8 thoughts on “Reading Questions for Feb. 23”

1. One way of thinking about these questions is to look very carefully at Walker’s views on violence. Is Walker’s Appeal a call for violent revolution? Even if you think the answer to that question is obvious, would you be able to find evidence to support the opposite answer?
   I actually found Walker’s views on violence to be slightly puzzling with apparently contradictory statements. Walker frequently claims that God will take revenge against the slaveholders for the injustices they have done to African Americans by keeping them in bondage. Walker claims that he is warning slaveholders about the coming vengeance of God, saying “I speak Americans for your good.” With these warnings Walker is trying to convince whites to end slavery. A difference between Walker and the radical abolitionists from last week is that Walker believes it is not too late for whites to avoid the vengeance of God, if they end slavery soon. Several times Walker even states that whites and blacks could be friends and “the whole past will be sunk into oblivion”, if whites treat blacks as men. For Walker violence is not guaranteed.
   So Walker thinks God will definitely retaliate against whites, if they don’t free their slaves soon, but it is not really clear what role Walker thinks slaves should have in violent rebellion. He frequently criticizes slaves for being too passive and accepting whites for their masters saying “we are too servile to assert our rights as men.” He ties manliness to resisting bondage claiming “Americans…are waiting for us to prove to them ourselves, that we are men…” Walker even claims that violence is justified stating, “it is no more harm for you to kill a man, who is trying to kill you, than it is for you to take a drink of water when thirsty.” Walker even condemns men who don’t resist white violence. Yet later Walker discourages slaves from being violent by saying “does not vengeance belong to the Lord?” Walker also says “If they (slaveowners) do not want to part with your labours, which have enriched them, let them keep you, and my word for it, that God Almighty, will break their strong band.” Overall for Walker part of slave passivity has to do with blacks aiding whites in slavery which he wants to end immediately. As for violence Walker wants slaves to join God when he takes his revenge on slaveholders, but he doesn’t want slaves to violently rebel without the instruction of God.

2. Although David Walker’s appeal is addressed specifically to the “coloured citizens of the world, but in particular, and very expressly, to those of the United States of America”, I think that his intended audience undoubtedly extends to white Americans as well. In his appeal, Walker repeatedly laments the denial of a thorough education to slaves and free blacks, and thus it seems unlikely that he could expect an extensive reception among only “colored citizens”, especially those in the bonds of slavery. Furthermore, at the end of the fourth article, Walker explicitly addresses whites and implores them: “Throw away your fears and prejudices then, and enlighten us and treat us like men, and we will like you more than we do now hate you… treat us like men, and there is no danger but we will all live in peace and happiness together.” This offer is difficult to reconcile with some of the rhetoric from the preceding articles in which Walker calls blacks and whites “natural enemies” and promises that the destruction of whites is inevitable. This contradiction is manifest in several aspects of Walker’s piece. His rhetorical choice to refer to only whites as “Americans” powerfully demonstrates the disenfranchisement of blacks, but also seems to contradict his assertion that slaves are just as entitled to live in America as whites. Much of his rhetoric is utterly uncompromising: for instance, he attacks a black slave woman for helping an injured slave driver. It is in effect difficult to believe that Walker could ever foresee an America in which whites and blacks could live side by side together in “friendship and harmony”, even if Walker’s calls for an uprising are intending more as a leveraging threat than a true call for eradication of whites.
   Another interestingly contradictory aspect of Walker’s work is his repeated invocations to God. It is contradictory because he seems to view Christianity as something transmitted by whites, but at the same time attacks “Americans” for utterly failing to uphold the tenets of their own religion. I think the rejection of Christianity and adoption of Islam by many black activists in the 20th century represents a reaction to this somewhat uncomfortable position, but Walker nonetheless uses his examples of white hypocrisy to great effect in attacking slavery. Ultimately the contradictions in Walker’s piece do not weaken his message, but rather represent, as Wilentz mentions in his introduction, the complexities of a “dual identity” and the extreme passion that Waker’s position in and perception of antebellum America aroused.

