'No Fair Claim to the Character of Christians': Mathew Carey's Path to Benevolence for Philadelphia's White Female Working Poor

In his last years, Mathew Carey (1760–1839), the disabled Irish Catholic immigrant who rose from anonymous poverty to become early America's most prominent publisher and a significant commentator on political economy, began a charitable crusade for the nation's white female working poor. Admonishing Christian republicans to love them with non-judgmental compassion, Carey's benevolence provides a nuanced view of how the Gospel's commission to care for abused and neglected outsiders was enacted in early nineteenth-century America and broadens our understanding of the religious fervor of the Second Great Awakening as being more than a movement defined solely by Protestant revivalists.