Review of Darwin's Brazil travel book in The Voice of Freedom

What it is

This is a page of The Voice of Freedom, Vol. VII, No. 49, dated 28 May 1846. The page carries dense multi-column text under headings including Editorial Sketches, Congress and New York Election. The article discusses a notice in the Standard of a book of travels in Brazil by Charles Darwin, published by Harpers. It says the book contains a manly denunciation of slavery, and that the author would never visit another land afflicted with it. The Library of Congress holds the page. Its text is an OCR copy made by an AI model, so it may contain errors and is not a reading by the original editors.

Why it matters

In 1846 Darwin was a young traveller whose account of Brazil had just appeared. This antislavery newspaper used his book to argue that public opinion was changing, and it criticised the publisher Harpers for past refusals to print certain works. The article shows how Darwin's travel writing was read in the United States, and how abolitionists used a British author's words in their own debate about slavery.

Look closer

• Why does the writer say the publisher's willingness to print the book is a good sign?
• What does the article suggest about who has power over what the public reads?
• Since the text was machine-read, which words should you check against an original scan before you trust them?