The Labors of Liberality: Christian Benevolence and National Prejudice in the American Founding

Abstract

Of all the keynote speakers asked to address their respective states on July 4, 1788, the Reverend Enos Hitchcock of Providence, Rhode Island, may have had the most difficult task. Two weeks earlier, New Hampshire, the requisite ninth state, had approved the fed eral Constitution; a few days after that, leading Federalists from Providence had tapped him to make a suitable oration on the approaching holiday. Like most Providence resi dents?and almost every Congregationalist pastor?Hitchcock supported the new Con stitution as a vital reply to social unrest and fiscal chaos. The rural majorities of Rhode Island, however, overwhelmingly opposed the plan, and on the night of July 3, hundreds or possibly thousands of them (some armed) marched to the seaport and told the authori ties to banish any mention of ratification from the next day's festivities. The event should herald independence only, they insisted. Meanwhile, black residents planned another celebration, one that would suitably applaud the state's recent decision to criminalize the slave trade. May Unity prevail throughout all Nations, they toasted. Hitchcock shared those enlightened aspirations and tightly associated them with the Federalist cause. But he also knew that his listeners would include slave owners as well as Antifederalists and