A new collecting area for Skillman, this collection concentrates on the period from the late 18th century to 1850 and includes a variety of texts—abolitionist poetry, anti-slavery periodicals, colonization-related publications, and artists’ books and broadsides that provide contemporary reflections on slavery, as well on issues of race and civil rights.

Robert Smirke engraving in Poems on the Abolition of the Slave Trade. (London, 1809)