3. The Appeal is first of all a radical document because it is addressed directly to slaves, even in the document’s title. Although David Walker also addresses southern slave owners, he is explicitly advocating the use of violence and seems to be encouraging slaves to rebel against their masters. Walker goes even further in his radicalism by stating that any slaves who do not revolt against the bonds of slavery did not deserve to experience freedom; anyone who was unwilling to fight deserved to remain as a slave. This was a bold statement for Walker to make; he himself had not had to physically or violently rebel against a former master. Walker explains this harsh call for rebellion: if slaves did not stand up for themselves and their rights, in the form of violent rebellion, then they were accepting their place as slaves and accepting what slaveholders said about them. In order to refute the current ideas that slaves were less than human, and thus intended by God to be slaves, they had to physically remove themselves from the situation of slavery. This idea was radical because it made possible that a majority of white Americans (and others living in different times) could be wrong about something they had been defending for years. By using violence to rebel, blacks would be proving how slaveholders could be wrong.
   Walker states that blacks have a tremendous and unexpected capacity for physical power over whites. He claims one black man could kill several whites, because of a powerful ability and even a tendency toward violence. This potential for extreme destruction could be due to years of white violence over blacks, in the form of slavery. By rebelling violently, blacks would be reacting appropriately to years of oppression, both physical and mental. People who supported slavery would find these ideas to be radical, because for many years slaves had been the receivers of violence, not the suppliers.
   Despite Walker’s revolutionary message, he does not always make such radical claims, which makes his argument seem contradictory at times. He admits that he believes blacks are accepting of their role as slaves and even subservient to whites, which explains why slave holders have been able to maintain control over their slaves. The slave holders “know that we are too servile to assert our rights as men–or they would not fool with us as they do.” The slaves that Walker is describing in this case would not be capable, or at least not willing, to revolt against their masters. This idea seems to contradict what he says prior to making this statement. Yet Walker might be trying to provoke more people into action, to rebel against slave holders, so that the slaves themselves do not become too tolerant of their situation to want to get out.

4. David Walker distinguishes two different set of audiences in his Appeal. The “Brethrens” are African Americans, and “Fellow Americans” are white Christian Americans that oppresses his Brethrens. He directs the preamble of the Appeal to both the Brethrens and “Fellow Americans,” but for the main article, he specifies the audiences to only his Brethrens. However, even though Walker directs the main article of the Appeal only to African Americans, I felt that he was also directing it to the “Fellow Americans” as well, during my close reading.

   As Walker acknowledges, the African Americans of his day were not educated to the extent that Walker hoped them to be. For this reason, in his Appeal, he emphasizes education to a high degree. In fact, in my distant reading, I noticed that the word “children” is the tenth most frequently mentioned word in the main article, “ignorant” is the thirteenth most frequently mentioned, and the word “education” or a variant of the verb “educate” is mentioned more than twelve times in the whole article.

   From this, it is clear that Walker wanted to empower and promote self-help among the Black public. At the same time, however, we may infer that Walker, in the back of his mind, understood that many Blacks would not be able to decipher or even read his article. In fact, especially as he presents the “wretched states” that the Black slaves are placed in by the “white Christians,” I could not help but think that Article I, if not the whole Appeal, was an extension of the preamble to a certain degree.

   I decided to conduct two separate distant readings of the preamble and the main article of the Appeal. I noticed that the four of the ten most frequently mentioned words in both cases of distant reading were the same. The four words were “God,” “Lord,” “people,” and “children.” Furthermore, some other key words, such as “ignorance” and “wretchedness” shared high frequency in both of the searches.

   Then there were the differences between the two searches. For instance, the word “peace” surprisingly was among the top ten most frequently used words in the preamble, but was used very sparingly in the main article. On the other hand, the word “slaves” was used very frequently in the main article, but not in the preamble.

   In the comparison of the two distant readings, we see that the main article and the preamble share many words in common, despite Walker’s distinction of audience for two parts. However, there were critical differences among the two readings at the same time. For this reason, it is best to suggest that Walker intended to have a distinction of audience for the preamble and the main article. However, Walker, when he thought necessary, was not afraid to blur the distinction and implicitly intended to address both the “fellow Americans,” and “Brethren” at critical moments in the main article.

5. While I was reading Sean Willentz’s introduction to David Walker’s “Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, but in particular, and very expressly, to those of The United States of America,” it seemed like Willentz was almost over-exaggerating how radical this pamphlet was. Thus, instead of bracing myself, I sort of set the bar at a decent height and pushed on. Needless to say, I was thoroughly surprised.

   One of the things that I think is fundamentally radical in Walker’s “Appeal” is his questioning of God’s motives. If there was one thing that was thought to transcend human critique, it was God, but Walker definitely is not afraid to do it. However, his critique has its limits. Instead of rebuking God altogether, for allowing such heinous acts to be committed against African Americans, he sort of provisions this by emphasizing that since God allowed this to happen, SURELY he would deliver them from bondage. That, I think, is the limits of his radicalism – his ever-present faith that God will deliver them, because he believes God is a beneficent and just one. When he first points out that God allowed those monstrosities to happen in the first place (where I was tipped off that it was going to be something quite radical), I was steeling myself for him to flatly deny God altogether in the quest for black emancipation. He did not. Still, his assumption of knowing God’s plan seems to be incredibly radical, considering his audience and the nation at the time, and that he was a free, black man who was not even a minister.

