Walker's Appeal, in Four Articles; Together with a Preamble, to the Coloured Citizens of the World
Glossary
A
- Avaricious
- Excessively greedy for wealth. One of Walker's most frequent epithets for slaveholders and colonizationists, whom he portrays as driven above all by the profit slavery generates rather than by genuine belief in Black inferiority.
B
- Bishop Richard Allen
- Founder and bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, whose published letter rejecting colonization Walker quotes in full and praises at length as a model of a Black leader working for his brethren's enlightenment rather than their removal.
- Related: Liberia, The Colonizing Plan
- Brethren
- Walker's constant form of address to his fellow Black Americans throughout the Appeal, emphasizing a bond of kinship and shared struggle that he urges his readers to act on collectively rather than submit individually.
E
- Elias B. Caldwell
- A speaker at the same Washington colonization meeting as Henry Clay, quoted by Walker as arguing that educating enslaved people only makes them more miserable and that they should be kept in 'the lowest state of degradation' to preserve their 'apathy' — words Walker turns back on the colonization movement as proof of its true aims.
- Related: Henry Clay, The Colonizing Plan
H
- Hannibal
- The Carthaginian general of African descent whom Walker cites as evidence of Black military genius, and whose defeat Walker attributes to disunity among Carthaginians — a parallel he draws directly to the divisions weakening Black Americans in his own time.
- Related: Hayti (Haiti)
- Hayti (Haiti)
- The Black republic Walker repeatedly invokes as proof of what a united, self-governing Black people can achieve, urging his readers to study its history — including the divisions among its own people that the enslavers exploited — as both inspiration and warning.
- Related: Hannibal
- Henry Clay
- Prominent American statesman and slaveholder whom Walker quotes at length from a Washington colonization meeting and from correspondence with Albert Gallatin about recovering fugitive slaves from Canada, using Clay's own words to expose the self-interest behind the colonization movement.
- Related: The Colonizing Plan, Elias B. Caldwell
- Henry Highland Garnet
- Black abolitionist minister who republished Walker's Appeal in 1848, nearly two decades after Walker's death, introducing it to a new generation of readers as part of the era's escalating antislavery movement.
J
- John Randolph of Roanoke
- A Virginia slaveholder and congressman Walker quotes from the same colonization meeting, who candidly states that removing free Black people would make slaveholders more comfortable manumitting slaves and more secure in keeping the rest in bondage.
- Related: Henry Clay, The Colonizing Plan
L
- Liberia
- The West African colony established by the American Colonization Society as a destination for free Black Americans. Walker treats proposals to send free Black people there as a thinly disguised plan to remove a population that unsettled slaveholders, quoting Bishop Allen's letter rejecting the scheme.
- Related: The Colonizing Plan
N
- Natural Enemies
- Walker's term for white Americans, which he carefully defines rather than assumes: he argues white people made themselves enemies to Black people through their own treatment of them, not through any inherent racial hostility present from creation.
- Notes on Virginia
- Thomas Jefferson's 1785 book, which Walker quotes directly in Article II to expose and argue against Jefferson's doubts about Black intellectual equality, urging his readers to obtain a copy and refute it themselves rather than rely on white allies' rebuttals.
- Related: Thomas Jefferson
P
- Providence
- Walker's recurring framework that a just God will not permit slavery to endure forever, and that America's cruelty toward Black people will bring divine judgment on the nation. His warnings to slaveholders are cast as much as prophecy as political argument.
- Related: The Four Articles
T
- The Colonizing Plan
- The American Colonization Society's scheme to remove free Black Americans to Liberia in Africa, the subject of Walker's fourth article. Walker argues it is designed not out of goodwill but to strip enslaved people of contact with free Black Americans and secure slavery more firmly.
- Related: Liberia, Henry Clay, Bishop Richard Allen, The Four Articles
- The Declaration of Independence
- The 1776 American founding document Walker quotes at length in his conclusion, holding its language — 'all men are created equal,' endowed with 'unalienable rights' — up against the nation's treatment of enslaved people to expose the contradiction at the heart of American self-description.
- The Four Articles
- The structure Walker builds his Appeal around: wretchedness caused by slavery (Article I), by ignorance (Article II), by the preachers of the religion of Jesus Christ (Article III), and by the colonizing plan (Article IV). Each article is a sustained, escalating argument rather than a simple list.
- Related: The Colonizing Plan, Providence
- The Helots
- An enslaved class in ancient Sparta whom Walker compares to enslaved Black Americans, arguing that even the Helots' harsh treatment under a heathen, pre-Christian people was less severe than what Christian Americans inflict on Black people.
- Thomas Jefferson
- Author of Notes on the State of Virginia, whose published claim that Black people are inferior 'in the endowments both of body and mind' Walker quotes at length and repeatedly refutes, treating it as one of the most damaging arguments circulating against Black equality.
- Related: Notes on Virginia
W
- Wretchedness
- Walker's central term for the condition of Black Americans under slavery and racial oppression, used in each article's title to name the specific cause — slavery, ignorance, false preaching, or colonization — producing that suffering.
- Related: The Four Articles