The new rhetoric of citizenship was a white, masculine language. The social and economic needs of the white moneyed classes, north and south, resulted in a 1787 constitution (and its 1791 bill of rights) that, amidst all its discus-sion of representative government and individual liberties, implicitly excluded African-Americans from that government and explicitly protected the insti-tution of slavery. The racial inferiority of African-Americans was judged to make them mentally and emotionally unfit for citizenship. In similar fashion women were made dependants within the republic. Just as wives enjoyed no legal identity under coverture, but had their being sub-sumed under their husband’s, so women had no political personhood apart from the men who supposedly represented them. As in the case of African-Americans, this was explained in terms of women’s natural mental and emotional unfitness to participate in government. In both cases the concept of childlikeness was invoked, implying that women and African-Americans were not complete adult persons. It was not that the lives of women or African-Americans had changed. Their circumstances had not changed, and that fact pointed up the progress that had been made by non-elite white men in the cause of republican liberty.

doi:10.4324/9780203166505-59

Chapter

The new rhetoric of citizenship was a white, masculine language. The social and economic needs of the white moneyed classes, north and south, resulted in a 1787 constitution (and its 1791 bill of rights) that, amidst all its discus-sion of representative government and individual liberties, implicitly excluded African-Americans from that government and explicitly protected the insti-tution of slavery. The racial inferiority of African-Americans was judged to make them mentally and emotionally unfit for citizenship. In similar fashion women were made dependants within the republic. Just as wives enjoyed no legal identity under coverture, but had their being sub-sumed under their husband’s, so women had no political personhood apart from the men who supposedly represented them. As in the case of African-Americans, this was explained in terms of women’s natural mental and emotional unfitness to participate in government. In both cases the concept of childlikeness was invoked, implying that women and African-Americans were not complete adult persons. It was not that the lives of women or African-Americans had changed. Their circumstances had not changed, and that fact pointed up the progress that had been made by non-elite white men in the cause of republican liberty.

Chapter

The new rhetoric of citizenship was a white, masculine language. The social and economic needs of the white moneyed classes, north and south, resulted in a 1787 constitution (and its 1791 bill of rights) that, amidst all its discus-sion of representative government and individual liberties, implicitly excluded African-Americans from that government and explicitly protected the insti-tution of slavery. The racial inferiority of African-Americans was judged to make them mentally and emotionally unfit for citizenship. In similar fashion women were made dependants within the republic. Just as wives enjoyed no legal identity under coverture, but had their being sub-sumed under their husband’s, so women had no political personhood apart from the men who supposedly represented them. As in the case of African-Americans, this was explained in terms of women’s natural mental and emotional unfitness to participate in government. In both cases the concept of childlikeness was invoked, implying that women and African-Americans were not complete adult persons. It was not that the lives of women or African-Americans had changed. Their circumstances had not changed, and that fact pointed up the progress that had been made by non-elite white men in the cause of republican liberty.

ABSTRACT

Methodists experienced extraordinary success among African-Americans, enslaved and free, although just how much is not known. Albert Raboteau believes that as late as 1820 the majority of slaves ‘remained only minimally touched by Christianity’, with evangelical religion having made its greatest strides among house servants, artisans and urban slaves. Gary Nash, on the other hand, has argued that in Philadelphia the membership of the African evangelical churches represented at least a third of the black population and probably much more.33 But as early as 1800 race politics appeared to destroy the simple equality presumed by the evangelical ethos. In response AfricanAmericans built their own separate churches, including Richard Allen’s African Methodist Episcopal Church (AMEC).