*On October 5, 1833, the 19th-century publication of An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans, by white American writer Lydia Maria Child, is celebrated. This book favored the immediate emancipation of African slaves without compensation to slaveholders and was the first book in support of this policy written by a white woman.
It was published by Allen & Ticknor in Boston, a predecessor to Ticknor and Fields, at the author's expense. She spent about three years researching and writing the book and often drew from William Lloyd Garrison's antislavery newspaper, The Liberator, and likely David Walker's 1829 Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World.
Child's argument includes a distrust of the growing political power of the Southern states, which she perceived as a proslavery system. She addresses her concern in a chapter titled "Influence of Slavery on the Politics of the United States" and specifically uses the Missouri Compromise as an example.
