Appeal by Walker
Ref: David Walker (1830). Appeal. Self-Published.
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Summary
Walker’s appeal is a radical anti-slavery and antiracist manifesto by a free American of African ancestry. Its bold denunciation of European culture was unprecedented, unrestrained, and startling. Walker attacks the slave system and its rampant racism from the viewpoint of America’s allegiance to the idea of freedom, quoting the Declaration of Independence at length…The appeals targets include southern slaveholders, their political protectors, Christian ministers who deny the lessons of the gospel to Africans, and the efforts to resettle (i.e. deport) free and freed negroes back to Africa. 200 years after enslaved Africans were first brought to North America, Walker’s appeal announced a new phase of resistance and struggle. Considered too radical by many who sympathized with abolition, it casts a beam of insightful courage across the centuries since- speaking truth to power, and chiding modern Americans over how much of its indictment still obtains.-Paul Royster.
“We Coloured People of these United States, are, the most wretched, degraded and abject set of beings that ever lived since the world began, down to the present day, and, that, the white Christians of America, who hold us in slavery, (or, more properly speaking, pretenders to Christianity,) treat us more cruel and barbarous than any Heathen nation did any people whom it had subjected, or reduced to the same condition, that the Americans (who are, notwithstanding, looking for the Millennial day) have us. All I ask is, for a candid and careful perusal of this the third and last edition of my Appeal, where the world may see that we, the Blacks or Coloured People, are treated more cruel by the white Christians of America, than devils themselves ever treated a set of men, women and children on this earth.”-David Walker.
David Walker (1796-1830): Born near Cape Fear, NC to a free mother and a deceased enslaved father. He lived in Charleston, SC, and Philadelphia before moving to Bostin in 1825. He was a clothes merchant, a Prince Hall Freemason, a member of the Methodist Church, and an agent and contributor for Freedom’s Journal. His first edition of Walkers Appeal appeared in Sep, 1829 and was quickly followed by two more in 1830. The work was suppressed in many parts of the country, especially in the Southern states. Walker died, probably of TB, shortly after the publication of the third edition.
“If any are anxious to ascertain who I am, know the world, that I am one of the oppressed, degraded and wretched sons of Africa, rendered so by the avaricious and unmerciful, among the whites.--If any wish to plunge me into the wretched incapacity of a slave, or murder me for the truth, know ye, that I am in the hand of God, and at your disposal. I count my life not dear unto me, but I am ready to be offered at any moment. For what is the use of living, when in fact I am dead.”-David Walker.
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Preamble
My Dearly Beloved Brethren and Fellow Citizens
“HAVING travelled over a considerable portion of these United States, and having, in the course of my travels, taken the most accurate observations of things as they exist--the result of my observations has warranted the full and unshaken conviction, that we, (coloured people of these United States,) are the most degraded, wretched, and abject set of beings that ever lived since the world began; and I pray God that none like us ever may live again until time shall be no more. They tell us of the Israelites in Egypt, the Helots in Sparta, and of the Roman Slaves, which last were made up from almost every nation under heaven, whose sufferings under those ancient and heathen nations, were, in comparison with ours, under this enlightened and Christian nation, no more than a cypher--or, in other words, those heathen nations of antiquity, had but little more among them than the name and form of slavery; while wretchedness and endless miseries were reserved, apparently in a phial, to be poured out upon our fathers, ourselves and our children, by Christian Americans!”
“Is not God a God of justice to all his creatures? Do you say he is? Then if he gives peace and tranquility to tyrants, and permits them to keep our fathers, our mothers, ourselves and our children in eternal ignorance and wretchedness, to support them and their families, would he be to us a God of justice? I ask, O ye Christians! ! ! who hold us and our children in the most abject ignorance and degradation, that ever a people were afflicted with since the world began--I say, if God gives you peace and tranquility, and suffers you thus to go on afflicting us, and our children, who have never given you the least provocation--would he be to us a God of justice?”
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Article I
Our Wretchedness in Consequence of Slavery
“My beloved brethren:--The Indians of North and of South America--the Greeks--the Irish, subjected under the king of Great Britain--the Jews, that ancient people of the Lord--the inhabitants of the islands of the sea--in fine, all the inhabitants of the earth, (except however, the sons of Africa) are called men, and of course are, and ought to be free. But we, (coloured people) and our children are brutes!! and of course are, and ought to be SLAVES to the American people and their children forever!! to dig their mines and work their farms; and thus go on enriching them, from one generation to another with our blood and our tears!!!”
“I do not know what to compare it to, unless, like putting one wild deer in an iron cage, where it will be secured, and hold another by the side of the same, then let it go, and expect the one in the cage to run as fast as the one at liberty.”
