten Pages!
Diary/Journal

JOSEPH KELSO, student at Dickinson College in 1790s, Manuscript Documents Signed, two notebooks written while a student at Dickinson College. 1792-1795, Carlisle, Pennsylvania. ~400 pp., unpaginated, 4" x 6.375" ("March 10th AD. 1792" [final page]; printed bookplate: "Joseph Kelso, June 12. / Homo sum puto nil huma ni alienum a me [a quotation from the Roman African playwright Terence, meaning "I am human, and I think nothing human is alien to me."]"); x + 375 hand-numbered pp., 4.25" x 6.5" ("Finis July 3, 1795" [p75], "Finis / October 5th 1795" [p355]). Leather covers are tight but worn and somewhat warped; general toning but pages are quite bright for their age; very legible; very good. 400 Handwritten Pages!

In these two bound notebooks, Dickinson College student Joseph Kelso took extensive notes in question-and-answer format on a variety of fields, including moral philosophy, logic, chronology, history, rhetoric, natural philosophy, arithmetic, and astronomy. Kelso went on to graduate with a medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania and become a physician in Harrisburg.

One of his fellow students at Dickinson was future U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney (1777-1864), who graduated as valedictorian from Dickinson in October 1795. Given Taney's later attitudes toward African Americans and slavery, it is fascinating to read here the commentary on slavery as part of Kelso's notes on "moral philosophy," a class Taney would also have taken.
Excerpts

"Q. Are there any reasons to believe there are different races of men? A. No; on the contrary ye most of ye nations of Europe and Asia are of Tartarean extraction, tho they now differ variously from ye figure & colour of their progenitors."
"Q. What are the best substitutes for wealth? A. Frugality & industry which are likewise the best means of acquiring it, temperance & judicious foresight are the best defense against the injuries & temptation of poverty."
"Q. How can we discern what is for the good of mankind? A. Whatever tends to inspire benevolence, check malice & secure the rights of mankind may be said to have this tendency."
"Q. What is a crime? A. Any injury done from malice, jealousy, revenge, avarice or some other passion this sets mankind at variance."
"Q. Is polygamy or concubinage agreeable to the institutions of nature? A. No So far from it, that tho' they obtained by the customs of many nations in the East, nature has made them impracticable without other unnatural institutions such as Slavery & Eunuchism to support them."
"Q. What is the origin of slavery? A. It may have arisen from a corruption of service by contract or imbecillity of understanding, but it has been most encouraged & supported by war, those taken in the field becoming slaves of the conquerors.
"Q. What are the inconveniences of slavery? A. They are innumerable, the chief of them is the injustice of the practice the corruption of the character both of master & slave that arises from its hurtfullness to population, agriculture, and manners, the disgracing the order of servants, continuing the state of war & exposing families to continue in dangers and tragical accidents."
"Q. Does the holy scriptures give any countenance to the institution of slavery? A. No; the Jews were indeed permitted to purchase slaves on the account of educating them in the true religion but as their laws made slavery the punishment of a person that was base enough to choose it, & forbid the delivering up of a fugitive slave to his master which is a sufficient testimony that slavery is contrary to natural justice, and that no man can become the lawfull property of another."
"Q. Can any countenance be derived to this practice from the new testiment? A. No; the precept of doing to others as we would have them to do to us is an absolute prohibition of slavery and no positive precept can be found in the whole tenor of the new testiment supposes the unlawfulness of slavery, the person who is called being a servant is called the Lords freeman, and when Paul desired Onesimus to receive Philemon as himself, the most senseless slave monster will not pretend that he ment that he should be received as a slave."
"Q. What is ye natural course of human affairs? A. In some instances they tend to improvement, in others to Corruption and the institutions of men in one case, promote their improvement and in the other hasten their corruption."
"Q. What are we then to think of the old complaint, that the world grows daily worse and worse? A. That there is real foundation for it, tho' the answers given to it by Seneca and others are not to be despised. Perhaps men are improving in the speculative knowledge & regard to the exterior of things, tho' honour, truth, uprightness, and less ostentatious virtues daily decay. Artificial manners may improve in the absence of good morals."

Historical Background

Dickinson College was founded in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in 1773 as Carlisle Grammar School. In 1783, Philadelphia physician Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, founded the college and named it in honor of John Dickinson, a signer of the Constitution who later served as governor of Pennsylvania, and his wife Mary Norris Dickinson, who had donated their extensive library to the institution. The college received its charter on September 9, 1783, making it the first college to be founded after the formation of the United States. Scottish minister Charles Nisbet served as the college's first president from 1785 until he died in 1804.

Joseph Kelso (1773-1817) was born in Pennsylvania and attended Dickinson College in Carlisle in the 1790s. He studied medicine under the elder Dr. William Simonton and graduated from the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania. He began a practice in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. In 1806, he married Elizabeth Galbraith (1784-1818), with whom he had two children.

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

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