ARCHIVE: ANTI AND PRO SLAVERY APPEALS
1)Excerpt from David Walker's "Appeals to the Colored Citizens of the World/ 1829. Walker was a free black calling
on slaves to fight slavery. He bluntly accused whites of hypocrisy. His pamphlet spurred the abolitionist movement
both in the North and South. One year after the essay was published Walker died mysteriously:
"You want slaves, and want us for your slaves!!! My colour will yet, root some of you out of the very face of theearth!!!!!!...
See your Declaration Americans!!! do you understand your own language? Hear your language, proclaimed to the world, July 4, 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!!!!!!"
2)Excerpt from ■ I Have wept in the land of my birth over slavery" by Angelina Grimke, at the National Anti-Slavery
Convention, in 1838. She was a Quaker born in South Carolina, who grew up amongst slaves:
"As a Southerner, I feel that it is my duty to stand up here tonight and bear testimony against slavery. I have seen it!I have seenit!I know it has horrors that can never be described. I was brought up under its wing. I witnessed for many years its demoralizing influences and its destructiveness of human happiness. I have never seen a happy slave. I have seen him dance in his chains, it is true, but he was not happy. There is a wide difference between happiness and mirth. Man cannot enjoy happiness whilehis manhood is destroyed. Slaves, however, may be, and sometimes are mirthful.When hope is extinguished, they say, "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die."
3) Excerpt from“A” Christian Defense of Slavery" by the Reverend Richard Fuller, of South Carolina, 1845, as follows:
"As soon as slavery is mentioned at the North, there is conjured up, in the minds of many persons, I know not what confused, revolting combination, and heart-rendering spectacle, of chains, and whips, and cruelty, and crime, and wretchedness. But I repeat it, even at the peril of tediousness, that necessarily and essentially—...slaveryis nothing more than the condition of one who is deprived of political power, and does service,—without his contract and consent, it is true, but yet it may be, cheerfully and happily, and for a compensation reasonable and certain, paid in modes of return best for the slave himself....The work assigned is confessedly very light—scarcely one half of that performed by a white laborer with you. When that is performed, theslaves...are "their own masters."
4) This song became a hit when it was performed by Daniel Emmett and his minstrel troop in 1859, New York City. The song became associated with the South during the Civil War. "Dixie" (or "Dixie Land") as follows:
Oh, I wish I was in the land of cotton,
Old times there are not forgotten,
Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land*
In Dixie Land where I was born in,early on a frosty mornin'
Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.
Chorus:
Then, I wish I was in Dixie, Hooray! Hooray!
In Dixie Land I'll take my stand to live and die in Dixie,
Away, away, away down south in Dixie,
Away, away, away down south in Dixie.
Dars buckwheat cakes an' ingen batter, makes you fat or a little fatter,
Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.
Den hoe it down and scratch your grabble to Dixie's land
I'm bound to travel,
Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.
(Chorus again)
5) Throughout the first half of the 1800s the dangers of a split of the nation into civil war over the issue of slaverygrew. Excerpt from Daniel Webster's second speech on Footed Resolution, January 26, 1830, as follows:
"When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States disevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood.
Behold the gorgeous ensign of the Republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original luster, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured....[It does not bear the motto] "Liberty first and Union afterwards," but everywhere, spread all over in characters of livinglight,blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart—Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!"