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Saint-Domingan Refugees and the Limits of Sympathetic Ideology in Philadelphia

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Saint-Domingan Refugees and the Limits of Sympathetic Ideology in Philadelphia University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Masters Theses Dissertations and Theses August 2014 Motives of Humanity: Saint-Domingan Refugees and the Limits of Sympathetic Ideology in Philadelphia Jonathan Earl Dusenbury University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/masters_theses_2 Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Dusenbury, Jonathan Earl, "Motives of Humanity: Saint-Domingan Refugees and the Limits of Sympathetic Ideology in Philadelphia" (2014). Masters Theses. 14. https://doi.org/10.7275/5458207 https://scholarworks.umass.edu/masters_theses_2/14 This Open Access Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations and Theses at ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Masters Theses by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Motives of Humanity: Saint-Domingan Refugees and the Limits of Sympathetic Ideology in Philadelphia A Thesis Presented by JONATHAN E. DUSENBURY Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS May 2014 The University of Massachusetts Amherst/Five College Graduate Program in History © Copyright by Jonathan E. Dusenbury 2014 All Rights Reserved Motives of Humanity: Saint-Domingan Refugees and the Limits of Sympathetic Ideology in Philadelphia A Thesis Presented By Jonathan Dusenbury Approved as to style and content by: _______________________________ Jennifer Heuer, Chair _______________________________ Manisha Sinha, Member _______________________________ Barry Levy, Member ________________________________ Joye Bowman, Chair, History Department ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This thesis would not have been possible without the assistance of many people. First, I would like to thank my advisor and the director of this work, Dr. Jennifer Heuer, for her patient guidance and feedback, not only in the writing of this thesis but in all areas of my study at UMass. I would also like to thank the other members of my committee, Drs. Barry Levy and Manisha Sinha, for the gift of their time and for their helpful feedback and encouragement. I am also grateful to the staff of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania for their fine work in preserving the records of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, and other pieces of America’s history. I am also indebted to the archivists of The Internet Archive for their efforts to record and digitize the past, and to make historical and cultural artifacts accessible to the broader public. This work would not have been possible without the generous support of the Department of History’s Graduate Studies Committee, and I thank them for providing me with four semesters of funding and teaching opportunities, as well as with support to improve my French language skills so as to do research for this work. I would be remiss if I did not thank my dear friends from the program – Amy Breimaier, Amanda Tewes, Erica Fagen, and Katie Garland – for their friendship and support over the past two years. I am also indebted to the other graduate students of the Department of History for providing a committee of scholars like none I had experienced before. Finally, I want to thank my parents and family for their love, emotional support, financial generosity, and interminable patience over the past 25 years. iv ABSTRACT MOTIVES OF HUMANITY: SAINT-DOMIGAN REFUGEES AND THE LIMITS OF SYMPATHETIC IDEOLOGY IN PHILADELPHIA MAY 2014 JONATHAN E. DUSENBURY, B.A., UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA M.A.T., UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL M.A., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Jennifer N. Heuer This thesis examines two crises that occurred in Philadelphia in the middle of the 1790s: the arrival of refugees from the revolution in the French West Indian colony of Saint-Domingue and the outbreak of yellow fever the followed their arrival. These crises are studied together in order to understand the challenges that they posed to the post- Revolutionary culture of sensibility and to the sympathetic construction of social order that drew upon this culture. Philadelphians’ post-Revolutionary sentimental project – the reorganization of society along lines of fellow-feeling, benevolence, and emotional parity – was strained by the arrival of refugees from Saint-Domingue and by the outbreak of epidemic disease. Both of these events were opportunities to actuate sympathetic ideologies, and in both cases, action fell short of rhetoric. This thesis examines why this was the case. Central to Philadelphians’ ambivalence in creating sympathetic social bonds was the presence of people of color – American