Bidspirit auction | (MORTARA, EDGARDO). VICTOR SEJOUR. Autograph

(MORTARA, EDGARDO). VICTOR SEJOUR. Autograph Manuscript Signed. From the preface to Tireuse de Cartes. One page. Five lines. Transcription: ”La famille, c'est la société en petit, l'humanité, c'est l'État en grand. (Préface à la Tireuse de Cartes). Victor Sejour.” Translation: ”Family is society in small, Humanity is the State in big. (Preface of the Tireuse de Cartes). Victor Sejour.” The autographed and signed quote highlights the idea that the family unit is a miniature representation of societal structures, and humanity as a whole can be viewed as a macro-level extension of the governing principles seen in a political state. ‘Tireuse de Cartes’ is by far the most important and influential dramatization of the Mortara case. It influenced Napoleon III, Emperor of France, to intercede with Pope Pius IX in his attempt to free the young boy. Juan Victor Séjour Marcou et Ferrand (1817-74) was an American Creole of color and expatriate writer. Born in New Orleans, he moved to Paris aged 19 where he spent the rest of his life. “Séjour’s La Tireuse de Cartes (The Fortune-Teller) is a result of the enormous amount of public attention received by the Mortara case, revealing an era of trans-Atlantic intellectual exchange, in which an African-American writer used notions of emancipation in religious as well as racial terms, linking the plight of blacks in America to that of Jews in Europe, and to the larger battles for freedom and nationhood advancing across the continent.” See Elèna Mortara, Writing for Justice: Victor Séjour, the Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara, and the Age of Transatlantic Emancipations (2015).