Somewhat More Independent: The End of Slavery in New York City, 1770-1810

3. Impious Prayers

3 Impious Prayers IN ALETTER to Egbert Benson in 1780, John Jay asserted that unless America introduced a gradual abolition measure "her Prayers to Heaven for Liberty will be impious." It was a maxim in God's court as well as in the new nation's own "that those who ask for Equity ought to do it."l The seeming paradox of a nation fighting to throw off the "slavery" of England while still holding several hundred thousand blacks in bondage, which had troubled John Jay, continued to perplex many of his contemporaries. The speculation and soul-searching it produced were important factors in the surge of interest in matters pertaining to slavery and to blacks that developed in the years following the Revolution, particularly after 1787. Not only is the sheer quantity of discussion of these matters impressive, but asWinthrop Jordan has pointed out, there is also an "aroma of causality" emanating from the coincidence between this sudden ferment and the formationof the federal Union. Sorting out the role that blacks and slaverywould play in the fledgling republic was a crucial component of the search for national self-identity.2 Historians have mined this material to produce a rich literature on white ideas about blacks and race and on the nature of the antislavery movement.3 But there are limitations to this historiography . Scholarly attention has been directed mainly at the discourse of a highly articulate elite, a discourse that was learned, literary, and often international in scope. Winthrop Jordan, for example, in his seminal White over Black, centered much of his analysis of the post-Revolutionary period on Thomas Jefferson, the archetypal transatlantic intellectual.4 Implicit within Jordan's discussion is the assumption that popular attitudes were shaped by this intellectual Impious Prayers 5 7 elite—that elite culture determined the popular response. Such an assumption leads Jordan to miss an interesting facet of white attitudes toward blacks—the way in which elite and popular culture interacted and what this demonstrates about the complexities of white racial opinion. Of course, "racial opinion" is a slippery and elusive concept at the best of times, and in order to grasp this difficult subject more fully, the scope of this inquiry has been broadened to include all of the Middle Atlantic states. Although a case can clearly be made for the separation of these states from both New England and the South, it would be impractical and would make little sense to extricate New York City from the region in which it was embedded. This chapter , then, contains an analysisof the treatment of blacks and slavery in the magazines, newspapers, and almanacsof the Middle Atlantic states in the quarter-century after the Revolution.5 IT WAS NOTuntil after the Revolution that American magazines firmly established themselves. Many were short-lived, but some, such as the Columbian Magazine (1786-1792) and the American Museum (1787-1792) of Philadelphia and the New York Magazine (17901797 ), were successful and important. The magazinesembodied the contradictory currents of the time: they were consciously modeled on renowned English publicationssuch asthe Gentleman's Magazine and the London Magazine, but they also attempted to assert, at times quite vigorously, distinct American values. Their offerings were varied and included history, poetry, fiction, engravings, and articles on such diverse topics as politics, religion, education, the role of women, American manufactures, and antislavery.6 Frank Luther Mott, in his History of American Magazines, estimated that at least three-quarters of the contents of the magazines had already been published in English or Americanbooks, pamphlets, newspapers, or other magazines.7 Mathew Carey frankly admitted in the preface to the fourth volume of theAmerican Museum that "this work lays little or no claim to originality." That material often was written and first published elsewhere does not diminish its importance for interpreting eighteenth-century society. In a situation where the printer had at his disposal a vast array of articles from numerous sources the actual process of selection becomes important. The eighteenth- 58 Whites century printer had a good idea of the concerns of his readers. If he did not he quickly went bankrupt. Few circulation figures are available, but clearly sales of individual magazines were numbered in the hundreds, not thousands. Carey, for example, claimed that his Museum had 1,250 subscribers; in 1790 the New York Magazine had 370 subscribers.8 But such figures do not tell the full story. The...