of the United States of America_. The book was remarkably successful.
Appearing in September, by March of the following year it had reached
its third edition; and in each successive edition the language was more
bold and vigorous. Walker's projected insurrection did not take place,
and he himself died in 1830. While there was no real proof of the fact,
among the Negro people there was a strong belief that he met with foul
play.

[Footnote 1: Adams: _Neglected Period of Anti-Slavery_, 93.]

Article I Walker headed "Our Wretchedness in Consequence of Slavery." A
trip over the United States had convinced him that the Negroes of the
country were "the most degraded, wretched and abject set of beings that
ever lived since the world began." He quoted a South Carolina paper as
saying, "The Turks are the most barbarous people in the world--they
treat the Greeks more like brutes than human beings"; and then from the
same paper cited an advertisement of the sale of eight Negro men and
four women. "Are we men?" he exclaimed. "I ask you, O! my brothers, are
we men?... Have we any other master but Jesus Christ alone? Is He not
their master as well as ours? What right, then, have we to obey and call
any man master but Himself? How we could be so submissive to a gang of
men, whom we can not tell whether they are as good as ourselves, or not,
I never could conceive." "The whites," he asserted, "have always been an
unjust, jealous, unmerciful, avaricious and bloodthirsty set of beings,
always seeking after power and authority." As heathen the white people
had been cruel enough, but as Christians they were ten times more so. As
heathen "they were not quite so audacious as to go and take vessel loads
of men, women and children, and in cold blood, through devilishness,
throw them into the sea, and murder them in all kind of ways. But being
Christians, enlightened and sensible, they are completely prepared