Slavery Exposed! repost of Abolitionists Trade Cards Set

Slavery exposed in this abolitionists trade cards set out of New Zealand is being re-posted in light of the recent film "Twelve Years a Slave".  We lived in Saratoga Springs for many years and were all too familiar with this horrible story of a freeman being kidnapped and sold back into slavery.  From 19th century ephemera to the big screen.  Lest we forget.Smack in the middle of the Civil War the abolitionists were still hard at work.  William A. Stephons must have been one of them.  In 1863 he registered a set of twelve images with the Copyright Office in the District of PA.  They were radical images, presenting a series of events in the life of a slave, events of a most dramatic kind.  They were so radical that they probably got the attention of everyone who saw them.These cards appeared for sale from New Zealand.  How they got there I do not know.  Some quick calls to advertising trade card experts revealed that only one card in this set had ever been seen by them before.  These have to be among the rarest trade cards ever printed in mid-19th Century America.  Why would that be?  First, these imprints are very early - the 1860s is early in the States for trade cards.  Second, they might not have been offered to advertisers in general, and the quack medicine advertised on the cards versos - all are identical - could have been the only user of these images.  But more likely, they were so radical, indeed - showing ex-slaves as brave union soldiers - that even Unionists would be put off.  I would not be surprised if all but a few were destroyed, wherever they might have turned up.  We are lucky to see them.The cards by number.One.The slave hard at work, doing his job in the cotton fields.Two.Christmas week - break from work, shows the slave as a human being, enjoying life as would anyone else.Three.The slave on the auction block.  No longer human - but chattel.Four.Breaking up the families.  Father was sold, but not his wife or children.  The hardened heart of slave owners.Five.The intense cruelty of slave owners is presented.Six.The slave breaks free, and seeks revenge.Seven.The runaway is hiding by the river.Eight.Across the Mason Dixon line (the river) he reaches the North, the US flag in the background, and the slave has escaped to freedom.Nine.The freed slave is recruited for the army.Ten.The freed slave fights bravely for the Union, in the thick of the battle.Eleven.Just as victory is attained, and the battle won, the slave is slain.Twelve.Columbia - the symbol for America's republic at that time - gives a laurel wreath to the freed slave who sacrificed himself for the Union.