Download History of the Americas HL 11 Homework assigned on Unit 3 Day 3

History of the Americas HL 11
Homework assigned on Unit 3 Day 3 of 15
Were abolitionists revolutionaries?
During class: In groups of four people, choose who will read the following
documents. No one should read more than three documents.
Document
Reader
Document A
Document B
Document C
Document D
Document E
Document F
Document G
Document H
Document I
Document J
Homework:
1. Read and annotate the article called “Aboliltionism” by Steven Mintz on p. 2-3 of
this packet.
2. Read and annotate the documents that you were assigned. The question for
reflection is Were abolitionists revolutionaries?
3. Complete the chart on p. 14-15 of this packet ONLY FOR THE DOCUMENTS THAT
YOU WERE ASSIGNED FOR HOMEWORK.
1
Abolitionism (Modified)
Steven Mintz, Digital History, University of Houston, 2015
As late as 1750, no church condemned slave ownership or slave trading. Britain, Denmark,
France, Holland, Portugal, and Spain all openly participated in the slave trade. Beginning
with the Quakers in the late 1750s, however, organized opposition to slavery quickly grew.
In 1787, the Northwest Ordinance barred slavery from the territories north of the Ohio
River; by 1804, the nine states north of Delaware had freed slaves or adopted gradual
emancipation plans. In Haiti in 1791, nearly a half million slaves emancipated themselves by
insurrection and revolutionary struggle. In 1807, Britain and the United States outlawed the
African slave trade.
The wars of national liberation in Spanish America ended slavery in Spain's mainland New
World Empire. In 1821, the region that now includes Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela
adopted a gradual emancipation plan. Two years later, Chile agreed to emancipate its slaves.
In 1829, Mexico abolished slavery.
In 1833, Britain emancipated 780,000 slaves, paying 20 million pounds sterling
compensation to their owners. In 1848, Denmark and France freed slaves in their colonial
empires. Slavery survived in Surinam and other Dutch New World colonies until 1863 and in
the United States in 1865. The last New World slaves were emancipated in Cuba in 1886 and
in Brazil in 1888.
Within the span of a century and a half, slavery came to be seen as a violation of Christian
morality and the natural, inalienable rights of man. The main impetus behind antislavery
came from religion. New religious and humanitarian values contributed to a view of slavery
as "the sum of all villainies," a satanic institution that gave rise to every imaginable sin:
violence, despotism, racial prejudice, and sexual corruption.
Initially, many opponents of slavery supported "colonization"--the deportation of black
Americans to Africa, the Caribbean, or Central America. But by the late 1820s, it was
obvious that colonization was a wholly impractical solution to the problem of slavery. Each
year the nation's slave population rose by 50,000, but in 1830, the American Colonization
Society persuaded just 259 free blacks to migrate to Liberia, bringing the total number of
blacks colonized in Africa to just 1,400.
African Americans were the first to denounce colonization as an effort to cleanse the United
States of its black population. In 1829, a 25-year-old white Bostonian named William Lloyd
Garrison demanded "immediate emancipation" of slaves without compensation to their
owners. Within six years, 200 antislavery societies had sprouted up in the North, and had
mounted a massive propaganda campaign against slavery.
The growth of militant abolitionism provoked a harsh public reaction. Mobs led by
"gentlemen of property and standing" attacked the homes and businesses of abolitionist
merchants, destroyed abolitionist printing presses, attacked black neighborhoods, and
murdered the Reverend Elijah P. Lovejoy, the editor of an abolitionist newspaper.
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In the face of vicious attacks, the antislavery movement divided over questions of strategy
and tactics. Radicals, led by Garrison, began to attack all forms of inequality and violence in
American society, withdrew from churches that condoned slavery, demanded equal rights
for women, and called for voluntary dissolution of the Union. Other abolitionists turned to
politics as the most promising way to end slavery, helping to form the Liberty Party in 1840,
the Free Soil Party in 1848, and the Republican Party in 1854.
By the late 1850s, a growing number of northerners were convinced that slavery posed an
intolerable threat to free labor and civil liberties. Many believed that an aggressive Slave
Power had seized control of the federal government, incited revolution in Texas and war
with Mexico, and was engaged in a systematic plan to extend slavery into the western
territories. John Brown's raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry in October 1859
produced shock waves throughout the South, producing fears of slave revolt and race war.
