Antislavery Tracts: David Walker's Appeal
As our text indicates, David Walker's Appeal was published in three editions between 1829 and 1830, and with each subsequent edition, Walker's tone and language increases in stridency and intensity--an audacious display of militancy that was in direct contradiction to the expectations of blacks during the early nineteenth century, especially. In this pamphlet, Walker decries the institution of slavery for its inhumanity, and assails white Christians for their hypocritical interpretation Scripture's divine justification of slavery. Concurrent with the publication of Walker's pamphlet, white Evangelical church organizations advocated the ownership of slaves as a Christian duty and slavery as a burdensome, but necessary evil. Without it, it was argued, the integrity of the social structure in the South would be undermined, and there would be chaos, as slavery was then considered necessary to mollify the "savage" characteristic of African slaves. Walker's...