t is generally the desire of the reader of any intellectual production, to know something of the character and life of the author. The character of David Walker is indicated in his writings. In regard to his life, but a few materials can be gathered; but what is known of him, furnishes proof to the opinion which the friends of man have formed of him — that he possessed a noble and courageous spirit, and that he was ardently attached to the cause of liberty. 

Mr. Walker was born in Wilmington, North Carolina, Sept. 28, 1785. His mother was a free woman, and his father was a slave.(1) His innate hatred to slavery was very early developed. When yet a boy, he declared that the slaveholding South was not the place for him. His soul became so indignant at the wrongs which his father and kindred bore, that he determined to find some portion of his country where he would see less to harrow his soul. Said he, 'If I remain in this bloody land, I will not live long. As true as God reigns, I will be avenged for the sorrow which my people have suffered. This is not the place for me — no, no. I must leave this part of the country. It will be a great trial for me to live on the same soil where so many men are in slavery; certainly I cannot remain where I just hear their chains continually, and where I must encounter the insults of their hypocritical enslavers. Go, I must.'

The youthful Walker embraced his mother, and received a mother's blessings, and turned his back upon North Carolina. His father died a few months before his birth; and it is a remarkable coincidence that the son of the subject of this Memoir, was a posthumous child.(2)

After leaving home, David Walker travelled rapidlytowards the North, shaking off the dust of his feet, and breathing curses upon the system of human slavery,(3) America's darling institution. As might be expected he met with trials during his journey; and at last he reached Boston, Mass., where he took up his permanent residence. There he applied himself to study, and soon learned to read and write, in order that he might contribute something to the cause of humanity. Mr. Walker, like most of reformers, was a poor man — he lived poor, and died poor.

In 1827 he entered into the clothing business in Brattle street, in which he prospered; and had it not been for his great liberality and hospitality, he would have become wealthy. In 1828, he married Miss Eliza —.(4) He was emphatically a self-made man, and he spent all his leisure moments in the cultivation of his mind. Before the Anti-Slavery Reformation had assumed a form, he was ardently engaged in the work. His hands were always open to contribute to the wants of the fugitive. His house was the shelter and the home of the poor and needy. Mr. Walker is known principally by his "Appeal," but it was in his private walks, and by his unceasing labors in the cause of freedom, that he has made his memory sacred.

With an overflowing heart, he published his "Appeal" in 1829. This little book produced more commotion amongst slave holders than any volume of its size that was ever issued from an American press. They saw that it was a bold attack upon their idolatry, and that too by a black man who once lived among them. It was merely a smooth stone which this David took up, and yet it terrified a host of Goliaths.

When the fame of this book reached the South, the poor, cowardly, pusillanimous tyrants grew pale behind their cotton bags, and armed themselves to the teeth. They set watches to look after their happy and contented slaves. The Governor of Georgia wrote to the Hon. Harrison Grey [sic] Otis, the Mayor of Boston, requesting him to suppress the Appeal. His Honor replied to the Southern Censor, that he had no power nor disposition to hinder Mr. Walker from pursuing a lawful course in the utterance of his thoughts.

A company of Georgia men then bound themselves by an oath, that they would eat as little as possible until they had killed the youthful author. They also offered a reward of a thousand dollars for his head, and ten times as much for the live Walker.

His consort, with the solicitude of an affectionate wife, with some friends, advised him to go to Canada, lest he should be abducted. Walker said that he had nothing to fear from such a pack of coward blood-hounds; but if he did go he would hurl back such thunder across the great lakes, that would cause them to tremble in their strong holds Said he, "I will stand my ground. Somebody must die tn this cause. I may be doomed to the stake and the fire, or to the scaffold tree, but it is not in me to falter if I can promote the work of emancipation."

He did not leave the country but was soon laid in the grave. It was the opinion of many that he was hurried out of life by the means of poison, but whether this was the case or not, the writer is not prepared to affirm.

He had many enemies, and not a few were his brethren whose cause he espoused. They said that he went too far, and was making trouble. So the Jews spoke of Moses. They valued the flesh-pots of Egypt more than the milk of Canaan. He died 1830 in Bridge street, at the hopeful and enthusiastic age of 34 years [sic]. His ruling passion blazed up in the hour of death, and threw an indescribable grandeur over the last dark scene. The heroic young man passed away without a struggle, and a few weeping friends

"Saw in death his eyelids close,
Calmly, as to a night's repose,
Like flowers at set of sun."

Mr. Walker was a faithful member of the Methodist Church at Boston, whose pastor is the venerable father Snowden.

The reader thus has a brief notice of the life and character of David Walker.

   1. In accordance with the law in the slave States, therefore, David Walker was born free, since for Negroes unlike whites — the law stated that their own condition would follow that of the mother, not of the father. Generally, of course, where the parents were slave and free, the mother was a slave and the father was a white man, often a slaveowner, who, thus, in accordance with law, had both pleasure and profit.

   2. This was Edwin G. Walker, who in 1866 became the first Negro elected to the State Legislature of Massachusetts.

   3. This cannot be entirely accurate, since in the Appeal, Walker several times refers to his extensive travels through the South and what he calls the West--by which he probably meant States such as Alabama or Tennessee. He refers, also, specifically, to his having been present at a revival meeting in South Carolina. It is possible, but not likely, that these trips were made sometime after his original visit to Boston — the date of which is uncertain — and his establishing himself in the clothing business there in 1827.

   4. Martha Gruening, in her sketch of Walker in the Dictionary of American B:ography, finds strange the omission of the maiden name of Walker's wife. No doubt she was herself a fugitive slave hence the use of only a first name may have been considered a necessary security measure — even in 1848.

   5. I know no other description of Walker's person; and no likeness of him is known to exist. Professor Leon F. Litwack lists Walker as a mulatto, but it would be interesting to know his source of information. All that is known for certain is that both his parents were Negroes - one, a slave — and that Mr. Garnet describes him in the above terms — having spoken with his widow. See, L.F. Litwack, North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790-1860 (Chicago: 1961, p. 182). 

    *Excerpted from Herbert Aptheker, "One Continual Cry" David Walker's Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World (1829-1830): Its Setting, Its Meaning (New York: Humanities Press, 1971), pp. 40-44, 63-68 and 69-81.

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