   Another idea Walker expresses that I think makes his Appeal radical is that he does not simply say that black and white men are equal. He goes beyond that, saying that black men, are in fact, BETTER than the whites who are corrupted by “greed and avarice,” and who are murderers, and uses multiple historical and contemporary references to call ALL white men to account for their misdeeds. And through the way he uses biblical references in regards to this, too, he delivers an ultimate, unwavering condemnation of whites all over the entire world. It is really quite fantastic.

   One of my favorite things Walker does, though, is exposes the idea of “racial inferiority” as simply something constructed by society. When he goes through this argument, he continually uses the word “natural,” and that “natural” observations supported the opposite of what whites claimed – that blacks were racially inferior. And these “natural” observations take preeminence over everything else. In Willentz’s introduction, he discussed how Walker read the work of the British philosopher Joseph Addison, who was part of the English Enlightenment. Throughout the “Appeal,” Enlightenment ideas clear permeate his argument, but are also strangely mixed with a blinder comprised of a fire-and-brimstone emphasis on religion. I found it quite fascinating.

6. The David Walker’s Appeal is and was undoubtedly a very radical work of its time. Walker writes as an appeal to the sensibility and religious ideologies of men. While many of Walker’s ideas are not necessarily “radical” by today’s standards, they were defiantly radical at the time when walker was writing. Walker depicts the plight of the slave of America in very real terms; he constantly calls on “God’s” justice and the rights given by God. Walker is interesting in the sense that he is not “radical” in the way that John Brown or Fredrick Douglas was, but in the sense that his approach to describing and calling for the end of slavery was “radical.” In essence Walker, a black man, called in to question the fact that African-Americans were in any way inferior to their white owners, writing: “The whip was made for the backs of fools.” (39) This statement conveys the general sentiment that Blacks were ignorant and mentally less capable than whites. I believe that the best way that Walker combated this argument was by him being an extremely well educated man proficient in the humanities, study of religion and rhetorical argument. Walker was a “radical” because he was an educated black man, and his Appeal was radical because it effectively shot down the common holding that blacks were inferior to whites.

   The second tool that walker uses is the use of the doctrines of the Christian religion to combat the atrocities of slavery. I felt that one of the best ways to examine the effect of Walker’s appeal was his use of religious language in the context of distant reading. To accomplish this I inserted all four articles in to Wordle.com, as I had expected the most frequently used word was “God,” but the cloud generated also boldly displayed “Lord, “Christ,” “Jesus,” “Heaven,” and “Christian.” Religion had commonly been used as a tool to justify slavery in America, often Slaves and Freemen were oppressed religiously and thought of as not being able to be fully “Christian.” Walker, the “radical” again calls this in to direct opposition. If I were to simplify Walker’s work down to the most basic description I would classify it as a Christian appeal against Slavery. By utilizing the bible, Walker’s greatest tool, it becomes impossible to argue that African-American’s were not children of Christ with the whites.

   Walker is a radical because of how he approached his argument, and how he constructed his thoughts against slavery in America. Walker’ the “radical, was not a man like Brown who called for militant action, nor was he a man who had outlandish demands. Walker eloquently sums up his demands writing: “Treat us like men and… we will liven in peace and happiness together.” (70) Walker was radical because he acted, as a black man, writing against all previously held justifications of slavery and discrimination. Walker never called for any radical measures to be taken nor did he advocate violence by either party, what walker did was express the plight of slavery as a moral issue. This is why Walker was a “Radical.”

7. I utilized Tagcrowd to look at the general language used by David Walker in his pamphlet, and I was surprised to discover that his word choices were not strikingly different than other abolitionists we have looked at using distant reading. Oddly for a radical abolitionist pamphlet, “slaves” is the sixth most frequently used word – falling behind God, people, whites, man, and brethren. For a text that even today seems shockingly bold in its rhetoric, the most commonly used words seem sanitized and banal by comparison.

   Walker dedicated an entire section to “wretchedness in consequence of ignorance,” but apparently these themes were not consistently utilized as his thorough emphasis of faith as a means of lifting blacks out of the ignorance forced upon them (19). No words regarding education, learning, or intelligence made it into the top 50 most frequently used words. The overall tone of the text through a distant reading seems to be one of a highly masculine text that utilized the word God to fight against the tyranny of slave-holders. This may be an accurate description, but it covers up the tone and emotion of Walker’s piece that made it so unique.

