An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans

Authors

Lydia Maria Child
Paul Royster (editor), University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow

Files

Description

The roots of white supremacy lie in the institution of negro slavery. From the 15th through the 19th century, white Europeans trafficked in abducted and enslaved Africans and justified the practice with excuses that seemed somehow to reconcile the injustice with their professed Christianity. The United States was neither the first nor the last nation to abolish slavery, but its proclaimed principles of freedom and equality were made ironic by the nation’s reluctance to extend recognition to all Americans.

“Americans” is what Mrs. Child calls those fellow countrymen of African ancestry in 1833; citizenship and equality were what she advocated beyond legal abolition. While Mrs. Child expected the Appeal to offend and alienate a significant portion of her large audience, she wrote “it has been strongly impressed upon my mind that it was a duty to fulfil this task; and earthly considerations should never stifle the voice of conscience.” Thirty years before Abraham Lincoln’s Emanicipation Proclamation, she assembled the evidence for liberation and placed it before a large national audience. Her work helped push national emancipation into the mainstream, and her research supplied a generation of later essayists and pamphleteers with essential background for the continuing debate on the most vital issue in American history.

doi: 10.32873/unl.dc.zea.1316

ISBN

978-1-60962-232-9 ebook

Publication Date

2-3-2022

Publisher

Zea Books

City

Lincoln

Keywords

antislavery

Disciplines

African American Studies | American Studies | Civil Rights and Discrimination | Comparative and Foreign Law | Human Rights Law | Indigenous, Indian, and Aboriginal Law | Other American Studies | Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies | United States History

Recommended Citation

Child, Lydia Maria and Royster, Paul (editor), "An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans" (2022). Zea E-Books in American Studies. 38.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/zeaamericanstudies/38