“I saw a paragraph, a few years since, in a South Carolina paper, which, speaking of the barbarity of the Turks, it said: "The Turks are the most barbarous people in the world--they treat the Greeks more like brutes than human beings." And in the same paper was an advertisement, which said: "Eight well built Virginia and Maryland Negro fellows and four wenches will positively be sold this day, to the highest bidder!" And what astonished me still more was, to see in this same humane paper! ! the cuts of three men, with clubs and budgets on their backs, and an advertisement offering a considerable sum of money for their apprehension and delivery. I declare, it is really so amusing to hear the Southerners and Westerners of this country talk about barbarity, that it is positively, enough to make a man smile.”
“Every body who has read history, knows, that as soon as a slave among the Romans obtained his freedom, he could rise to the greatest eminence in the State, and there was no law instituted to hinder a slave from buying his freedom. Have not the Americans instituted laws to hinder us from obtaining our freedom? Do any deny this charge? Read the laws of Virginia, North Carolina, &c. Further: have not the Americans instituted laws to prohibit a man of colour from obtaining and holding any office whatever, under the government of the United States of America? Now, Mr. Jefferson tells us, that our condition is not so hard, as the slaves were under the Romans!!!!!!”
“The whites have always been an unjust, jealous, unmerciful, avaricious and blood-thirsty set of beings, always seeking after power and authority. But we will leave the whites or Europeans as heathens, and take a view of them as Christians, in which capacity we see them as cruel, if not more so than ever. In fact, take them as a body, they are ten times more cruel, avaricious and unmerciful than ever they were; for while they were heathens, they were bad enough it is true, but it is positively a fact that they were not quite so audacious as to go and take vessel loads of men, women and children, and in cold blood, and through devilishness, throw them into the sea, and murder them in all kind of ways. While they were heathens, they were too ignorant for such barbarity. But being Christians, enlightened and sensible, they are completely prepared for such hellish cruelties.”
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Article II
Our Wretchedness in Consequence of Ignorance
“Ignorance, my brethren, is a mist, low down into the very dark and almost impenetrable abyss in which, our fathers for many centuries have been plunged. The Christians, and enlightened of Europe, and some of Asia, seeing the ignorance and consequent degradation of our fathers, instead of trying to enlighten them, by teaching them that religion and light with which God had blessed them, they have plunged them into wretchedness ten thousand times more intolerable, than if they had left them entirely to the Lord, and to add to their miseries, deep down into which they have plunged them tell them, that they are an inferior and distinct race of beings, which they will be glad enough to recall and swallow by and by. Fortune and misfortune, two inseparable companions, lay rolled up in the wheel of events, which have from the creation of the world, and will continue to take place among men until God shall dash worlds together.”
“That scourge of nations, the Catholic religion.”
“We must remember that humanity, kindness and the fear of the Lord, does not consist in protecting devils.”
“Mr. Jefferson, a much greater philosopher the world never afforded, has in truth injured us more, and has been as great a barrier to our emancipation as any thing that has ever been advanced against us. I hope you will not let it pass unnoticed. He goes on further, and says: This unfortunate difference of colour, and perhaps of faculty, is a powerful obstacle to the emancipation of these people.”
“If any of you wish to know how FREE you are, let one of you start and go through the southern and western States of this country, and unless you travel as a slave to a white man (a servant is a slave to the man whom he serves) or have your free papers, (which if you are not careful they will get from you) if they do not take you up and put you in jail, and if you cannot give good evidence of your freedom, sell you into eternal slavery, I am not a living man: or any man of colour, immaterial who he is, or where he came from, if he is not the fourth from the negro race!! (as we are called) the white Christians of America will serve him the same they will sink him into wretchedness and degradation for ever while he lives.”
“It is lamentable, that many of our children go to school, from four until they are eight or ten, and sometimes fifteen years of age, and leave school knowing but a little more about the grammar of their language than a horse does about handling a musket--and not a few of them are really so ignorant, that they are unable to answer a person correctly, general questions in geography, and to hear them read, would only be to disgust a man who has a taste for reading; which, to do well, as trifling as it may appear to some, (to the ignorant in particular) is a great part of learning. Some few of them, may make out to scribble tolerably well, over a half sheet of paper, which I believe has hitherto been a powerful obstacle in our way, to keep us from acquiring knowledge. An ignorant father, who knows no more than what nature has taught him, together with what little he acquires by the senses of hearing and seeing, finding his son able to write a neat hand, sets it down for granted that he has as good learning as any body; the young, ignorant gump, hearing his father or mother, who perhaps may be ten times more ignorant, in point of literature, than himself, extolling his learning, struts about, in the full assurance, that his attainments in literature are sufficient to take him through the world, when, in fact, he has scarcely any learning at all!!!!”
“It is a notorious fact, that the major part of the white Americans, have, ever since we have been among them, tried to keep us ignorant, and make us believe that God made us and our children to be slaves to them and theirs. Oh! my God, have mercy on Christian Americans!!!”