   Violence, like education, was an integral part of Walker’s text that was nonetheless missing from the Tagcrowd representation. He vividly addressed the violence of slave-holders and described how men “of good sense and learning” would rather “cut [the] devilish throat” of a slave-holder “from ear to ear” rather than become a slave (32). Although these nuances of his argument are missing from the distant reading, I was able to quantify just how important inter-personal connections and faith were to his argument. Walker’s discussions of violence and education may leave the most vivid impression, but the radical-ness of his work should not completely undercut where his values aligned with other abolitionists.

8. Think about what Walker’s “appeal” is. What does he want his audience to do as a result of reading this book? And whom does he consider to be his audience(s)?

   Ostensibly, David Walker’s Appeal is addressed “to the Coloured Citizens of the World, but in Particular, and Very Expressly, to Those of the United States of America,” but I doubt that is actually his primary target audience. Although he is speaking to other blacks, I think that whites are actually his primary intended audience. The fact that the appeal is addressed to “the coloured citizens” seems to be more of a rhetorical strategy rather than a legitimate appeal to them.

   David Walker’s Appeal makes heavy use of biblical and historical allusions. He mentions the Israelite enslavement in Egypt as well as slaves in the ancient Greek and Roman empires. These references are not merely side comments; he goes in to quite a bit of detail on these historical examples of slavery in Section I. I don’t think he is doing this merely for the comparison with American slavery. I think he also mentions them to reveal that he is knowledgeable and educated. This would have been more of value to a white audience than to a black audience. Walker points out continually in his appeal that most American blacks are uneducated. He knows that they probably are not educated enough to understand the reference to the Helots in ancient Sparta. This is for the benefit of a white audience. Additionally, Walker’s demonstration that he is educated serves another benefit rhetorically. One of Walker’s main points in the first half of the appeal is that the way whites treat blacks is only morally defensible because they consider blacks to be animals rather than humans. Walker explicitly rejects this white defense of slavery. The fact that he is clearly intelligent and well educated seems to further prove implicitly his point that blacks should be considered men, not animals.

   I do not actually think that David Walker’s Appeal is a call for violent revolution. I think he is trying to scare white audiences to change through the possibility of violent revolution more than he is actually trying to incite a black audience to violent revolution. At one point, Walker mentions that the English are the most charitable nation towards black people. He says this several times in various ways, but he provides virtually no real support for it. He mentions African slavery in the British West Indies and basically dismisses it. This makes no sense. The appeal was published four years before the British abolished slavery in the West Indies. Slavery in the West Indies was much more violent and had a higher fatality rate than slavery in the United States did. Furthermore, The British are the ones who originally brought African slavery to the North American colonies. I don’t think that David Walker is mentioning the British because he actually thinks they are the kindest towards blacks. This is glaringly untrue. I think he is mentioning it to play on the animosity between white Americans and the British during this time period.

   The focal point of Walker’s argument throughout the appeal is a religious one. I plugged the plain text into wordle and tagcrowd. The most used word in the appeal was “God.” The words “Lord” and “Christians” were also prominent. A cornerstone of Walker’s argument is that the people that are responsible for this horrible and oppressive system of American slavery are claiming to be Christians. The system of slavery is a striking contradiction to the principles of Christian love and mercy. Furthermore, Walker points out that slaveholders often prohibit their slaves from learning to read, which keeps them from being able to read the bible, as well as actually punishing them for worshipping God. This argument seems to also be geared primarily towards whites. It is as if Walker is saying, “You call yourselves Christians? Look at the atrocities you are afflicting on other human beings.” Walker also uses religion to play to the pathos of fear. He frequently suggests that God is going to punish whites for the terrible things they are doing to blacks. This argument also seems to relate more to whites as an intended audience than it does to blacks.

   On the surface, David Walker’s Appeal is addressed as a call to his fellow blacks to stop submitting to whites. From this vantage point, it can be seen as a revolutionary document. Although he wanted other blacks to read it, particularly free blacks, I think that his primary audience was whites. Walker knew that most slaves were illiterate and would not be able to access this document. The references and the rhetoric that he chose to employ seem to fit more with a white audience rather than a black audience. I think that rather than being a call to blacks to violently revolt, this document is more of a warning to whites to scare them to change because a violent revolt, like the one in Haiti that Walker mentioned, is a real threat. Walker warns that the nation cannot go on as it is unless white slaveholders change their ways. Considering that this was written 30 years prior to the Civil War, Walker seems eerily prophetic.