Mary Rankin Typed Biographical Sketch of John Rankin to Lucien V. Rule, [after 1886]

5.

Mr. Rankin's account of his first book is significant.
"My brother Thomas settled in Middle Brook, Augusta
County, Virginia, as a merchant, and after living there
some years he wrote me that he had bought a slave. I
replied to him in a series of letters published in a
paper then printed in Ripley, called the "Castigator".
I sent him the paper; for them it cost twenty-five cents
to send a letter by mail. At that time (1823) Ohio was
an Antislavery state, consequently the series of letters
was well received. In those letters I urged the wrong
of slavery to a great extent. The arguments were all
my own for I had no books on the subject to guide me.
I let to the editors of the "Castigator", one
third of my house at $50.00 a year to pay for printing
a thousand copies of the letter in book form. I was too
poor to get them all bound at once. I got a few bound
at a time, until I circulated in Ohio and Kentucky six
hundred. A bookseller at Maysville, Ky. supplied his
store with them and the sale of them gave no offence
then. Since that time it would have endangered a man's
life to sell one of them in that state. I was too poor
to publish another edition and supposed it would never
appear again, but by some means Mr. Garrison obtained
a copy which excited him to run his antislavery course.
He acknowledged himself to be my disciple. I am responsi-
able for his Abolitionism but not for his divinity. He
published the entire series in the "Liberator". At
the origin of the American Antislavery Society it was
extensively published in New England, and the Society
made it a text book for their lectures. It was also
published in England. The facts of cruelty stated in
it were almost incredible yet they were true. -- It
has done its work and has passed away."

Because the American Book and Tract Society would not
publish antislavery tracts, Mr. Rankin suggested the
organization of a new one. The organization of the
American Reform Tract and Book Society took place in
the Vine Street Congregational Church of Cincinnati.
Its chief supporters were Congregationalists, Presby-
terians and Friends. As its first secretary, it fell
to Mr. Rankin to collect funds for its endowment and
his travels took him as far away as Bangor Maine. The
name later (1852) became the "west Tract and Book
Society." Mr. Rankin also wrote a number of tracts
which were published by the Society, among them -
"The Bible Contains no Sanction for Slavery", "By the
son of a Blacksmith", "On the Duty of Voting for Good
Men", and one on temperance, offering reasons why in-
toxicating drinks should be prohibited by law. One was
written for the North, showing why the North should a-
gree to liberate the slaves by purchase, and one
was for the Southern People, showing why they should
agree to free the slaves on those terms. Mr. Rankin
says - "The late war has shown that the reason given
in those two tracts were well founded, for it would have
saved millions of lives and thousands of millions of
money."