When Abraham Lincoln was elected in 1860, many white southerners were convinced that
this represented the triumph of abolitionism in the North and thought they had no choice
but to secede from the Union. The new president, however, was passionately committed to
the preservation of the union, and peaceful secession proved to be impossible.
Black Abolitionists
African Americans played a vital role in the abolitionist movement, staging protests against
segregated churches, schools, and public transportation. In New York and Pennsylvania, free
blacks launched petition drives for equal voting rights. Northern blacks also had a pivotal
role in the “underground railroad,” which provided escape routes for southern slaves
through the northern states and into Canada. African-American churches offered sanctuary
to runaways, and black “vigilance” groups in cities such as New York and Detroit battled
slave catchers who sought to recapture fugitive slaves.
Fugitive slaves, such as William Wells Brown, Henry Bibb, and Harriet Tubman, advanced
abolitionism by publicizing the horrors of slavery. Their firsthand tales of whippings and
separation from spouses and children combated the notion that slaves were contented under
slavery and undermined belief in racial inferiority. Tubman risked her life by making 19 trips
into slave territory to free as many as 300 slaves. Slaveholders posted a reward of $40,000 for
the capture of the “Black Moses.”
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Document A: David Blight on Racism in the Abolitionist Movement (Interview)
Black and white abolitionists often had different agendas by the 1840s, and certainly in the
1850s. But one of the greatest frustrations that many black abolitionists faced was the racism
they sometimes experienced from their fellow white abolitionists. In many cases, within the
Garrisonian movement in particular, the role of the black speaker or the black writer or the
black abolitionist was, in some ways, prescribed, as the famous case of Frederick Douglass'
relationship with the Garrisionians.
The Garrisionians wanted Douglass to simply get up and tell his story, to tell his narrative on
the platform. They didn't want him to speak about Northern racism, to take on the whole
picture of the anti-slavery movement as much as he did. And it had a lot to do with why
Douglass eventually broke with the Garrisionians.
It was a problem for white abolitionists as well, because, in many ways, what they had
discovered with black speakers is the authentic black voice, and they were using it all that
they could, whether it was Douglass or whether it was Henry Garnett or whether it was
others.
But for black abolitionists, it became very often simply a case of the demand for recognition,
the demand for mutual respect. And it was also especially frustrating to black abolitionists to
deal sometimes with the kinds of abstract debates that abolitionists would have, that white
abolitionists would have, over doctrine. And, increasingly, in the 1850s, black abolitionists
didn't have time to struggle over doctrinaire questions of tactics and strategy. They were by
the 1850s about the business of building their own communities, and trying to organize real
strategies against slavery in the South.
Many white abolitionists had certain expectations of what black abolitionists were to provide
or to perform within this movement. Very often, black abolitionists had different, very
different, perceptions of what their role ought to be. So, there was a struggle among white
and black abolitionists about just what the proper role of a black abolitionist was in this
movement.
David W. Blight is a Professor of American History at Yale University and the Director of the Gilder
Lehrman Center. His works include American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era, A Slave
No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including their Narratives of Emancipation and Race and
Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, which won the Bancroft Prize, the Abraham Lincoln
Prize, and the Frederick Douglass Prize as well as four awards from the Organization of American
Historians
Source: “Africans in America”, WGBH Educational Foundation, 1998
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Document B: David Blight on William Lloyd Garrison (Interview)
William Lloyd Garrison was the real thing in the sense that he was a professional radical....
Garrison was also one of the few white abolitionists who shouldered up to David Walker
and actually published parts of...Walker's appeal in the Liberator in 1831, after Walker's
death. But Garrison becomes, in some ways, a kind of combination of a radical abolitionist
and almost an anarchist. Some of his doctrines, like his doctrine of never joining political
parties, of urging his fellow abolitionists to not vote, to not participate in the American
republic, because in Garrison's view the American Constitution was a covenant with death,
because it supported slavery.
Much of this doctrinaire approach by Garrison was difficult at times for other abolitionists
to follow, particularly black abolitionists. Because, to many black abolitionists, the
emergencies of their lives were daily affairs. They had to become, in some ways, more
practical abolitionists. But what they had in Garrison, now, was a voice and a newspaper that
was challenging the United States like nothing ever had before. And Garrison developed a
very important following among the free black population of the North.
