Rhetoric and Identity in Absalom Jones and Richard Allen's Narrative
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Rhetoric and Identity in Absalom Jones and RichardAllen's Narrative of the Proceedings of the Black People, During the Late Awful Calamity in Philadelphia HE DEADLY YELLOW FEVER epidemic that devastated the citizenry Tof Philadelphia in 1793 has been studied by historians from a variety of perspectives, illuminating diverse aspects of late eighteenth-century American life, including medicine, morality, politics, urban society, and the press.' One significant aspect of the epidemic that has been relatively neglected, however, is the role of African American Philadelphians who served the sick and the public response to their efforts. The author would like to acknowledge the assistance of Glen McClish, Gary and Wynne Bacon, Gary Nash, and the anonymous reviewer for PMHB. 'Stc, for example, David Pad Nord, "Readership as Citizenship in Late-Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia." in A Melancholy Scene of Dcvaradon: The Public Response to the 1793 Philacphia Yellow Fever Epidemni, ed. J. Worth Estes and Billy G. Smith (Canton, Mass., 1997), 19-44; Jacquelyn C. Miller, "Passions and Politics: The Multiple Meanings of Benjamin Rush's Treatment for Yellow Fever," in Melancholy Sccne, 79-95; Jacquelyn C. Miller, "An Uncommon Tranquility of M d Emotional Self-Control and the Constnuction of a Middle-Class Identity in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia," Journal of Social History 30 (1996), 129-48; Martin S. Pemick, "Politics, Parties, and Pestilence: Epidemic Yellow Fever in Philadelphia and the Rise of the First Party System," William and May Qparterly29 (1972), 559-86; J. H. Powell, Bring Out Your Dead: The Great Plague of Yellow Fever in Philadelphiain 1793 (Philadelphia, 1949); Mark Workman, "Medical Practice in Philadelphia at the Time of the Yellow Fever Epidemic, 1793," Pennsylvania Folkhif 27 (1978), 33-39; Eve Kornfied, "Crisis in the Capital The Cultural Significance of Philadelphia*s Great Yellow Fever Epidemic," Pennsylvania History 51 (1984), 189-205; Mark A. Smith, "Andrew Brown's 'Earnest Endeavor': The Federal Gazette's Role in Philadelphia's Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793," Pennsyl)vnia Magazinc offHistoryandBiogrphyhereafrer, PMHB) 120 (1996), 321-42; Chris Holmes, "Benjmin Rush and the Yellow Fever," Bulletin of the Histoiy of Medicine 40 (1996), 246-63. THE PENNSYLVANIA MAGAZINE OF HisTORY AND BIOGRAPHY VoL CXXV, Nos. 1/2 (January/April 2001) JACQUELINE BACON January/April With the exception of a detailed article by Phillip Lapsansky and brief accounts in monographs by Julie Winch, Gary Nash, and Philip Foner,2 few studies have addressed the work of African Americans during the 1793 epidemic. One historical document is particularly relevant to the role of black Americans in this plague-the 1794 pamphlet A Narrative of the Proceedings of the Black People, During the Late Awful Calamity in Philadephia,in the Year 1793: And a Refutation ofSome Censures Thrown Upon Them in Some Late Publications,written by African American Philadelphia leaders and clergymen Absalom Jones and Richard Allen. In broader terms, this text is one of few available that articulates the perspective oflate eighteenth-century black Philadelphians? Jones and Allen's Narrative, Lapsansky establishes, is "the first account of a free black community in action," a public statement of "the principles of [the] first generation of free black leaders" in America.' Lapsansk's study of African American service during the 1793 yellow fever epidemic provides a history of the text and examines significant shifts in their public consciousness. The transformation in African American identity exemplified by Jones and Allen's treatise constitutes a powerful new rhetoric. Lapsansky suggests that the Narrative is "the first African American polemic in which black leaders sought to articulate black community anger and directly confront an accuser."5 In this way it lends credence to Elizabeth Rauh Bethers claim that during the 1780s and 1790s "the supplicative tone of earlier petitions against slavery was transformed into one of civil and moral protest."' Extending beyond its immediate exigence, Jones and Aen's discourse advocates African American rights, freedom, and self-determination. Following Lapsansky's lead, I will explore the rhetoric of the Narrative. I first provide a brief historical overview of the context in which Jones and IPhillip Lapsansky, "Abigail, A Negress': The Role and the Legacy of Af-ican Americans in rhe Yellow Fever Epidemic," inMelancholy Scene, 61-78; Julie Winch, Philaddphia'sBlack EMr Activism, Accoi nodation, and the Stru Wn forAutonomy, 1787-1848 (Philadelphia, 1988), 15-16, 72; Gary B. Nash, ForgingFreedom: The Formation of Philadelphia'sBlac Commumi, 1720-1840 (Cambridge, Mass., 1988), 121-25; Philip S. Foner, Histo y of Black Americans; From Africa to the Emergence of the Cotton Kingdom (Westport, Conn., 1975), 550-53. 