An exceptional volume edited by John A. Collins, General Agent and Vice President of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society.

Collins was a fire-brand, and among the first to see the potential of Frederick Douglass as a voice for abolition. It was in fact Collins who hired Douglass as an agent of the society in 1841 and told him "just tell your story." And tell his story he did! But hiring a person still technically enslaved to lecture publicly across New England was a bold, some thought wreckless, move. But it worked.

Collins was always the radical. Concurrent with his abolitionist work, he was active in urging the church into a position of non-resistance and was among those who helped lead the Skaneateles Community. After it's failure, he moved to California and labored as an attorney, defending Asian immigrants against the Chinese Exclusion Act, etc.

If any movement of the time held to a vision for a shared economic, racial and gendered humanity and a commitment to resist injustice in all its forms, he seems to have been involved

The content, much of which is original, includes: The Cause of Emancipation by William Lloyd Garrison; Story of Lila [Female Slave on the Mississippi]; Narrative of Nehemiah Caulkins [Underground Railroad - Series]; Slavery by R. Hildreth; Testimony of Angelina Grimke Weld; A Letter to the Abolitionists of Massachusetts by John A. Collins; West India Emancipation by Wendell Phillips; The Spirit of Abolitionists by William Lloyd Garrison; Picture of Slavery by R. R. Madden; The Equality of the Colored Race by Alexander H. Everett; Hard Language by William Lloyd Garrison; A Prayer for the Oppressed by John Pierpont; An Address to Slaveholders by William Ray; The African Character by W. E. Channing; Duty and Safety of Emancipation; The Holy War by G. S. Burleigh; The Degrading Influences of Slavery by Thomas Jefferson; Unchain the Laborer by John Pierpont; The Fugitives from Injustice in Boston by Susan Wilson; Children Pleading for the Slave; Freemen Awake! by Maria W. Chapman; Arming, but not with Carnal Weapons; A Colored Man's Opinion of Colonization; Rise, Sons of Africa! Freemen Asserting their Own Rights; The Gag by John Pierpont; etc.

Perhaps half a dozen pieces of content specifically on the First of August, the date on which the famed Lombard Street "Riots" took place, where 1,000 black formerly enslaved men marched in Philadelphia and were brutally attacked by mobs of white Philadelphians. It was one of the earliest and largest public protest of people of color in American history. 

A single page contemporary MSs loosely inserted in the rear containing the lyrics and music for the song, Hark Listen to the Trumpeters by John A. Granade. 

Collins, John A. [ed.] The Anti-Slavery Offering and Picknick; A Collection of Speeches, Poems, Dialogues, Songs, for Schools and A. S. Meetings. Boston. H. W. Williams. 1843. 

Good - in wraps, covers handled and soiled from use, spine cover nearly all chipped. Contents themselves all rather solidly bound and in a good state other than being well-used. Some corners turned and hand soil on the text.