One of Garrison's doctrines is what he called "non-resistance"; he was a pacifist…And
Garrison believed, as hard as it is sometimes for us in the 20th century to fully understand,
this kind of outlook. Garrison believed that through moral suasion, as it was called at the
time, by an onslaught of persuasion, that Southerners, over time, could be convinced of the
sin of slave holding.
It was, in many ways, the project of the radical abolition movement of the 1830s, led
principally by William Lloyd Garrison, to advance this idea of slave holding as sin. It comes
out of the evangelical tradition, it comes out of the second Great Awakening, it comes out of
this Christian evangelical notion that if you can convert individuals to salvation, you can also
convert whole societies.
In the 1830s there are many black abolitionists attracted to William Lloyd Garrison, even
attracted to this pacifist persuasion. They are themselves, like Charles Remond in Boston
and others, attracted to this pacifist outlook, because they are themselves deeply imbued
with this evangelical tradition of Christianity. But, over time, black abolitionists living in
Northern cities -- living, again, with the daily emergencies of the lives of fugitive slaves -find it increasingly difficult to abide by a kind of doctrinaire approach to anti-slavery, which
Garrisonianism represented. And, in many ways, to be a Garrisonian was to tow the line on
four or five of these principles that Garrison advanced, not the least of which was nonresistance and pacifism.
David W. Blight is a Professor of American History at Yale University and the Director of the Gilder
Lehrman Center. His works include American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era, A Slave
No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including their Narratives of Emancipation and Race and
Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, which won the Bancroft Prize, the Abraham Lincoln
Prize, and the Frederick Douglass Prize as well as four awards from the Organization of American
Historians
Source: “Africans in America”, WGBH Educational Foundation, 1998
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Document C: Eric Foner on the Abolitionist Movement (Interview)
Q: What obstacles did the Abolitionist Movement face?
A: One might say that the greatest obstacle facing the Abolitionist Movement as it develops
in the 1830's was not so much the heated hostility of the white South -- everybody would
understand that the white South would be bitterly opposed to a movement demanding the
abolition of slavery -- but the indifference, you might say, in the North. There was a
conspiracy of silence about the issue of slavery. Both major political parties, Whigs and
Democrats, basically agreed to keep this out of politics. You just were not allowed to raise
this question in a public forum. And when abolitionists did begin to talk about slavery
publicly, in the North, mobs would break up their meetings; their printing presses were
destroyed. Elijah Lovejoy, an editor in Illinois, was murdered by a mob, trying to defend his
printing press.
Why was this? I think it's because so many northerners were deeply implicated in the
institution of slavery itself -- the trade of cotton, the financing of cotton. Then there were
racist fears that the abolition of slavery would unleash a flood of black migrants into the
North, competing for jobs and things like this. And there were those who felt, "Well, if we
raise the slavery question, it's going to destroy the American Union." For those and other
reasons, as I say, there was this conspiracy of silence.
And the first thing abolitionists had to do was just put the issue on the table, in a way that it
couldn't be ignored. Or as Wendell Phillips, the great abolitionist orator, said: We must
divide public opinion. Our enemy is not the slaveowner only. It's also the person of good
will who simply doesn't want to talk about slavery and wants to keep it off the national
agenda. I think the greatest achievement of the Abolitionist Movement in its first decade was
to make slavery a public issue, to destroy the conspiracy of silence on slavery.
Eric Foner is the DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University. He is a winner of the
Pulitzer Prize for History, the Bancroft Prize for History, the Lincoln Prize and the Guggenheim
Fellowship for Humanities.
Source: “Africans in America”, WGBH Educational Foundation, 1998
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Document D: Eric Foner on the Abolitionist Vision (Interview)
Q: What was the abolitionist vision?
The Abolitionist Movement was concerned not only with the specific issue of abolishing
slavery as an institution, but the even broader issue of what kind of a country America was
going to be. And you might say that the Abolitionists invented an idea which in the 20th
century, of course, became very prominent: that this is a multi-racial society in which all
Americans ought to enjoy equal rights, equal treatment before the law. The abolitionists, you
might say, invented a new and different Constitution, a different reading of the Constitution,
very much informed by the Declaration of Independence and its affirmation of human
equality; and posited it as an alternative to the dominant vision of America as a white society,
which was so prominent in this period.
