Rhetorical Analysis Of David Walker Appeal

In his Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, African American abolitionist David Walker called for a radical influence on the status quo. He addressed his primary audience, the enslaved men and women of the South, to promote consciousness and provoke rebellion against their masters to reclaim their humanity and resonate on the principles of Christianity for free and enslaved blacks throughout the country. Criticizing white American’s defense of slavery and mistreatment of blacks, Walker focused on aspects of black ignorance and the ways white Christians upheld the slave system in his Appeal. David Walker boldly revealed the hypocrisy of white Americans in their failure to follow the Declaration of Independence’s principles to their

Contrary to Thomas Jefferson’s assertion, Walker insisted that the whites treated the enslaved blacks in the United States not any milder or more benevolent than ancient slavery in Egypt, Greece, or Rome. Slaves were treated far less humane compared to those of which Walker mentioned in his Appeal. For example, the throat cutting Greeks, the tyranny and deceitful Romans to all over Europe and even Asian and Africa that had acted “more like devils than accountable men.” However, those sufferings were not “half so avaricious, deceitful and unmerciful as the whites.” As Walker described in his Appeal, the whites not only enslaved the colored people, but ill treated them with chains, handcuffs and beatings to a point minimal life was left just enough to live. The whites separated slaves from their families and drove from one end of the country to another. The Declaration of Independence written by Jefferson himself states, “all men are equal.” But on the contrary, Walker claims that Jefferson said, colored people “are inferior to the whites, both in endowments of our bodies and of minds.” As a colored man himself, Walker is indeed being radical by challenging the status

The distinction of the people by their color is nothing the Lord and Master had taught, as “the American preachers appeal unto God, the Maker and Searcher of hearts tell him, with the Bible in their hands, that they make no distinction on account of men’s colour.” Nothing in the Bible had differentiated one man’s color to the other, nor said one to be superior to the other. Walker debated, “what right then one of us, to despise another and to treat him cruel, on account of his colour, which none, but the God who made it can alter.” There is no justification for the black’s inferiority or them coming from a different biological origin as the whites proclaimed. As Walker argued, there are no rights to differentiate men alike from each other based on color and treat them any less humane. Racial discrimination was nothing but what Thomas Jefferson justified in the inferiority of the blacks and whites claimed God created the blacks to be their servant. Whites extorted the slave system and call upon their own “destruction” and to be “speedily consummated” unless they repent. Walker felt it was the blacks who should stand up to reject the notion that the Bible discourages all forms of slavery, and help the whites repent before God punishes them for their unforgivable sins. “I warn you in the name of the Load, to repent and reform, or you are ruined.” The God is a