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
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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
[Hand->] "We hold these truths to be self evident--that
_ALL_ MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL! _that they are endowed by
their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among
these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness!!_"
Compare your own language above, extracted from your Declaration of
Independence, with your cruelties and murders inflicted by your cruel
and unmerciful fathers on ourselves on our fathers and on us, men who
have never given your fathers or you the least provocation!!!
Hear your language further!
[Hand->] "But when a long train of abuses and usurpations,
pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to
reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their _right_,
it is their _duty_, to throw off such government, and to
provide new guards for their future security."
Now, Americans! I ask you candidly, was your sufferings under Great
Britain one hundredth part as cruel and tyrannical as you have
rendered ours under you? Some of you, no doubt, believe that we will
never throw off your murderous government, and "provide new guards for
our future security." If Satan has made you believe it, will he not
deceive you?[30] Do the whites say, I being a black man, ought to be
humble, which I readily admit? I ask them, ought they not to be as
humble as I? or do they think they can measure arms with Jehovah? Will
not the Lord yet humble them? or will not these very coloured people,
whom they now treat worse than brutes, yet under God, humble them low
down enough? Some of the whites are ignorant enough to tell us, that
we ought to be submissive to them, that they may keep their feet on
our throats. And if we do not submit to be beaten to death by them, we
are bad creatures and of course must be damned, &c. If any man wishes
to hear this doctrine openly preached to us by the American preachers,
let him go into the Southern and Western sections of this country--I
do not speak from hearsay--what I have written, is what I have seen
and heard myself. No man may think that my book is made up of
conjecture--I have travelled and observed nearly the whole of those
things myself, and what little I did not get by my own observation, I
received from those among the whites and blacks, in whom the greatest
confidence may be placed.
The Americans may be as vigilant as they please, but they cannot be
vigilant enough for the Lord, neither can they hide themselves, where
he will not find and bring them out.
* * * * *
1 Thy presence why withdraw'st thou, 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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