Characteristics Of David Walker Abolitionism

In 1866, the passage of the 14th amendment granted full citizenship status (de jure) to African Americans. It concretely marked the end of a long era in the United Stated where Black people were completely devoid of human rights, and could be bought and sold as chattel. Although it did not end of the legal and systematic oppression of African Americans, the 14th amendment legally freed most African Americans and served as a stepping stone towards the attainment of full rights. But it did not come about overnight.
In the early 1830s, the rise militant abolitionism would channel the long-standing rebellious feelings of African Americans. The resulting uprisings would fuel white southerners to lash back in defense of slavery during the 1950s,

Walker’s appeal, which was circulated among free African Americans in the south, argued that death was a better fate than enslavement “to a tyrant, who takes the life of [one’s] mother, wife, and dear little children.” Although he was not the first to espouse such ideas, his violent stance broke with the widespread conservative brand of antislavery reform directed black Americans to work within the system to end slavery. Walker’s sentiments were echoes in Nat Turner’s revolt in Virginia and, furthermore, inspired the prominent abolitions, William Lloyd Garrison to likewise adopt militant stance on abolition. This sentiment was paralleled in the north by creation of antislavery societies who called for the end of bondage on a moral basis. The rise of militant abolitionism is uniquely important because it serves as evidence that there was a restless tension in the ether, and that African American would quickly take up arms and free themselves if given the

They used this rhetoric to argue, in some cases, that emancipating a large black population was far too dangerous. On other occasions, they used to as a reason to worsen the conditions of enslaved people, either by outlawing the gathering of slaves, by banning them from learning how to read, or by increasing slave patrols. This theorize fear may have a served as a social justification for the continuation of slavery up until in civil war. On the economic front, westward expansion, and the production of new cash crops in the south made slavery far too profitable for emancipation to be serious consideration for white southerners. In fact, they worked relentlessly to expand it as evident by the passage of the fugitive slave act of 1950, the Kansas-Nebraska act (which threatened to expand slavery in violation of the Missouri Compromise), and arguably by the Dred Scott