You know, [in] the first Naturalization Law, 1790, Congress stated that any person from
abroad could migrate and become an American citizen, as long as they were white. The vast
majority of the world's population (Africans, Asians) were ineligible to become naturalized
citizens of the United States. For much of the 19th century, free blacks were not considered
citizens, even though they were born here. The Dred Scott decision of 1857 makes that the
law of the land. But long before it was widely debated whether free blacks could be citizens
at all.
The abolitionists put forward this definition of birthright citizenship: "Anybody born in
America is a citizen, black or white, doesn't matter. And they are citizens of the nation, not
just of the state, and are entitled to the same equal rights as all other citizens of the nation."
Frederick Douglass, one of the greatest exponents of this view, extended it also to Asians. In
a wonderful speech right after the Civil War, called "The Composite Nation", he said
discrimination against Asian immigrants also violates the essence of what America ought to
be.
So that the abolitionists, you might say, reinvigorated the rhetoric of the American
Revolution, which stated that this was an asylum for liberty for all mankind. But that rhetoric
had not been put into reality by the founding fathers. They had created a society of white
entitlement. And the abolitionists challenged this and called for a different vision of what
America ought to be.
Eric Foner is the DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University. He is a winner of the
Pulitzer Prize for History, the Bancroft Prize for History, the Lincoln Prize and the Guggenheim
Fellowship for Humanities.
Source: “Africans in America”, WGBH Educational Foundation, 1998
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Document E: Margaret Washington on Northern Racism (Interview)
Q: How did people think about race in this period?
A: Slavery in the South reinforced racial attitudes. That's for sure. But it's important to keep
in mind that the northern part of the nation had slavery as well, and that some states were
very slow in emancipation. New York and New Jersey in particular had very gradual
emancipation laws. So that there are African Americans in bondage well into the antebellum
era.
It's also important to keep in mind that the midwestern states, as they came into the union,
some of them, passed black exclusion laws so that free blacks who wanted to leave, say, the
mid-Atlantic and settle in the Midwest were prevented, as well as African Americans who
might for one reason or another get their freedom in the South. They were prevented from
moving into some midwestern states.
So it would seem as though the nation itself had an attitude that African Americans were
inferior. And if you look at some of the laws that were in existence in the northern states,
African Americans were not supposed to ride on streetcars; African Americans were not
supposed to ride on steamers. The whole idea of Jim Crow and segregation of the races
really originates in the North. African Americans couldn't vote in most states, even if they
owned property. So the exclusion and the [disfranchisement] was already there.
The concept of democracy seemed to be something in the nation at that time that was for
white people. And it really relates to this concept of white nationalism, that no matter how
poor you are, no matter what situation you're in, if you're white, then you are far better off
than the wealthiest person of African descent. And people operated on that. And it affected
the public schools. It affected every aspect of life in America. It affected immigrants coming
in, because immigrants, especially the Irish, would come in and they would have immediately
a higher status than African Americans who had been born there, whose generations go back
to existence in the nation. And this, of course, created a lot of tension, because immigrants
coming in would oftentimes be the people who took jobs away from African Americans. So
while immigration became a form of economic and social mobility for whites, it became a
form of degradation for African Americans.
Margaret Washington is a Professor of American History at Cornell University. Her works include
Sojourner Truth's America and A Peculiar People: Slave Religion and Community-culture among the
Gullahs
Source: “Africans in America”, WGBH Educational Foundation, 1998
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Document F: Garnet's "Call to Rebellion", 1843
In August of 1843 in Buffalo, New York, Henry Highland Garnet, an African-American Abolitionist,
gave an inspirational speech that shocked the delegates of the National Negro Convention. In came to be
known as the "Call to Rebellion" speech, Garnet encouraged slaves to turn against their masters.
Brethren, arise, arise! Strike for your lives and liberties. Now is the day and the hour. Let
every slave throughout the land do this and the days of slavery are numbered. You cannot be
more oppressed than you have been -- you cannot suffer greater cruelties than you have
already. Rather die freemen than live to be slaves. Remember that you are FOUR
MILLIONS!
