pewholders were in the professional and government category, a figure that more than doubled the 7 percent city average. At the beginning of the decade, John Jay served as the first Supreme Court justice of the United States, and by mid-decade he was elected governor of New York. At $17.50 annually, he paid the second-highest rent at Trinity Church, suggesting a prominent location. Jay’s brother-in-law Robert R. Livingston, who served as chancellor of the state, also paid $17.50. Both men’s pews probably overlooked the congregation from prominent spots in the gallery. Within this occupational category, the individual with the lowest pew rent, William Strong, appeared in the directory as an inspector; his rent of five dollars nevertheless placed him above the bottom decile of pewholders.10
Retailers and merchants comprised fully half of Trinity’s pew renters. Between 46 and 54 percent were merchants, grocers, or other retailers, a number double the city average of 26 percent. Merchants such as Charles Ludlow and Edmund Seaman rented the most expensive pews prominently located in the front of the church. Not all merchants were as well-off as the Ludlows and Seamans, however, for many sat in pews priced in the middle ranges, around ten dollars annually. Grocers operated on narrow margins, and many grocery ventures were small-scale sales of produce grown just outside the city limits. A handful of small grocers and a merchant occupied the cheapest pews alongside poorer artisans, huddled in the backs of aisles or in corners of the gallery.11
The diverse and numerous artisan category included everyone from impecunious cordwainers and shoemakers to prosperous shipbuilders and silversmiths. They comprised from 19 to 22 percent of Trinity’s pewholders, half that of the 40 percent appearing in the directory, and about one-third the number of artisans historians believe resided in the city.12 Trinity’s artisans included many in lucrative and prestigious trades. Philip Hone and Robert Carter were both cabinetmakers, whose skills were “the most refined of the mechanic branches.” If their rents are the only indication of wealth, however, the two had differing rates of success: Hone’s pew rent of $14.75 placed him in the top quintile of rent prices, whereas Carter’s $5.00 pew ranked just above the poorest rents. Hugh Gaine appears in the artisan category as a “printer-bookseller-stationer,” and his pew rent of $15.00 reveals that he had made the transition from small-scale manufacturer to overseer of a larger shop and retailer. In general, however, artisans occupied the lower rent levels, including a tailor, cooper, and shoemaker each in the bottom decile.13
The lower occupational levels were especially underrepresented in Trinity’s pews: from 9 to 13 percent of Trinity’s pewholders filled the combined service-transport-marine category, also only half the city averages. Shipmaster Richard Black and branch pilot Matthew Daniel held positions of greater prestige than the typical mariner, and William Robinson, Edward Bardin, and John Battin as tavern keepers held greater sway than other service workers. All five, however, rented pews below the median rate of $10.00. Not surprisingly, the fewest pewholders in number were those identified as unskilled, the “laborer” category, making up no more than 4 percent of Trinity’s pewholders. The number of unskilled workers attending must have been higher, for those too poor to pay for pews do not appear in the lists. Further, twenty-eight males on the pew lists do not appear in the directories at all, many of whom were probably unskilled workers.14
In the 1790s, Trinity church held a level of public prestige unmatched by other churches, for it participated in public displays associated with the new government in which other churches could not. Trinity’s parishioners also tended to be in wealthier and more prestigious occupations than even upwardly weighted city averages. Individuals from all occupational categories rented pews at Trinity, however, and as John Jay took his seat above the sanctuary, or as Charles Ludlow walked to the front of the church, they surveyed poorer individuals who worshiped with them. More important, the poorer and middling individuals who attended Trinity saw the most prominent men at their head, or above them. On any given Sunday, Trinity remained white and affluent, but it still approximated the traditional image of an organic, inclusive church.
Anglican politicians also continued their attempt to properly educate blacks and move the state toward voluntary, gradual manumission. John Jay ascended to governor in 1795, and presided over a legislature that passed the gradual manumission law of 1799. Jay and his fellow Episcopalians in the New York Manumission Society had achieved one of the major goals that they had held at that institution’s founding in 1785. The law offered nothing for existing slaves, promising freedom only to slaves born after July 4 of that year, and then only at age twenty-eight for men and twenty-five for women. Young slave men and women thus spent many of their most productive years paying for the ostensible costs of their childhood. Of the states north of the Chesapeake, only New Jersey was slower to pass a gradual manumission law.15
That a law was passed at all is testament, however, to the determination of NYMS members. In a burgeoning economy, successful shopkeepers became merchants, small merchants became large merchants, the numbers of professionals increased, and successful individuals at all levels bought slaves when they could afford them. In the 1790s, the percentage of men holding slaves rose from one-quarter to one-third of the population. It took a long, determined effort to convince a majority of New Yorkers that slavery should end.16
The New York Manumission Society’s bylaws did not demand immediate manumission from its participants, and actually placed guidelines on its members more lenient than the 1799 law. Trinity’s parishioners, who were also the most prominent politicians within the society, men such as John Jay, James Duane, Alexander Hamilton, and Rufus King, all held slaves. Historians have debated the significance of this connection. An older generation of scholars, now reinforced by new scholarship, has highlighted the real abolitionist intentions of the NYMS. David Gellman characteristically argued that “pragmatic incrementalism and moral idealism” marked the society’s efforts, and that, no matter the compromises, society members always pushed the status quo toward, rather than away from, abolitionism. On the other side, scholars studying the black community have noted the heavy-handed paternalism of NYMS members, and critiqued the fact that those members widely held slaves even as a statewide manumission law passed. Shane White noted that the percentage of known slaveholders in the NYMS was significantly higher—perhaps double—than in the city as a whole, and further that slaveholding members owned nearly 50 percent more slaves than the average city slaveholder.17
Whereas Gellman finds idealism, and White hypocrisy, Trinity’s Anglican abolitionists occupied a place where slavery was simply secondary to their larger concerns. Alexander Hamilton, for example, was consumed by ambition and a desire to remain within the social elite. Despite antislavery convictions on national or international issues, Hamilton kept his slaves because New York’s elites kept slaves, as ultimate status symbols. John Jay, a more devout Episcopalian and more ardent abolitionist than Hamilton, nonetheless kept his slaves until he judged they had worked off their purchase cost. Further, Jay was not above selling recalcitrant slaves. And when earlier attempts at manumission failed to pass the legislature, Jay told friends that he was content to do his duty as best he could; the issue simply was not his greatest concern as a politician.18
Trinity’s abolitionists opposed slavery as a part of a larger socioeconomic outlook. In supporting gradual manumission, they affirmed property rights and legal procedures, and further placed themselves at the head of organizations that stressed benevolence toward society’s lower orders, including blacks. One cannot separate their opposition to slavery from what we might deem a cultural Federalism, which recognized hierarchy and property along with an organic interconnectedness of society’s members.
Merchants and Methodists: John Street’s Attempt at Social Unity
During the 1780s, Methodist leaders quickly distanced themselves from the stigma of loyalism that plagued the Episcopalians. Their English-born preachers had largely fled, and the church now revived under locally produced lay ministers.19 New challenges lay ahead. Methodist leaders sought to bring others to Christ, and to make their own people holy in the process. Urban life challenged this ideal. As the first bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church
