Editorial Regarding
"Walker's Appeal"
The Liberator
January 8, 1831
Editorial Regarding "Walker's Appeal"
Believing, as we do, that men should never do evil that good may come;
that a good end does not justify wicked means in the accomplishment of
it; and that we ought to suffer, as did our Lord and his apostles,
unresistingly -- knowing that vengeance belongs to God, and he will
certainly repay it where it is due; -- believing all this, and that the
Almighty will deliver the oppressed in a way which whey know not, we
deprecate the spirit and tendency of this Appeal. Nevertheless, it is
not for the American people, as a nation, to denounce it as bloody or
monstruous. Mr. Walker but pays them in their own coin, but follows
their own creed, but adopts their own language. We do not preach
rebellion -- no, but submission and peace. Our enemies may accuse us of
striving to stir up the slaves to revenge but their accusations are
false, and made only to excite the prejudices of the whites, and to
destroy our influence. We say, that the possiblity of a bloody
insurrection at the south fills us with dismay; and we avow, too, as
plainly, that if any people were ever justified in throwing off the yoke
of their tyrants, the slaves are that people. It is not we, but our
guilty countrymen, who put arguments into the mouths, and swords into
the hands of the slaves. Every sentence that they write --every word
that they speak -- every resistance that they make, against foreign
oppression, is a call upon their slaves to destroy them. Every Fourth of
July celebration must embitter and inflame the minds of the slaves. And
the late dinners, and illuminations, and orations, and shoutings, at the
south, over the downfall of the French tyrant, Charles the Tenth,
furnish so many reasons to the slaves why they should obtain their own
rights by violence.
Some editors have affected to doubt where the deceased Walker wrote this
pamphlet. -- On this point, skepticism need not stumble: the Appeal
bears the strongest internal evidence of having emanated from his own
mind. No white man could have written in language so natural and
enthusiastic.
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With its call for revolts and
insurrection,David Walker's Appeal was a strong statement against
slavery, even in the eyes of radical abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison.
In the second issue of his anti-slavery newspaper, The Liberator,
Garrison denounced Walker's Appeal. "Believing, as we
do," Garrison wrote, "that a good end does not justify wicked
means. . . , we deprecate [disapprove of] the spirit and tendency of this
Appeal." Garrison did, however, qualify his denouncement. He
continued, "Nevertheless, it is not for the American people, as a
nation, to denounce it as bloody or monstrous." And it was not the
slaves or the abolitionists who were responsible for Walker's call for
violence, but slaveholders and other slavery proponents. "Every
sentence they write -- every word they speak -- every resistance they
make. . .," Garrison said, "is a call upon their slaves to
destroy them."
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