An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans

Mrs. Lydia Maria Child (1802-1880) was widely read and extremely well informed. She was the successful and popular author of a novel (Hobomok) and several how-to books (The Frugal Housewife, The Mother's Book, The Girl's Own Book), and editor of the Juvenile Miscellany. She was also a former educator and a member of the learned and reform-minded intellectual circles in Boston, both in her own right and as the younger sister of Convers Francis (1795-1863), a Unitarian minister, Harvard professor, and member of the Transcendental Club. In 1828 she married David Lee Child (1794-1874), another Harvard graduate, schoolmaster, diplomat, and lawyer. Their association with William Lloyd Garrison prompted Mrs. Child to publish this Appeal, for which she paid the price of alienating a significant portion of her previous audience. She did not waver but went on to edit the National Anti-Slavery Standard in New York City (1840-1844) and continued to write in support of emancipation, women's rights, and native rights as well.

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; citizenship and equality are what she proposed beyond simple 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.