1On the paucity of primary texts, see Nash, Forging Freedom, 79. SLapsanaky, -Abigail,' 61, 74. SIbid., 61. Elizabeth Rau Bethel, Pie Roots ofDAficanAmerican Identir Memory and History in Free Antebellum Co nities (New York, 1997), 56-57. ABSALOM JONES AND RICHARD ALLEN Allen were writing, exploring particular features of Philadelphia in 1793 that magnified the significance of the epidemic for the new nation, the characteristics of the African American community in Philadelphia in the late eighteenth century, the immediate circumstances that led to Jones and Allen's publication of their Narrative, and the probable motives that spurred them to write the text. I then turn to the text itself, focusing on how this first generation ofAfrican American leaders in Philadelphia began to assume the agency necessary to argue forcefully against oppression, to assert an em- powering African American identity, and to create an independent voice that would influence the generations of rhetors-writers and orators-that followed them. In particular, I argue, Jones and Allen's text suggests that in order to achieve agency through rhetoric, late eighteenth-century Affican Americans had to negotiate three fundamental tensions: 1) the conflict between one's personal, individual authority and one's status as part of a community; 2) the desire both to respond to white society and to establish a voice independent of white control; and 3) the effort to merge their identities as Africans and as Americans into an empowering group consciousness. Finally, I reflect on how Jones and Allen's Narrative provides historical context for the work of the more widely studied generation of nineteenth-century African American rhetors in Philadelphia and beyond. Although many communities faced the deadly plague of yellow fever in 1793, the epidemic in Philadelphia had national significance.7 Philadelphia was not only the political capital of the new nation but also the intellectual, commercial, and medical center, the seat from which the nation's leading politicians, physicians, and businessmen influenced culture, policy, and trade. The largest city in late eighteenth-century America, it could boast of a dynamic, well-established press and a thriving economy. Despite this vitality and prosperity-or, perhaps, because of it-many were anxious about the new capital, uneasy about how the city could maintain order and tranquility as it underwent rapid growth, political turmoil, and diversification of its citizenry due to immigration and the manumission of slaves. Thus 'My description of Philadelphia in this section is inormed by the following studies: Pernick, olitics," 5-61; Komfeld, Crisis"; Robrt McColley, "A Tale of Three Cities," Journal ofthe Early Republic 3 (1983), ; Richard G.Miller, Philphi-"cTheFedemlisr City.A Study of Urban Politics, 1789-1801 (Port Washington, N.Y., 1976), 4-5, 52-57; John K. Alxan der, Render Them Submissive: Responses to Povery in Philadelphia, 1760-1800 (Amherst, 1990), 26-47. JACQUELINE BACON Ja uary//ApriJ Americans had reason to observe how Philadelphia responded to the 1793 epidemic and to consider the implications of the crisis for the fiture of the new nation. Philadelphia in 1793 was also an important center of African American culture and leadership.' In many northern cities at the time, as scholars have noted, the period from the 1780s to the 1820s was crucial for free blacks. Although revolutionary sentiment increased white American anxiety over slavery in both the North and South, plans to end the practice were offered only tentatively; and many white Americans were apprehensive about the economic and social consequences of abolition. Conceptions of racial difference among white Americans became more rigid as works published in the 1770s and 1780s claimed that people of African descent were inherently inferior to those of European ancestry. Thomas Jefferson's personal relationship to the "peculiar institution," his expressed views on God's ultimate judgment for the sin of slavery, and his belief that free African Americans were inferior and could never coexist peacefily with whites exempli the complex views of many white Americans in the late eighteenth century about slavery and race, both in the North and South.' Because of the force of racism and constant threats of violence, African Americans who were not slaves were only nominally free. They faced vicious mobs and the possibility of being kidnapped and sold into slavery-a threat made worse by the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793, which denied due process to 'My hisorical ovrview of the African American community in Philadelphia and the North draws from the following stdies- Lerone