David Walker's Appeal Analysis

Before David Walker’s Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World during the 1800’s, there had not been any other type of anti-slavery documents published. Although the Appeal is directed to black slaves, its powerful moral message and indictment of white America’s hypocritical society and oppressive, brutal system of slavery is a moral message that resonates to all audiences, including whites. Walker’s Appeal calls for slaves to rebel against their masters as the means of reacquiring their humanity. Walker relies heavily upon religious values of Christianity, communicating strongly with free and enslaved blacks:
The man who would not fight under the Lord and Master Jesus Christ, in the glorious and heavenly cause of freedom
As the rest of the United States Constitution eventually clarified enslaved black people were not recognized as human beings and therefore were not entitled to the rights, privileges, and protection of the law. Furthermore, slavery was a legal institution under these sets of
In order to support his call for slaves to unify and revolt against their masters Walker challenges the ideas of political documents relied upon whites. Walker effectively uses religion to pursued whites and blacks that the institution of slavery was massively unjust. Walker states that God and religion actually discouraged all forms of slavery. For example he states,
Are we MEN!! I ask you, my brethren are we MEN? Did our creator make us to be slaves to dust and ashes like ourselves? Are they not dying worms as well as we? Have they not to make their appearance before the tribunal of Heaven, to answer for the deeds done in the body, as well as we? Have we any other Master but Jesus Christ alone? Is he not their Master as well as ours? What right then, have we to obey and call any other Master, but Himself? (Walker, Article