and foreign – in the city. When asked to extend fellow-feeling to black Philadelphians and black Saint-Domingan refugees, white Philadelphians equivocated. The reorganization of society in the post-Revolutionary period had presumed emotional equality among Americans, but the issue of race repeatedly demonstrated weaknesses in the application of this ideology. The crises examined within this work demonstrate the enduring appeal of sensibility in 1790s Philadelphia. They also demonstrate its weaknesses. As more and more groups use the language of sympathy and benevolence to voice their demands, sensibility faltered. This thesis builds upon a growing scholarship that examines the effect of the Haitian Revolution on the United States to argue that the arrival of refugees from that revolution to Philadelphia highlighted fundamental ambivalences and fault lines in the United States’ post-Revolutionary sentimental project. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS………………………………………………………………..iv ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………………v INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………...1 CHAPTER I. THE CULTURE OF SENSIBILITY IN THE ANGLO-ATLANTIC WORLD….4 HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE CULTURE OF SENSIBILITY……………..6 THE CULTURE OF SENSIBILITY IN AMERICA………………………..24 II. SAINT-DOMINGAN REFUGEES AND THE CRISIS OF SYMPATHETIC SOCIAL ORDER………………………………………………………………..30 III. SYMPATHY AND THE YELLOW FEVER EPIDEMIC OF 1793……………51 IV. SYMPATHY AND SLAVERY: PHILADELPHIA’S RESPONSE TO BLACK SAINT-DOMINGANS……….…………………………………………………71 CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………………….90 BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………………….94 vi INTRODUCTION This thesis examines the ways in which two related crises – the arrival of refugees from the French colony of Saint-Domingue and Philadelphia’s 1793 yellow fever epidemic – pulled at the boundaries of the United States’ post-Revolutionary sympathetic social order. By focusing on Philadelphia, it examines the city that was not only the birthplace of American independence and the site of the new national capital, but that was also the epicenter of sentimental ideology in the young republic. That the crises herein examined both occurred in Philadelphia allows for an analysis of the multiple dimensions by which Americans conceptualized social order and social relationships in this period. The first crisis discussed began outside of the United States in the French colony of Saint-Domingue in the summer of 1791. Thousands of refugees – black and white – arrived from the French West Indies in the 1790s. Americans’ responses to their arrival revealed fault lines in the construction of sympathetic sociability. While sympathetic language pervaded public and private responses to the arrival of (especially white) refugees, the actions taken for their relief reveal a more fundamental ambivalence towards their presence and the possibility of finding a place for them within the sympathetic social order. This was far more true of the African-descended slaves which were brought by the hundreds into Philadelphia. Unlike their masters, black Saint-Domingans could not generally rely upon Philadelphians’ sympathy. Issues of race certainly marked them as distinct, and their economic ties to their masters through slavery or indentured servitude made charitable action implausible for most white Philadelphians. However, the Saint- Domingans slaves’ associations with black political violence was the biggest roadblock 1 to their inclusion within Philadelphians’ imagined community of sympathy. The response to Philadelphia’s second crisis bears this assertion out somewhat more. In the wake of the refugees’ arrival, yellow fever (more likely than not imported from the West Indies along with the Saint-Domingans) broke out in Philadelphia. Thousands of people died, and thousands more fled. The general social collapse precipitated by the epidemic gave some, however, the chance to argue for a restructuring of the city’s social order. The debate between white publisher Mathew Carey and black community leaders Absalom Jones and Richard Allen highlights the economic and racial dimensions of this discussion. Jones and Allen’s response to Carey’s characterization of the city’s black community’s actions during the epidemic was couched in the language of sympathetic citizenship. As we shall see, for those white Philadelphians who championed sensibility as a hallmark of American identity and political action, black inclusion within this political and social order undermined the supposedly expansive and “universal” character of sympathy. When presented with the presence of foreign blacks – especially foreign blacks associated with the violent overthrow of white colonial society – white and black Philadelphians remained largely silent. The revolution
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