J. M. Opal

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J. M. Opal | The Labors of Liberality: Christian Benevolence and National Prejudice in the American Founding | The Journal of American History, 94.4 | The History Cooperative

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

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 federal 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 residents—and almost every Congregationalist pastor—Hitchcock supported the new Constitution 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 authorities 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 that such men had very different hopes for the new nation than he did.¹

As it happened, Hitchcock may have been the perfect man for the delicate job. Contemporaries recalled him as an affable gentleman who enjoyed creature comforts and social harmony. Having married into independent wealth, he had a talent for looking on the bright side of things and promoting the virtues espoused by his church, the First, or Benevolent, Congregational Society. Noting that religion was a blessing to "all nations of the world," its charter welcomed "any good man" to a fellowship based "not on the prejudice of party, but on the broad basis of Christian philanthropy." Ever since his settlement as pastor of the Benevolent Church in 1783, Hitchcock had tried to heal the sectarian rifts that raged with special intensity in his adopted state. All his public addresses during the 1780s stressed the virtues of denominational harmony, and at least two of them closed with his stated hope for a future in which "universal love smiles on all around." If anyone could please everyone, it was the Benevolent pastor.²

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