This paper analyzes how two black ministers in early national Philadelphia,
Absalom Jones and Richard Allen, selectively incorporated both liberal
and classical republican principles into a model of social relations that
served their own community's peculiar needs. In defending past black sacrifices
and presenting a blueprint for future black civic participation, Jones
and Allen sought to demonstrate to anxious white Philadelphians that African-Americans
merited full inclusion in the state. Their thought sheds light on an early
phase of the black struggle for citizenship and reflects the ideological
tensions between liberalism and republicanism inherent in the larger American
community's search for ties to bind together the young nation.
Jones and Allen defended both the disinterested self-sacrifice and the acquisitive individualism manifested by black Philadelphians during the 1793 yellow fever epidemic. Their assumption that people naturally pursued strategies of acqisitive individualism placed limits on their faith in the efficacy of republicanism as an organizing principle for society. Neither, however, did they regard liberalism as capable of tying individuals to the state and to each other. Allen constructed an alternative model for social relations--Christian charity--that incorporated the benefits but not the drawbacks of both liberalism and republicanism. Advising black Philadelphians that God would reward their charitable actions with eternal salvation, Allen promoted sacrifice for the common good, but not disinterested sacrifice of the classical republican mold. In depicting Christian charity as a market transaction, whereby immediate sacrifice returned a greater reward later, Allen disclosed his own liberal assumptions. Allen's sermons thus reconciled the contradictions between republicanism and liberalism, harnessing acquisitive individualism for the greater good of the whole while conversely rendering public virtue appealing to the acquisitive individual.