People, Locations, Episodes

Mon, 08.05.1833

‘An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans’ is Published

*The 19th century publication of the book, An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans is celebrated on October 5, 1833.  This book by white American writer Lydia Maria Child.  It favored of the immediate emancipation of the African slaves without compensation to slaveholders.  It was the first book in support of this policy written by a white woman.  

It was published by Allen & Ticknor in Boston, a predecessor to Ticknor and Fields, at the expense of the author.  She spent about three years researching and writing the book and often drew from William Lloyd Garrison's antislavery newspaper The Liberator and likely David Walker's 1829 Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World

Child's argument includes a distrust of the growing political power of the Southern states which she perceived as a proslavery system. She addresses her concern in a chapter titled "Influence of Slavery on the Politics of the United States" and specifically used the Missouri Compromise as an example.  

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I had no thoughts of violets of late, The wild, shy kind that spring beneath your feet In wistful April days, when lovers mate And wander through the fields in raptures... SONNET by Alice Nelson Dunbar.
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