“Let Freemen Read!” Joshua R. Giddings’ Falsehoods Repelled! [opening lines of broadside Ohio newspaper extra].

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An election-year Ohio newspaper extra attacking the prominent antislavery and Free Soil congressman Joshua R. Giddings (1795–1864) for alleged abuses of his Congressional travel mileage allowance. The broadside deploys the words of Giddings’ former legal mentor and immediate predecessor in Congress, Elisha Whittlesey (1783–1863), then serving as a U.S. Treasury official, to affirm the charges of impropriety, “exposing the Falsehoods, the Frauds and Treasury Swindles of J. R. Giddings,” and declaring that “the falsehoods of Mr. Galphin Giddings [are] repelled.”

The text opens with two brief statements by Giddings, followed by a substantial two-and-a-half-column letter from Whittlesey. Giddings’ defense sought to maintain his innocence while shifting responsibility to Comptroller Whittlesey for alleged “dereliction of duty” in permitting the mileage allowance. Whittlesey’s letter has the final word, concluding with a pointed appeal to voters to “purify Congress” by electing representatives who would not claim pay for travel not performed or attendance while absent, adding pointedly, “I am sorry my character and example had no controlling influence over him.”

A sharp, partisan document from the mid-century Ohio political press, illuminating factional conflict within the antislavery movement on the eve of a contested election.

Price: $250.00