THE PENNSYLVANIA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY VOLUME CXXXV January 2011 NO. 1 THIS “RENDS IN PIECES ALL THE BARRIERS BETWEEN VIRTUE AND VICE”: TENNENTISTS,MORAVIANS, AND THE ANTINOMIAN THREAT IN THE DELAWARE VALLEY Jared S. Burkholder 5 WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM THE FRIENDS:THE QUAKER AND TACTICAL CONTEXTS OF ANTHONY BENEZET’S ABOLITIONIST PUBLISHING Jonathan D. Sassi 33 PHILADELPHIA NOT PHILANTHROPOLIS:THE LIMITS OF PENNSYLVANIAN ANTISLAVERY IN THE ERA OF THE HAITIAN REVOLUTION James Alexander Dun 73 NOTES AND DOCUMENTS: NEWLY AVAILABLE AND PROCESSED COLLECTIONS AT THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF PENNSYLVANIA Christopher Munden and HSP Archives Staff 103 BOOK REVIEWS 109 BOOK REVIEWS PENCAK, Pennsylvania’s Revolution, by David Waldstreicher 109 VITIELLO, with THOMAS, The Philadelphia Stock Exchange and the City It Made, by Richard Sylla 110 EASTMAN, A Nation of Speechifiers: Making an American Public after the Revolution, by Joseph Rezek 112 OTTER, Philadelphia Stories: America’s Literature of Race and Freedom, by Edward Larkin 113 ROYDHOUSE, Women of Industry and Reform: Shaping the History of Pennsylvania, 1865–1940, by Loretta Sullivan Lobes 114 HARRIS, ed., Second Suburb: Levittown, Pennsylvania, by Peter Siskind 115 LONGHURST, Citizen Environmentalists, by Sherie R. Mershon 117 COVER ILLUSTRATION: Title page of Anthony Benezet’s pamphlet, Some Historical Account of Guinea, reprinted in London in 1788, four years after Benezet’s death. Two articles in this issue the transatlantic networks of the abo- lition movement: Jonathan Sassi’s article on Anthony Benezet’s publishing efforts and James Alexander Dun’s article on the Pennsylvania Abolition Society during the era of the Haitian Revolution. Editorial Advisory Committee BETH BAILEY RICHARD N. JULIANI Temple University Villanova University SETH BRUGGEMAN WALTER LICHT Temple University University of Pennsylvania STEVEN CONN GUIAN A. MCKEE Ohio State University University of Virginia ERICA ARMSTRONG DUNBAR CARLA MULFORD University of Delaware Pennsylvania State University JOHN FEA MARK E. NEELY JR. Messiah College Pennsylvania State University JUDITH GIESBERG LESLIE PATRICK Villanova University Bucknell University LORI GINZBERG JUDITH RIDNER Pennsylvania State University Muhlenberg College ANN N. GREENE DAVID SCHUYLER University of Pennsylvania Franklin & Marshall College JOHN HEPP ANDREW SHANKMAN Wilkes University Rutgers University, Camden Editor TAMARA GASKELL Editorial Intern CHRISTOPHER MUNDEN THE PENNSYLVANIA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY (ISSN 0031-4587) is published each quarter in January, April, July, and October by THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF PENNSYLVANIA, 1300 Locust Street, Philadelphia, PA 19107-5699. Periodicals postage paid at Philadelphia, PA and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: send address changes to PMHB, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1300 Locust Street, Philadelphia, PA 19107-5699. Authorization for academic photocopying: For permission to reuse material, please access www.copyright.com or contact the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (CCC), 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400. CCC is a nonprofit organization that provides licenses and registration for a variety of uses. Submissions: All communications should be addressed to the editor. E-mail may be sent to [email protected]. Manuscripts should conform to The Chicago Manual of Style. Electronic submissions are welcome. For submission guidelines, visit the PMHB web page (http://www.hsp.org). The editor does not assume responsibility for statements of fact or of opinion made by the contributors. Contributors JARED S. BURKHOLDER is assistant professor of history in the Department of History and Political Science at Grace College (Winona Lake, IN). He specializes in American religious history with a focus on pietist groups, such as the Moravians, the evangelical tradition, and various forms of Anabaptism. Burkholder is co-editor of the forthcoming book, The Activist Impulse: Exploring the Intersection of Anabaptism and American Evangelicalism (Wipf and Stock). JAMES ALEXANDER DUN is a lecturer and departmental representative in the history department at Princeton University. His current book project is Dangerous Intelligence: Slavery, Saint-Domingue, and the Haitian Revolution in the Early American Republic. JOHNATHAN D. SASSI is associate professor of history at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York, and a member of the faculty of the PhD program in history at the CUNY Graduate Center. Previous articles of his on revolutionary-era antislavery have been published in the Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society and the Journal of Early Modern History. The full run of