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"We Participate in Common": Richard Allen's Eulogy of Washington and the Challenge of Interracial Appeals
Richard S. Newman
| LIKE many of the nation's founding figures, Richard Allen's major accomplishments early in life obscure other aspects of his wide-ranging activism. Indeed, no event looms larger in Allen's biography than his departure from a segregated Philadelphia church and the establishment of Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in the early 1790s. For generations of African Americans, that action shaped Allen's image as the apostle of autonomy. "Rome had her Caesar ... Germany her illustrious Luther ... America ... her Washington, and Jefferson and ... Abraham Lincoln," Philadelphia's Bishop A. M. Wyman told a crowd at an Allen birthday celebration in February 1865. African Americans could proudly offer their own illustrious hero in the vaunted Allen.1 |
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Yet during the first decade and a half after he departed segregated Saint George's, Allen dedicated himself to racial outreach. In pamphlets and speeches, words and deeds, Allen hoped to build an interracial coalition of reformers, statesmen, and citizens that would rout racial injustice.2 Perhaps the most intriguing event in this campaign was Allen's eulogy of George Washington. Given first in his own Bethel Church and then reprinted in newspapers along the eastern seaboard, Allen's eulogy enshrined Washington's emancipatory will as the general's greatest achievement. Allen also hoped to define abolitionism as a key legacy of the American Revolution: a founding act. Finally, Allen's eulogy illustrated his own optimism about a black person's ability to foster national dialogue about slavery and racial equality. |
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The story of Allen's eulogy began on December 14, 1799, when Washington died at his Mount Vernon home. "What limit is there to the extent of our loss?" Major-General Henry Lee of Virginia wondered. "None within the reach of my words to express," he answered, for Washington's death had shaken "the civilized world ... to its centre."3 In churches, newspaper columns, statehouses, and Masonic lodges, Americans echoed Lee's words. After a decade of party wrangling, Washington's death would briefly bring Americans together in a display of national unity. |
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On December 29, 1799, Allen ended his normal Sunday services at Bethel Church by speaking about Washington's death. "At this time," he began, "it may not be improper to speak a little on the late mournful event." Though black parishioners knew about Washington's death, many wondered what the passing away of a slaveholding president had to do with them. Allen quickly supplied answers. Washington's death, Allen intoned, was "an event in which we participate in common with the feelings of a grateful people—an event which causes 'the land to mourn' in a season of festivity."4 |
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Allen's eulogy was concise and pointed. In roughly five hundred words, he told his congregation just why African Americans "have particular cause to bemoan our loss." Washington had been a "sympathising friend and tender father" to free blacks, doubtless an allusion to the fact that Washington had donated to the building of an African church in Philadelphia. Washington, Allen went on, "viewed our degraded and afflicted state with compassion and pity—his heart was not insensible to our sufferings." A famously reticent man, Washington did not speak publicly of his dislike for slavery. But, Allen said, Washington's final will liberated his slaves (on his wife's death). "Deeds like these are not common," Allen told people who did not need to be reminded. More than liberation, Allen added, Washington provided for his former slaves' education and support. As Allen put it, Washington "gave them an inheritance!"5 |
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