One of the laws, “An Act to Prevent the Circulation of Seditious Publications,” banned bringing into the state any publication with the tendency to inspire revolution or resistance among enslaved or free Black people. A first violation of the law was punishable by whipping and one-year imprisonment, while those convicted of a second offense would “suffer death without benefit of clergy.”
The 1830 law directly responded to a publication written in September 1829 by David Walker, a free Black abolitionist and activist living in Boston, Massachusetts. Walker published an anti-slavery pamphlet, An Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World. The pamphlet advocated for racial equality and called for free and enslaved Black people to actively challenge injustice, racial oppression, and the institution of slavery.