the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography is available in electronic format on JSTOR (http://www.jstor.org). Information on both print and electronic subscriptions can be found at http://www.hsp.org/default.aspx?id=132. In addition, issues from 1907 through 2005 are available on the Penn State University Libraries’ website at http://publications.libraries.psu.edu/eresources/pmhb. Both sites can also be accessed from the Historical Society’s website, at http://www.hsp.org/default.aspx?id=68. Selected issues and annual bound volumes are avail- able. Query editor for availability and price. This “rends in Pieces all the Barriers between Virtue and Vice”: Tennentists, Moravians, and the Antinomian Threat in the Delaware Valley N THE SUMMER OF 1745, Gilbert Tennent, one of the middle colonies’ leading revivalist preachers, was preparing a sermon in his IPhiladelphia study during a fierce thunderstorm, when a bolt of light- ning struck the house and sent a surge of electricity through his body, blowing out the soles of his shoes and melting the buckles.1 Although Tennent would later explain this frightening experience as a random act I would like to thank the Pietism Studies Group, which meets each year in conjunction with the American Historical Association, for inviting me to present a paper on this material for the 2008 annual meeting in Washington, DC. This article is a revised version of that presentation delivered as “Anglo-Moravians and Tennentist Propaganda: The Nature of Moravian–New Light Relations in the Delaware Valley, 1741–1748.” I am also indebted to Paul Peucker and Lanie Graf for their assistance at the Moravian Archives in Bethlehem, Lisa Jacobson at the Presbyterian Historical Society in Philadelphia, as well as several people who have reviewed and offered comments on this piece. Among them are Craig Atwood, Ned Landsman, and Mark Norris. This article is much improved because of comments I received from these individuals and those of an anonymous reviewer. I am, however, solely responsible for those deficiencies that remain. 1 Gilbert Tennent (1703–1764) was arguably the most significant revivalist in the mid-Atlantic colonies. He was instrumental in creating a temporary split with “Old Side” Presbyterians in 1741 and best known for his controversial 1739 sermon, “The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry.” THE PENNSYLVANIA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY Vol. CXXXV, No. 1 ( January 2011) 6 JARED S. BURKHOLDER January of God, Moravians in Philadelphia interpreted the lightning bolt as a spe- cific demonstration of divine “warning” thrown down on one of their most vocal “enemies.”2 In fact, according to a Reformed opponent of the Moravians, the leader of the whole Moravian enterprise, Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, had predicted as much three years earlier.3 Although coming after the fires of the Great Awakening had cooled, the Moravian interpretation of Tennent’s encounter with a bolt of lightning is testament to debates that surged to the fore during the Great Awakening and that revolved around Moravian activity in the Delaware Valley.4 The Moravians of the eighteenth century were the theological descen- dents of the Unitas Fratrum or “United Brethren.” As a remnant of the followers of Jan Hus, the “Unity” faced legal prosecution under Catholic authority and fled north from the region of Moravia. Finding safety in Saxony on the estate of Zinzendorf, a nobleman with a pietist orientation, the tradition was revived there in 1727 in a community they called “Herrnhut.” Moravians began visiting Pennsylvania in 1736 and estab- lished the administrative center of Bethlehem, along the Lehigh River, in 1742. These pietists, most of whom were German speaking, faced oppo- sition on a number of fronts. This essay focuses on the Moravians’ con- tentious interaction with Presbyterian evangelicals who, during the Great 2 On the lightning strike incident, see the entry for July 14, 1745, in the congregational diary of First Moravian Church, Philadelphia, PA, Moravian Archives, Bethlehem, PA. Also consult Milton J. Coalter, Gilbert Tennent, Son of Thunder: A Case Study of Continental Pietism’s Impact on the First Great Awakening in the Middle Colonies (New York, 1986), 126. 3 According to Johann Philip Böhm, Zinzendorf once claimed in a sermon, “Thunder and light- ning will strike all ministers who hinder souls from following the Lamb.” William J. Hinke, ed., Life and Letters of the Rev. John Philip Boehm: Founder of the Reformed Church in Pennsylvania 1683–1749 (Philadelphia, 1916), 381. Count Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf (1700–1760) was the patron nobleman of the “renewed” Moravian Brethren or “Brüdergemeine” as it became known in Europe. Zinzendorf was heavily influenced by German pietism and, although he did not work from a systemized theological framework, was responsible for