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Article III
Our Wretchedness in Consequence of the Preacher of the Religion of Jesus Christ
“Our wretchedness first commenced in America--where it has been continued from 1503, to this day, 1829.”
“Perhaps they will laugh at or make light of this; but I tell you Americans! that unless you speedily alter your course, you and your Country are gone!!!!!! For God Almighty will tear up the very face of the earth!!! Will not that very remarkable passage of Scripture be fulfilled on Christian Americans? Hear it Americans!! "He that is unjust, let him be unjust still:--and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still.”
“The English are the best friends the coloured people have upon earth. Though they have oppressed us a little and have colonies now in the West Indies, which oppress us sorely.--Yet notwithstanding they (the English) have done one hundred times more for the melioration of our condition, than all the other nations of the earth put together. The blacks cannot but respect the English as a nation, notwithstanding they have treated us a little cruel.”
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ARTICLE IV
Our Wretchedness in Consequence of the Colonizing Plan
“When God Almighty commences his battle on the continent of America, for the oppression of his people, tyrants will wish they never were born.”
“I shall now pass in review the speech of Mr. Elias B. Caldwell, Esq. of the District of Columbia, extracted from the same page on which Mr. Clay's will be found. Mr. Caldwell, giving his opinion respecting us, at that ever memorable meeting, he says: "The more you improve the condition of these people, the more you cultivate their minds, the more miserable you make them in their present state. You give them a higher relish for those privileges which they can never attain, and turn what we intend for a blessing into a curse."”
“A law has recently passed the Legislature of this republican State (Georgia) prohibiting all free or slave persons of colour, from learning to read or write; another law has passed the republican House of Delegates, (but not the Senate) in Virginia, to prohibit all persons of colour, (free and slave) from learning to read or write, and even to hidner them from meeting together in order to worship our Maker!!!!!!”
“It is said by the Southern slave-holders, that the more ignorant they can bring up the Africans, the better slaves they make.”
“This land which we have watered with our tears and our blood, is now our mother country, and we are well satisfied to stay where wisdom abounds and the gospel is free.”
“Bishop Allen. I do hereby openly affirm it to the world, that he has done more in a spiritual sense for his ignorant and wretched brethren than any other man of colour has, since the world began. And as for the greater part of the whites, it has hitherto been their greatest object and glory to keep us ignorant of our Maker, so as to make us believe that we were made to be slaves to them and their children, to dig up gold and silver for them.”
“Some ignorant creatures hesitate not to tell us that we, (the blacks) are the seed of Cain the murderer of his brother Abel. Now, I ask those avaricious and ignorant wretches, who act more like the seed of Cain, by murdering the whites or the blacks?”
“How many millions souls of the human family have the blacks beat nearly to death, to keep them from learning to read the Word of God, and from writing. And telling lies about them, by holding them up to the world as a tribe of TALKING APES, void of INTELLECT!!!!! incapable of LEARNING, &c.”
“See the inconsistency of the assertions of those wretches--they beat us inhumanely, sometimes almost to death, for attempting to inform ourselves, by reading the Word of our Maker, and at the same time tell us, that we are beings void of intellect!!!!”
“Would they fool with any other people as they do with us? No, they know too well, that they would get themselves ruined. Why do they not bring the inhabitants of Asia to be body servants to them? They know they would get their bodies rent and torn from head to foot. Why do they not get the Aborigines of this country to be slaves to them and their children, to work their farms and dig their mines? They know well that the Aborigines of this country, or (Indians) would tear them from the earth. The Indians would not rest day or night, they would be up all times of night, cutting their cruel throats. But my colour, (some, not all,) are willing to stand still and be murdered by the cruel whites.”
“America is more our country, than it is the whites--we have enriched it with our blood and tears. The greatest riches in all America have arisen from our blood and tears:--and will they drive us from our property and homes, which we have earned with our blood? They must look sharp or this very thing will bring swift destruction upon them. The Americans have got so fat on our blood and groans, that they have almost forgotten the God of armies.”
