Matthias and His Impostures: or, the Progress of Fanaticism. Illustrated in the Extraordinary Case of Robert Matthews, and Some of His Forerunners and Disciples. (SIGNED)

Publishers Cloth. 12mo. Stated third edition. 347 pp. + ads. Very good. Small repair at crown of spine. Some light foxing. SIGNED in ink by the author on the front free end paper: "presented by Mr. Wm. L. Stone." rare third edition of this unusual account, involving sojourner truth ('isabella'). In 1832, Isabella Baumfree, who had freed herself from bondage in upstate New York and later renamed herself 'Sojourner Truth,' met Elijah Pierson, prophet of a religious sect. She joined with her infant child and met Robert Matthias, another member of the sect, who vied for leadership, claiming to be Jesus Christ incarnate. Matthias was accused of killing Elijah Pierson with some poisoned blackberries. Isabella, his servant, was of course implicated. In the end, Isabella was not only cleared, but awarded a sum of money after she sued the court for slander--the first black person to win such a suit. Not in the Blockson Collection. A rare inscribed coy now housed in a custom clamshell box with leather label. William Leete Stone (1792 - 1844) known as Colonel Stone, was an influential journalist, publisher, author, and public official in New York City. His name also appears as "Leet". Stone always advocated the abolition of slavery by congressional action in the columns of the Commercial Advertiser, as well as the activities of the American Colonization Society. He served as President of the New York Colonization Society. At the anti-slavery convention at Baltimore in 1825, he originated and drew up the plan for slave emancipation, including the deportation of all freed slaves out of the United States and financial compensation to slaveholders, which was recommended at that time to Congress for adoption [Adams, Alice Dana, The Neglected Period of Anti-Slavery in America, Radcliffe 1908]. He was one of the leading public critics of the American Anti-Slavery Society and others in favor of "immediate emancipation" and has been called one of the principal fomenters of the Anti-abolitionist riots (1834) [Wyatt-Brown, Bertram, Lewis Tappan and the Evangelical War against Slavery, Louisiana State University Press, 1969].