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Winslow Homer Civil War Wood Engraving

"EXPULSION OF NEGROES AND ABOLITIONISTS FROM TREMONT TEMPLE, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS, ON DECEMBER 3, 1860"

Frederick Douglas and William Lloyd Garrison Kicked Out

This Homer Winslow engraving was not produced during the Civil War but it pictures a scene that illustrates the conflicts between justice and union which gave rise to the Civil War. The Harper's web site provides an instructive note to the engraving:

Although Boston had come to be associated as the seat of the antislavery movement, many of the city’s citizens held contrary views. In December 1860, a group of abolitionists, including William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass, met at Tremont Temple in Boston to commemorate the anniversary of John Brown’s execution. The assembled abolitionists considered Brown to be a martyr to their cause, but other Bostonians were not persuaded. Some of the latter interrupted and took over the proceedings, passing resolutions that condemned John Brown’s raid and expelling the abolitionists from the hall.
 

In "Winslow Homer's Magazine Engravings," Philip C. Beam, New York, 1979, the author reviews the playful genre work products of Homer in 1860 and notes that "Only the Expulsion of the Negroes and Abolitionists from Tremont Temple, Boston points to the darker and more serious times."

"Echo Of A Distant Drum: Winslow Homer and the Civil War" by Julian Grossman (New York, 1974) notes that this print highlights the role of Jews in the abolition movement. Garrison and Douglas probably chose the site for their meeting because the Rabbi and his congregation were believed to be sympathetic and author Grossman notes that,

In Baltimore, Rabbi David Einhorn, the great leader of the Reform wing of American Judaism, was directed to stop his preaching against slavery and eventually was force to leave his post a Har Sinai Temple because of his abolitionist writings. He, like many others, held that slavery was incompatible with the teachings of the Bible.

Below is the print as it will come to you matted and framed.

Price: SOLD