''The African Observer'', subtitled "Illustrative of the General Character, and Moral and Political Effects of Negro Slavery", was an

abolitionist Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery. In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historic movement that sought to end the Atlantic slave trade and liberate the enslaved people. The British ...

publication, produced in

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, largest city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the List of United States cities by population, sixth-largest city i ...

as a monthly journal between 1827 and 1828.Pride, Armistead Scott. "A Register and History of Negro Newspapers in the United States, 1827-1950." Widener, 1950. It was founded and edited by Enoch Lewis, a

Quaker Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of Christian denomination, denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belie ...

educator and mathematician who released the publication's first edition in April 1827.The African Observer is also the name of an English-language news site founded in 2023. According to Lewis's son, Joseph J. Lewis, the job "was a labor of love" for his father "rather than a business enterprise; his salary as editor being by no means sufficient for his support. But he was profoundly impressed with the growing importance of the political and social questions connected with

slavery Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...

, and clearly foresaw that the history of the nation must for many years take its character from its dealings with this institution."

History

During the mid-1820s, Lewis was recruited by the Pennsylvania Free Produce Society to design, launch and disseminate a new abolitionist publication. He was chosen by that group, according to historian Brian Temple, because he had rescued a runaway slave in 1803 by purchasing the man's freedom and had also invited a former slave to educate his ewis'smathematics class about what life was genuinely like in America for enslaved men, women and children. A half century after the publication's demise, Lewis's son, Joseph J. Lewis, reflected back on his father's involvement, calling it "a labor of love … rather than a business enterprise" because the salary he had been paid was not "sufficient for his support." The younger Lewis observed that his father had been "profoundly impressed with the growing importance of the political and social questions connected with slavery, and clearly foresaw that the history of the nation must for many years take its character from its dealings with this institution," adding that:

In view of the asperity which the controversy was already beginning to assume, and of the dangers threatened by the sectional alienation and the party passions which were growing up under it, his earnest desire was to introduce into the discussion the calmness of true statesmanship. He sought to apply to these questions at once the principles of political economy and those of humanity, principles universally accepted as laws of civilization; and, by showing the impolicy and waste, as well as the immorality of slavery, to reach the minds and hearts of its supporters. To convince and persuade, avoiding every expression which could provoke or exasperate; to remember that slaver-owner as well as slave was a man and a brother, and to bring to bear upon both all the resources of sound reason and of philanthropy."

Following eleven months of production, Enoch Lewis was forced, by economic circumstances, to cease operations. Demand had not been sufficient, according to Lewis's son, because the "Society of Friends, in which such a periodical would otherwise have found a large number of patrons, was distracted by internal questions of doctrine and discipline" and "torn by discord" when longtime minister

Elias Hicks Elias Hicks (March 19, 1748 – February 27, 1830) was a traveling Quaker minister from Long Island, New York. In his ministry he promoted unorthodox doctrines that led to controversy, which caused the second major schism within the Religious So ...

split from the church, taking with him his large group of followers (known as "

Hicksites Elias Hicks (March 19, 1748 – February 27, 1830) was a traveling Quaker minister from Long Island, New York. In his ministry he promoted unorthodox doctrines that led to controversy, which caused the second major schism within the Religious So ...

") after church elders decreed that Hicks had been preaching "doctrines incompatible with the faith of the early Friends."

Content

During its brief period of operation, ''The African Observer'' "attempted to quell animosity between the North and South, dispel party disaffection, 'trace the moral influence of slavery on those who breathe its atmosphere" and "point out the best means for its peaceful extinction,'" according to historian Paul Finkelman. Its content included essays, source materials, and articles which were intended to objectively illustrate for Lewis's white contemporaries the evils of the institution of slavery. Essays and documents also traced the early origin of the

African slave trade Slavery has historically been widespread in Africa. Systems of servitude and slavery were common in parts of Africa in ancient times, as they were in much of the rest of the ancient world. When the trans-Saharan slave trade, Indian Ocean ...

from the continent of Africa to the Americas. The publication also included accounts of kidnappings of free people who were sold into slavery, including

Cornelius Sinclair Cornelius Sinclair (c. 1813 to unknown) was an African American child kidnapped in Philadelphia in August 1825 by Patty Cannon's gang. He was one of a number of children kidnapped that summer and later transported south, to be sold into slavery. ...

and other victims of the Cannon-Johnson gang who were abducted from the Philadelphia area in the summer of 1825. Most were helped to return to freedom in Philadelphia in 1826.Crump, Judson and Alfred L. Brophy,
Cornelius Sinclair's Odyssey: Freedom, Slavery, and Freedom Again in the Old South" (UNC Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2469529)
in ''Mississippi Law Journal, 2016''. University, Mississippi: University of Mississippi School of Law, 2016.

References

External links

*
African Observer
' (catalog record with links to online, public domain copies of the publication made available by various universities and libraries across the United States). Ann Arbor, Michigan: Hathi Trust, retrieved online August 3, 2019. *
African Observer
' (online content from the 1827 edition). San Francisco, California: Internet Archive, retrieved online August 3, 2019. {{Authority control 1827 establishments in Pennsylvania 1828 disestablishments in Pennsylvania Abolitionist newspapers published in the United States Defunct political magazines published in the United States Magazines established in 1827 Magazines disestablished in 1828 Defunct magazines published in Philadelphia Abolitionism in Pennsylvania