Political History Commons^™

Walker’S Appeal, In Four Articles; Together With A Preamble, To The Coloured Citizens Of The World, … (Boston, 1830), David Walker, Paul Royster , Editor & Depositor

Zea E-Books in American Studies

Walker’s Appeal ... is a radical antislavery and antiracist manifesto by a free American of African ancestry. Its bold denunciation of European culture was unprecedented, unrestrained, and startling, viz.:

“The whites have always been an unjust, jealous, unmerciful, avaricious and blood-thirsty set of beings, always seeking after power and authority.”

Walker attacks the slave system and its rampant racism from the viewpoint of America’s allegiance to the idea of freedom; he quotes the Declaration of Independence at length, and strikes a recognizably jeremiad note:

“O Americans! Americans!! I call God—I call angels— I call men, to witness, that your destruction …

A Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission And Non-Resistance To The Higher Powers: With Some Reflections On The Resistance Made To King Charles I. And On The Anniversary Of His Death: In Which The Mysterious Doctrine Of That Prince’S Saintship And Martyrdom Is Unriddled, Jonathan Mayhew

Zea E-Books in American Studies

After the Restoration of the English monarchy in the person of Charles II in 1660, the new king and his first Parliament declared the anniversary of the beheading of his father Charles I (January 30, 1649) a religious holiday with a special commemoration in the Book of Common Prayer, naming the late monarch a saint and martyr. This holiday was not generally celebrated in Massachusetts until the emergence of several Anglican churches there in the early eighteenth century. In 1750, Jonathan Mayhew, the twenty-nine-yearold pastor of the West (Congregational) Church in Boston, took occasion to dispute the first Charles’ credentials …