David Walker Quotes


Perhaps they will laugh at or make light of this; but I tell you Americans! that unless you speedily alter your course of continuing slavery, you and your Country are gone!!!!!! For God Almighty will tear up the very face of the earth!!!...


Context

Many see the predicted action of God to be the Civil War where new military technology did indeed “tear up the very face of the earth.”


Citations

David Walker, 1785-1830, Free Negro & Writer, Appeal To The Coloured Citizens Of The World, But In Particular, And Very Expressly, To Those Of The United States Of America, 1829

Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations

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As a slave holder himself, this was a dramatic statement. Slavery was immoral, God’s justice will not be on the white slave owners side, a slave revolt or other event could occur and change things radically. One great puzzlement of American history has been why Jefferson, who wrote so eloquently against slavery and predicted the disaster that would come. would himself keep his slaves and never free them as George Washington did. Some argue that he was so broke financially, that he could not afford to free them.


The hatred of the English was so great in Germany during WWI that this phrase substituted for the usual “Good Morning” and “Good Bye” etc.


On May 26, 1887 President Grover Cleveland, himself a Union Army Civil War veteran, issued an Executive Order providing that the captured Confederate regimental flags held as trophies by the War Department be returned to the States of the regiments from which they were captured. Union veterans were outraged:. Within three weeks the president rescinded the order, caving in to pressure from the major veterans organization of the day, The Grand Army of the Republic. Many years later President Theodore Roosevelt ordered the flags returned to the former Confederate states.


Ivan the Terrible. He was referring to himself as God’s Chosen One. He and the Church were aligned against the Nobles, whose lands Ivan wanted. He would execute hundreds of “traitors” every month. He even executed the families of his enemies in very cruel ways. He claimed to be “cleansing” the land of sinners in preparation for the coming judgment day, and the church backed him up on this. The Church gave him carte blanche to “punish” all sinners and his paranoia eventually got around to the church fathers themselves who became the final victims.


A massive earthquake struck Japan, destroying most of Tokyo and Yokohama. The deaths were so extensive that no official count was ever made. At the time, Japanese politics was polarized by two factions: One urged Japan to become democratic and modern like the West; the other, urged Japanese right wing militarism and expansionism. The shock of the Japanese population of such an enormous natural disaster, were seem by most Japanese as a punishment from God as Yasubumi and many other Japanese leaders stated. The reason for the punishment claimed by most was the recent adoption of Western ideas, lifestyles and particularly the trend away from traditional Japanese authoritarian government and toward Democracy. Japan then rejected democratic ideas and followed a militaristic, expansionistic, aggression leading directly to WWII.


“Slaves” in this passage referred to indentured servants. This concept is referred to as the “Jubilee” where once every 50 years all the land reverted to the original owner or heirs even if it had been rented or sold. Land therefore, was very cheap as the Jubilee year approached, as it would have to be given up. And this command of God made sure that no one could be in servitude forever.


He was reacting to the fact that the Supreme Court had ruled that a State could not criminalize adult, consensual, homosexual behavior.


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  • Born: September 28, 1796
  • Died: August 6, 1830
  • Nationality: American
  • Profession: Businessman, Abolitionist

David Walker was an American abolitionist, writer, and anti-slavery activist. Though his father was enslaved, his mother was free; therefore, he was free as well (partus sequitur ventrem). In 1829, while living in Boston, Massachusetts, with the assistance of the African Grand Lodge (later named Prince Hall Grand Lodge, Jurisdiction of Massachusetts), he published An Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, a call for black unity and a fight against slavery.