It is in your power so to torment the God-cursed slaveholders that they will be glad to let
you go free. If the scale was turned, and black men were the masters and white men the
slaves, every destructive agent and element would be employed to lay the oppressor low.
Danger and death would hang over their heads day and night. Yes, the tyrants would meet
with plagues more terrible than those of Pharaoh. But you are a patient people. You act as
though, you were made for the special use of these devils. You act as though your daughters
were born to pamper the lusts of your masters and overseers. And worse than all, you tamely
submit while your lords tear your wives from your embraces and defile them before your
eyes. In the name of God, we ask you, are you men? Where is the blood of your fathers? Has
it all run out of your veins? Awake, awake; millions of voices are calling you! Your dead
fathers speak to you from their graves. Heaven, as with a voice of thunder, calls on you to
arise from the dust.
Let your motto be resistance! resistance! RESISTANCE! No oppressed people have ever
secured their liberty without resistance. What kind of resistance you had better make, you
must decide by the circumstances that surround you, and according to the suggestion of
expediency. Brethren, adieu! Trust in the living God. Labor for the peace of the human race,
and remember that you are FOUR MILLIONS.
Source: “Africans in America”, WGBH Educational Foundation, 1998
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Document G: William Lloyd Garrison, The Liberator, "To the Public", January 1,
1831
William Lloyd Garrison employed a tactic called “moral suasion” – achieving abolition by convincing the
nation that slavery was inherently wrong – in his writing. He remained non-political in his activism, relying
entirely on moral arguments.
Assenting to the "self-evident truth" maintained in the American Declaration of
Independence, "that all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain
inalienable rights -- among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," I shall
strenuously contend for the immediate enfranchisement of our slave population. In Parkstreet Church, on the Fourth of July, 1829, in an address on slavery, I unreflectingly assented
to the popluar but pernicious doctrine of gradual abolition. I seize this opportunity to make
a full and unequivocal recantation, and thus publicly to ask pardon of my God, of my
country, and of my brethren the poor slaves, for having uttered a sentiment so full of
timidity, injustice and absurdity. A similar recantation, from my pen, was published in the
Genius of Universal Emancipation at Baltimore, in September, 1829. My consicence in now
satisfied.
I am aware, that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for
severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do
not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. No! no! Tell a man whose house is on
fire, to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hand of the
ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen;
-- but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest -- I will not
equivocate -- I will not excuse -- I will not retreat a single inch -- AND I WILL BE
HEARD. The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal,
and to hasten the resurrection of the dead.
It is pretended, that I am retarding the cause of emancipation by the coarseness of my
invective, and the precipitancy of my measures. The charge is not true. On this question my
influence, -- humble as it is, -- is felt at this moment to a considerable extent, and shall be
felt in coming years -- not perniciously, but beneficially -- not as a curse, but as a blessing;
and posterity will bear testimony that I was right.
Source: “Africans in America”, WGBH Educational Foundation, 1998
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Document H: "The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro”, 1852
During the 1850s, Frederick Douglass typically spent about six months of the year travelling extensively,
giving lectures. During one winter -- the winter of 1855-1856 -- he gave about 70 lectures during a tour that
covered four to five thousand miles. And his speaking engagements did not halt at the end of a tour. From his
home in Rochester, New York, he took part in local abolition-related events.
On July 5, 1852, Douglass gave a speech at an event commemorating the signing of the Declaration of
Independence, held at Rochester's Corinthian Hall.
Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? that he is the rightful owner of his
own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a
question for Republicans? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a
matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice,
hard to be understood? …There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven that does not
know that slavery is wrong for him.
What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more
than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant
victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your
national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your
denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow
mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious
parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy -a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.There is not a nation
on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United
States, at this very hour.
Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms
of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have
found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will
say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a
rival....
Source: “Africans in America”, WGBH Educational Foundation, 1998
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Document I: David Brion Davis, “Slavery and Anti-Slavery”, Gilder Lehrman
Institute (2015)
By 1854…many northern whites had also concluded that the Slave Power had seized control
of America’s manifest destiny [we’ll discuss this term soon], thereby appropriating and
nullifying the entire evangelical and millennial [having to do with the end of the world]
mission of creating a model New World. Moreover, the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850,
requiring federal agents to recover fugitive slaves from their sanctuaries in the North,
directly challenged the North’s integrity and its new self-image as an asylum of liberty. The
arrival of federal “kidnappers” and the spectacle of African Americans being seized in the
streets invited demonstrations of defiance and civil disobedience. Increasing numbers of
former moderates echoed Garrison’s rhetoric of disunion, and an increasing number of
former nonresistants called for a slave uprising or predicted that the streets of Boston might
“yet run with blood.”
