Walker's Appeal, with a Brief Sketch of His Life: And Also Garnet's Address to the Slaves of the United States of AmericaWalker, David
History
Walker's Appeal, with a Brief Sketch of His Life: And Also Garnet's Address to the Slaves of the United States of America
Walker, David
Slavery -- United States
I ask those people who treat us so _well_, Oh! I ask them, where is
the most barren spot of land which they have given unto us? Israel had
the most fertile land in all Egypt. Need I mention the very notorious
fact, that I have known a poor man of color, who labored night and
day, to acquire a little money, and having acquired it, he vested it
in a small piece of land, and got him a house erected thereon, and
having paid for the whole, he moved his family into it, where he was
suffered to remain but nine months, when he was cheated out of his
property by a white man, and driven out of door!--And is not this the
case generally? Can a man of color buy a piece of land and keep it
peaceably? Will not some white man try to get it from him even if it
is in a _mud hole_? I need not comment any farther on a subject, which
all, both black and white, will readily admit. But I must, really,
observe that in this very city, when a man of color dies, if he owned
any real estate it must generally fall into the hands of some white
person. The wife and children of the deceased may weep and lament if
they please, but the estate will be kept snug enough by its white
possessors.
But to prove farther that the condition of the Israelites was better
under the Egyptians than ours is under the whites. I call upon the
professing christians, I call upon the philanthropist, I call upon the
very tyrant himself, to show me a page of history, either sacred or
profane, on which a verse can be found, which maintains, that the
Egyptians heaped the _insupportable insult_ upon the children of
Israel by telling them that they were not of the _human family_. Can
the whites deny this charge? Have they not, after having reduced us to
the deplorable condition of slaves under their feet, held us up as
descending originally from the tribes of _Monkeys_ or _Orang-Outangs_?
O! my God! I appeal to every man of feeling--is not this
insupportable? Is it not heaping the most gross insult upon our
miseries, because they have got us under their feet and we cannot help
ourselves? Oh! pity us we pray thee, Lord Jesus, Master.--Has Mr.
Jefferson declared to the world, that we are inferior to the whites,
both in the endowments of our bodies and of minds? It is indeed
surprising, that a man of such great learning, combined with such
excellent natural parts, should speak so of a set of men in chains. 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. So far, my brethren, were the
Egyptians from heaping these insults upon their slaves, that Pharaoh's
daughter took Moses, a son of Israel, for her own, as will appear by
the following.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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