Inventing Americas: 1800–1865 143suspicious circumstances; it certainly wanted him dead. But, even after Walker’s
sudden death, the Appeal continued to be reprinted and to circulate widely. “Our suf-
ferings will come to an end, in spite of all the Americans this side of eternity,” Walker
said: that sounded like, and was indeed, a threat. It was also, though, an affirmation
of hope, forged in the belief that African-Americans had only to summon up the
courage and collective will in order to be free. “Yea,” Walker asserted, “I would meet
death with avidity far! far! in preference to such servile submission to the murderous
hands of tyrants:” like earlier, white Americans, Walker asked to be given liberty or
death – and he wanted others of his community to ask exactly the same.
Henry Highland Garnet wrote “A Brief Sketch of the Life and Character of David
Walker.” In 1848, with the financial aid of the militant white abolitionist John Brown,
he combined his “Call to Rebellion” speech as it was known, with Walker’s Appeal in
one pamphlet. That suggests the degree of the connection between the two men, and
the sense Garnet in particular had of sharing beliefs and commitments with Walker.
Garnet was born a slave in Maryland, but escaped with his family in 1825. He became
a Presbyterian minister and, in 1843, he attended the National Negro Convention in
Buffalo, New York. There, he delivered his Address to the Slaves of the United States of
America: his “Call to Rebellion” speech which, as the popular title indicated, argued
for violent resistance if necessary in the slaves’ dealings with their masters. Taking up
Walker’s argument that slaves should be ready to “kill or be killed” to achieve
freedom, Garnet insisted that the condition of slavery made it impossible for slaves
to obey the Ten Commandments. “The diabolical injustice by which your liberties
are cloven down, neither God, nor angels, or just men, command you to suffer for a
single moment,” he told the slaves. “Therefore it is your solemn and imperative duty to
use every means, both moral, intellectual and physical, that promises success.” Garnet
used many of the rhetorical and argumentative strategies of Walker. Like Walker, he
asked the slaves, “are you men? Where is the blood of your fathers?” “Awake, awake,”
he told them, “millions of voices are calling you! Your dead fathers speak to you from
their graves.” Like Walker, too, he insisted that the only choice was “Liberty or death.”
“Brethren, arise, arise!” he implored the slave community. “Rather die freemen than
live to be slaves. Remember that you are four millions!”
What Garnet added to the argument and language of the Appeal – along with
pointing out, fiercely, that no Commandment required a slave to suffer “diabolical
injustice” – was a perspective at once international and peculiarly American. Garnet
was a traveled man: he had journeyed in America before giving his “Call to Rebellion”
speech and, later, he was to journey as consul general to Liberia, where he died. He
was also widely read and informed. And he used the revolutionary ferment in Europe
to support the cause of slave liberation. “The nations of the old world are moving in
the great cause of universal freedom,” he pointed out. Now it was time for African-
Americans to move in obedience to a similar impulse, since “no oppressed people
have ever secured their liberty without resistance.” They owed it to themselves,
Garnet added, not only as a peculiarly oppressed people but as Americans. “Forget
not that ye are native-born American citizens,” he told the slaves whom he addressed,
“and, as such, you are justly entitled to all the rights that are granted to the freest.”GGray_c02.indd 143ray_c 02 .indd 143 8 8/1/2011 7:54:40 AM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 54 : 40 AM