vincing arguments against slavery were already noted. Antislavery sentiment in the North increased after 1815, and more ministers, editors, and other leaders of public opinion came out against slavery. In time, nearly all of these critics were confined to the North. The coming of the age of the abolitionists was indicated by three events: the publication of David Walker's "Appeal," the appearance of William Lloyd Garrison's Liberator, and the insurrection of slaves under the leadership of Nat Turner. Walker was a free black in North Carolina who moved to Boston and worked selling secondhand clothes, and his bitter hatred for slavery was apparent in his writing. He evoked the image of the Declaration of Independence and the fact that it seemed not to apply to blacks. Garrison's newspaper also evoked the Declaration of Independence and stated that the black man was as entitled to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" as the white man.
Abolitionists developed an elaborate argument against continuing slavery. They first held that it was contrary to the teachings of Christianity because Jesus taught the doctrine of universal brotherhood and that all men are created in the image of God. These arguments are found in James G. Birney's Letter to the Ministers and Elders in 1834 and Theodore Weld's The Bible Against Slavery in 1837. Abolitionists next stated that slavery was contrary to the fundamental principles of the American way of life, which valued freedom as an inalienable right. Slavers were denied this freedom. Abolitionists further stated that slavery wa economically unsound because the workers could not be expected to be efficient and because there was such a waste of physical and human resources in the plantation economy:
The culture and civilization of the South suffered, moreover, for the master-slave relationship did not produce a gentility of spirit but brought out instead the baser aspects of the natur...