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 pamphlet followed a period in which white slave owners actively sought to Christianize slaves; however, publications like Walker's and the insurrections of Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner that preceded and followed the publication of Walker's Appeal led to hysteria among whites who grew more threatened and concerned about their ability to control the African American slave population. In religious matters, whites concluded that to continue religious instruction to blacks was to promote their literacy and hence provoke their militation toward freedom. "Frightened and angry, white southerners tightened their control upon the black population, forbade the education of slaves as antisocial and dangerous, and curtailed independent religious activity on the part of slaves..." (Mathews 138). So determined was the white public to censure Walker that a bounty was placed on his head. Blacks known, or even presumed to possess copies of the pamphlet were apprehended by white officials who subjected them to severe whippings or worse. Nonetheless, Walker was undaunted and distribution of his pamphlet continued unabated. Walker, who owned and ran a secondhand apparel shop, sewed copies of the Appeal into the linings of the garments he sold.

Walker's Appeal is significant example of how one outspoken and courageous individual adopted language as a weapon against oppressors: modeling his pamphlet in accordance with the Declaration of Independence, he levels an unprecedented attack on the hypocrisy and brutality of the slaveowner, and with unmatched eloquence, calls his fellows--free and enslaved--to action.