Page 171 - American Stories, A History of the United States

slavery—free African Americans were denied equal standing with white worshippers.
6.1 Humiliations of this sort persuaded African Americans to form their own churches.
In Philadelphia, Richard Allen, a former slave, founded the Bethel Church for Negro
african Methodist episcopal Methodists (1793) and later organized the African Methodist Episcopal Church
6.2 church Richard Allen founded (1814), an institution of cultural and religious significance for nineteenth-century
the African Methodist episcopal American blacks.
Church in 1816 as the first
independent black-run Protestant Even in the South, where African Americans made up much of the population,
6.3 church in the United States. The slavery disturbed thoughtful white republicans. Some planters simply freed their
AMe Church was active in the slaves. By 1790, 12,766 free blacks lived in Virginia. By 1800, there were 30,750.
abolition movement and founded This trend reflected uneasiness among white masters. Richard Randolph, one of
educational institutions for free Virginia’s wealthier planters, explained that he freed his slaves “to make restitution,
6.4 blacks. as far as I am able, to an unfortunate race of bond-men, over whom my ances-
tors have usurped and exercised the most lawless and monstrous tyranny.” George
Washington also freed his slaves in his will after his death. But most southern slave-
holders, especially in South Carolina and Georgia, rejected manumission. Their
well-being depended on slave labor. Perhaps more significant, however, is that no
southern leader during the era of republican experimentation defended slavery as a
positive good. Such racist rhetoric did not become part of the public discourse until
the nineteenth century.
Despite promising starts, the southern states did not abolish slavery. The economic
incentives to maintain a servile labor force, especially after the invention of the cot-
ton gin in 1793 and the opening up of the Alabama and Mississippi frontier, over-
whelmed the initial abolitionist impulse. An opportunity to translate the principles
of the American Revolution into social practice had been lost, at least temporarily.
Quick Check Jefferson reported in 1805, “I have long since given up the expectation of any early pro-
Why did the new republican govern- vision for the extinction of slavery among us.” Unlike some contemporary Virginians,
ments not bring liberty and equality the man who wrote the Declaration of Independence condoned slavery on his own
to African Americans living in the plantation, even fathering children by a woman who, since she was his slave, had little
United States?
choice in her pregnancies.

The Challenge of Women’s Rights

The revolutionary experience accelerated changes in how ordinary people viewed the
family. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, fathers claimed authority over their
families simply because they were fathers. As patriarchs, they demanded obedience.
Fathers could treat wives and children however they pleased. John Locke had pow-
erfully undermined arguments of this sort. In Some Thoughts Concerning Education
(1693), Locke insisted that the mind was not formed at birth. Children learned from
experience. If the infant witnessed violent, arbitrary behavior, then the baby would
become an abusive adult. As Locke warned parents, “If you punish him [the child]
for what he sees you practice yourself, he will not think that Severity to proceed from
Kindness in you careful to amend a Fault in him; but will be apt to interpret it, as Pee-
vishness and Arbitrary Imperiousness of a Father.” Enlightened eighteenth-century
parents—especially fathers—condemned tyranny in the home.
In this changing intellectual environment, American women began making new
demands not only on their husbands but on republican institutions. Abigail Adams,
wife of future President John Adams and one of the era’s most articulate women,
instructed her husband, as he set off for the Second Continental Congress: “I desire
you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than
your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands.”
John responded condescendingly. The “Ladies” would have to wait until the country
achieved independence. In 1777, Lucy Knox took an even stronger line with her hus-
band, General Henry Knox. When he was about to return home from the army, she
warned him, “I hope you will not consider yourself as commander in chief in your own
house—but be convinced . . . that there is such a thing as equal command.”

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