eBook David Walker's Appeal - Journal of Pan African Studies

What our brethren could have been thinking about, who have left their native land and home and
gone away to Africa, I am unable to say. This country is as much ours as it is the whites, whether
they will admit it now or not, they will see and believe it by and by. They tell us about prejudice-
-what have we to do with it? Their prejudices will be obliged to fall like lightning to the ground,
in succeeding generations; not, however, with the will and consent of all the whites, for some
will be obliged to hold on to the old adage, viz: the blacks are not men, but were made to be an
inheritance to us and our children forever!!!!!! I hope the residue of the coloured people, will
stand still and see the salvation of God and the miracle which he will work for our delivery from
wretchedness under the Christians!!!!!!
Addition.--If any of us see fit to go away, go to those who have been for many years, and are
now our greatest earthly friends and benefactors--the English. If not so, go to our brethren, the
Haytians, who, according to their word, are bound to protect and comfort us. The Americans say,
that we are ungrateful--but I ask them for heaven's sake, what should we be grateful to them for--
for murdering our fathers and mothers?--Or do they wish us to return thanks to them for chaining
and handcuffing us, branding us, cramming fire down our throats, or for keeping us in slavery,
and beating us nearly or quite to death to make us work in ignorance and miseries, to support
them and their families. They certainly think that we are a gang of fools. Those among them,
who have volunteered their services for our redemption, though we are unable to compensate
them for their labours, we nevertheless thank them from the bottom of our hearts, and have our
eyes steadfastly fixed upon them, and their labours of love for God and man.--But do slaveholders
think that we thank them for keeping us in miseries, and taking our lives by the inches?
Before I proceed further with this scheme, I shall give an extract from the letter of that truly
Reverend Divine, (Bishop Allen,) of Philadelphia, respecting this trick. At the instance of the
editor of the Freedom's Journal, he says (see Freedom's Journal for Nov. 2d, 1827--vol. I, No.
34).
"Dear Sir, I have been for several years trying to reconcile my mind to the Colonizing of
Africans in Liberia, but there have always been, and there still remain great and insurmountable
objections against the scheme. We are an unlettered people, brought up in ignorance, not one in a
hundred can read or write, not one in a thousand has a liberal education; is there any fitness for
such to be sent into a far country, among heathens, to convert or civilize them, when they
themselves are neither civilized or Christianized? See the great bulk of the poor, ignorant
Africans in this country, exposed to every temptation before them: all for the want of their
morals being refined by education and proper attendance paid unto them by their owners, or
those who had the charge of them. It is said by the Southern slave-holders, that the more ignorant
they can bring up the Africans, the better slaves they make, ('go and come.') Is there any fitness
for such people to be colonized in a far country to be their own rulers?
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David Walker’s Appeal by David Walker
The Journal of Pan African Studies 2009 eBook