David Christy

author

David Christy

b. 1802

A 19th-century American writer and journalist, he is best remembered for books that argued over slavery, colonization, and the place of cotton in the U.S. economy. His work sits at the center of some of the fiercest political debates of his time.

1 Audiobook

African Colonization by the Free Colored People of the United States, an Indispensable Auxiliary to African Missions.

African Colonization by the Free Colored People of the United States, an Indispensable Auxiliary to African Missions.

by David Christy

About the author

Born in 1802 and dying in 1882, David Christy was an American author, journalist, and public figure associated with Cincinnati, Ohio. He wrote on some of the biggest issues of the mid-19th century, especially slavery, African colonization, and the economic power of cotton.

His best-known books include African Colonization by the Free Colored People of the United States (1854), Cotton Is King (1855), and Ethiopia: Her Gloom and Glory (1857). Those titles show the range of his interests, from U.S. politics and commerce to Africa and the future imagined by American reformers and polemicists.

Christy is often remembered today not simply as a literary figure, but as a writer whose books reveal the arguments and assumptions of his era. For listeners interested in American history, his work offers a direct window into the language, conflicts, and controversies of the decades before the Civil War.