“I will give here a very imperfect list of the cruelties inflicted on us by the enlightened Christians of America.--First, no trifling portion of them will beat us nearly to death, if they find us on our knees praying to God.--They hinder us from going to hear the word of God--they keep us sunk in ignorance, and will not let us learn to read the word of God, nor write--If they find us with a book of any description in our hand, they will beat us nearly to death--they are so afraid we will learn to read, and enlighten our dark and benighted minds. They will not suffer us to meet together to worship the God who made us--they brand us with hot iron--they cram bolts of fire down our throats--they cut us as they do horses, bulls, or hogs--they crop our ears and sometimes cut off bits of our tongues--they chain and hand-cuff us, and while in that miserable and wretched condition, beat us with cow-hides and clubs--they keep us half naked and starve us sometimes nearly to death under their infernal whips or lashes (which some of them shall have enough of yet)--They put on us fifty-sixes and chains, and make us work in that cruel situation, and in sickness, under lashes to support them and their families.--They keep us three or four hundred feet under ground working in their mines, night and day to dig up gold and silver to enrich them and their children.--They keep us in the most death-like ignorance by keeping us from all source of information, and call us, who are free men and next to the Angels of God, their property!!!!!! They make us fight and murder each other, many of us being ignorant, not knowing any better.--They take us, (being ignorant,) and put us as drivers one over the other, and make us afflict each other as bad as they themselves afflict us--and to crown the whole of this catalogue of cruelties, they tell us that we the (blacks) are an inferior race of beings! incapable of self government!!--We would be injurious to society and ourselves, if tyrants should loose their unjust hold on us!!! That if we were free we would not work, but would live on plunder or theft!!!! that we are the meanest and laziest set of beings in the world!!!!! That they are obliged to keep us in bondage to do us good!!!!!!--That we are satisfied to rest in slavery to them and their children!!!!!!--That we ought not to be set free in America, but ought to be sent away to Africa!!!!!!!!--That if we were set free in America, we would involve the country in a civil war, which assertion is altogether at variance with our feeling or design, for we ask them for nothing but the rights of man, viz. for them to set us free, and treat us like men, and there will be no danger, for we will love and respect them, and protect our country--but cannot conscientiously do these things until they treat us like men.”
“Treat us then like men, and we will be your friends. And there is not a doubt in my mind, but that the whole of the past will be sunk into oblivion, and we yet, under God, will become a united and happy people. The whites may say it is impossible, but remember that nothing is impossible with God.”
“The Americans may say or do as they please, but they have to raise us from the condition of brutes to that of respectable men, and to make a national acknowledgement to us for the wrongs they have inflicted on us.”
“If the United States of America is a Republican Government?--Is this not the most tyrannical, unmerciful, and cruel government under Heaven--not excepting the Algerines, Turks and Arabs?--I believe if any candid person would take the trouble to go through the Southern and Western sections of this country, and could have the heart to see the cruelties inflicted by these Christians on us, he would say, that the Algerines, Turks and Arabs treat their dogs a thousand times better than we are treated by the Christians.”
“In conclusion, I ask the candid and unprejudiced of the whole world, to search the pages of historians diligently, and see if the Antideluvians--the Sodomites--the Egyptians--the Babylonians--the Ninevites--the Carthagenians--the Persians--the Macedonians--the Greeks--the Romans--the Mahometans--the Jews--or devils, ever treated a set of human beings, as the white Christians of America do us, the blacks, or Africans.”
1 Thy presence why withdraw'st, Lord?
Why hid'st thou now thy face,
When dismal times of deep distress
Call for thy wonted grace?2 The wicked, swell'd with lawless pride,
Have made the poor their prey;
O let them fall by those designs
Which they for others lay.3 For straight they triumph, if success
Their thriving crimes attend;
And sordid wretches, whom God hates,
Perversely they command.4. To own a pow'r above themselves
Their haughty pride disdains;
And, therefore, in their stubborn mind
No thought of God remains.5 Oppressive methods they pursue,
And all their foes they slight;
Because thy judgments, unobserv'd,
Are far above their sight.6 They fondly think their prosp'rous state
Shall unmolested be;
They think their vain designed shall thrive,
From all misfortune free.7 Vain and deceitful is their speech,
With curses fill'd, and lies;
By which the mischief of their heart
They study to disguise.8 Near public roads they lie conceal'd
And all their art employ,
The innocent and poor at once
To rifle and destroy.9 Not lions, crouching in their dens,
Surprise their heedless prey
With greater cunning, or express
More savage rage than they.10 Sometimes they act the harmless man,
And modest looks they wear;
That so, deceiv'd the poor may less
Their sudden onset fear.11. For, God, they think, no notice takes,
Of their unrighteous deeds;
He never minds the suff'ring poor,
Nor their oppression heeds.12. But thou, O Lord, at length arise,
Stretch forth thy mighty arm,
And, by the greatness of thy pow'r,
Defend the poor from harm.13 No longer let the wicked vaunt,
And, proudly boasting, say,
"Tush, God regards not what we do;"
"He never will repay."--
Common Prayer Book.
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Terminology
Niger: Derived from Latin, which was used by the old Romans, to designate inanimate beings, which were black: such as soot, pot, wood, house, &c. Also, animals which they considered inferior to the human species, as a black horse, cow, hog, bird, dog, &c. The white Americans have applied this term to Africans, by way of reproach for our colour, to aggravate and heighten our miseries, because they have their feet on our throats (Walker).
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