ABSTRACT
African-American Bostonian David Walker, who was born free in North Carolina, published his Appeal in 1829 after generations of American slaves failed to mount coordinated attempts of violent slave resistance. Hundreds of single slaves or small groups of slaves struck at their conditions of bondage violently in the American South, but these acts of rebellion did not threaten the region's system of slavery. Walker boldly expressed the logic for violent resistance against the oppressive labor system, but only five major slave revolts, or conspiracies for massive revolts, can be documented for the entire history of the American South. None of them succeeded, and all were quickly repressed. The only slave revolt that moved beyond the planning stages in the United States took place in Southampton County, Virginia in 1831. Only two years after Walker published his appeal, Nat Turner and some seventy other slaves confirmed the long-standing fears of the Southern countryside.