In the 1850s many northern abolitionists finally concluded that if southern slaveholders were
not overthrown by insurrection or expelled from the Union, the Slave Power would cross
every legal and constitutional barrier and destroy the physical ability of northerners to act in
accordance with the moral ability that had been the main legacy of the religious revivals. The
western territories were thus the crucial testing ground that would determine whether
America would stand for something more than selfish interest, exploitation, and rule by
brutal power. All of the aspirations of the Benevolent Empire, of evangelical reformers, and
of perfectionists of every kind could be channeled into a single and vast crusade to keep the
territories free, to confine and seal off the southern Slave Power, and thus to open the way
for an expansion of righteous liberty and opportunity that would surpass all worldly limits.
David Brion Davis is Sterling Professor of History Emeritus at Yale and Director Emeritus of Yale’s
Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition. His groundbreaking work on
the history of slavery includes The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (1967), which received the Pulitzer
Prize; The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770–1823 (1976), which received the Bancroft
Prize; and Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World (2006).
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Document J: David Walker’s Appeal
David Walker's Appeal, arguably the most radical of all anti-slavery documents, caused a great stir when it
was published in September of 1829 with its call for slaves to revolt against their masters. David Walker
wasa free black originally from the South. Garrison begrudgingly published the text below in The
Liberator.
...to my no ordinary astonishment, [a] Reverend gentleman got up and told us (coloured
people) that slaves must be obedient to their masters -- must do their duty to their masters
or be whipped -- the whip was made for the backs of fools, &c. Here I pause for a moment,
to give the world time to consider what was my surprise, to hear such preaching from a
minister of my Master, whose very gospel is that of peace and not of blood and whips, as
this pretended preacher tried to make us believe….They have newspapers and monthly
periodicals, which they receive in continual succession, but on the pages of which, you will
scarcely ever find a paragraph respecting slavery, which is ten thousand times more injurious
to this country than all the other evils put together; and which will be the final overthrow of
its government, unless something is very speedily done; for their cup is nearly full.-Perhaps
they will laugh at or make light of this; but I tell you Americans! that unless you speedily alter
your course, you and your Country are gone! ! ! ! !
…Let no man of us budge one step, and let slave-holders come to beat us from our country.
America is more our country, than it is the whites-we have enriched it with our blood and
tears. The greatest riches in all America have arisen from our blood and tears: -- and will they
drive us from our property and homes, which we have earned with our blood? They must
look sharp or this very thing will bring swift destruction upon them. The Americans have
got so fat on our blood and groans, that they have almost forgotten the God of armies. But
let the go on.
…See your Declaration Americans! ! ! Do you understand your won language? Hear your
languages, proclaimed to the world, July 4th, 1776 -- "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 and yourselves on our
fathers and on us -- men who have never given your fathers or you the least provocation! ! ! !
Source: David Walker's Appeal, In Four Articles: Together With A Preamble To The Coloured Citizens
Of The World, But In Particular, And Very Expressly, To Those Of The United States Of America,
revised Edition with an Introduction by Sean Wilentz
Hill and Wang, New York, 1995
A Division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux
13
Name: ________________________________________________________
Were Abolitionists Revolutionaries?
Date: ____________________________________
Directions: Use the chart below to organize your discussions of the documents. Under “Document” record the letter of the document and an “R” if it supports the
conclusion that Abolitionists were revolutionaries and an “N” if it supports the conclusion that Abolitionists were not revolutionaries. Under “Summary of the Content”,
briefly explain what the document says, either as you read the document for homework or as it is verbally explained to you by a person who read the document. Under
“Evidence”, briefly identify specific ideas or details from the document that support an answer to the question: were Abolitionists revolutionaries? Draw lines to separate
your entries.
Document Summary of Content
Evidence
14
Document
Summary of Content
Evidence
15