How an 1830s Children’s Magazine Taught Hard Truths About Slavery

From 1836 to 1839, the American Anti-Slavery Society published The Slave’s Friend, a juvenile periodical edited by abolitionist Lewis Tappan. Each issue, specially sized to fit small hands, was 16 pages in length and featured a mix of stories, news items, and poems meant to gently but firmly tell white children about the evils of slavery. The New York Public Library’s digital collection offers a small collection of scans of the magazine’s 1837 issues.