is the case. To claims that the slaves’ “baseness is incurable” or, as Jefferson argues, “the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind,”164 Jones and Allen present their own “degree of experience,” the term straddling aesthetic (study of senses) and scientific (study of phenomena) discourse: “a black man, although reduced to the most abject state human nature is capable of, short of real madness, can think, reflect, and feel injuries, although it may not be with the same degree of keen resentment and revenge, that you who have been and are our great oppressors, would manifest if reduced to the pitiable condition of slave.”165 Just as black citizens displayed more real sensibility during the fever, enslaved Africans have maintained a remarkable degree of humanity even in the midst of their enslavement. The passage directly confronts Jefferson’s claims that enslaved Africans’ “griefs are transient,” that “afflictions … are less felt, and sooner forgotten,” with the suggestion not only that Africans feel as deeply as Europeans but also that Jefferson and others’ expectations of “resentment and revenge” bespeak more a white propensity for violence or revenge than the lack of feeling on the part of the enslaved.166 The “Address” opens with the suggestion that looking for “superior good conduct” from the enslaved would be “unreasonable,” and yet “experience” has shown Jones and Allen that enslaved Africans also exceed reasonable expectations. The double move questions standard paradigms measuring the humanity of slaves, challenges the premise that such measurements can and ought to be made, and recalibrates the comparison from one between ancient Greeks and Romans to one between contemporary enslaved Africans and their white masters. Again, the comparison gestures back to Narrative’s scenes of black citizens overcoming the dread of the moment—a dread they shared with white citizens—as they went about their work. Both points emphasize black self-regulation over white self-interest; both points build on Jones and Allen’s experiential authority and narrative perspective, not necessarily to question the effects of enslavement or standards of civilization but rather to suggest that white observers like Jefferson do not have sufficient experience to report accurate data.
More than an argument that black citizens were more sensible than white citizens or a competition over innate differences between master and slave, Narrative and “Address” assume the legitimacy of black observation and testimony, even as they call attention to how white normativity and the violence of enslavement not only fostered an antagonistic sensibility but also blocked white observers’ ability to be sensible subjects. This point goes for slaveholders and abolitionists alike. Narrative establishes the importance of firsthand observation early on, suggesting that “respectable citizens” could not relate the proceedings of the black people but rather had to solicit Jones and Allen’s authority, “[seeing] that from our situation … we had it more fully and generally in our power, to know and observe the conduct and behavior of those that were so employed.”167 Their observations of the nuances of bleeding as a cure—they note, for instance, that bleeding at the early onset of symptoms had greater effects than at later stages and that the patient’s positive emotional state was correlated with recovery—further establish their empiricist credentials, their ability to analyze evidence and practically apply their conclusions. The “Address,” in turn, not only applies this observational “power” as a counter to Jefferson, who appeals to scientific “experience” and his own “observations” in Notes, but also advocates including Rush, who eventually admits the fallacy of black immunity to the yellow fever but who also thought black skin a curable condition.168
Jones and Allen’s request for the experiment of education combines this sensory empiricism with a neighborly civic and social ethos. Education was essential to the production of future citizens, and national debates about education swirled around questions of how best to educate citizens for republican citizenship. Rush, for instance, argues, “Our Schools of learning, by producing one general, and uniform system of education, will render the mass of the people more homogeneous, and thereby fit them more easily for uniform and peaceable government.”169 He saw these institutions as training grounds “to convert men into republican machines.”170 The homogeneity many saw as essential to republican government could be produced through a unified system of education, offsetting other points of difference. The students coming out of this system, joined in the same program of intellectual and physical instruction, will form “such ties to each other, as add greatly to the obligations of mutual benevolence.”171 These ties reproduce the structures of neighborly contact created during the fever, structures that, if temporary, created a society based in mutual aid rather than competition or hierarchy.
The proposal of educating black children “with the same care” and “prospect in view” as white children challenges those who would try this experiment to try it in a neighborly frame and confronts directly gradual emancipation practices in Pennsylvania that, as Erica Armstrong Dunbar catalogues, involved indentures with the proviso that children be taught to read “if capable.”172 The “Address” takes the unspoken assumption of incapacity off the table. Their “care” demands the same degree of rigor and breadth as that for white children, the same training for republican government, creating the same “ties” between them. Training black children with the same “prospect in view” suggests that they be trained for full political and economic participation in the republic as members of what Rush calls a “great, and equally enlightened family” in which benevolence flows horizontally between fellow citizens, rather than vertically between citizens and (their) former slaves or lesser sorts.173 That is, they should be educated with the expectation of their contribution and with the assurance that access to the full range of liberties will be available to them. And this training should not be framed as some favor for which black citizens will remain in debt but rather as a basic principle of republican governance. Beginning with children in their formative years would produce a new generation fit for participation in a “uniform and peaceable government,” because they would have received the same republican training that commentators like Rush prescribed for the general public.
Neighborliness as an approach to emancipation, then, goes beyond momentary benevolence in the face of inequality and oppression, requiring instead structural adjustments and long-term planning.174 This approach contrasts sharply to the rhetoric of Jefferson or even antislavery groups and activists, such as the Quaker-dominated PAS, Benezet, and Rush, who viewed Africans, free and enslaved, as objects of study or benevolence and a problem to be solved, but rarely as partners or fellow citizens.175 By suggesting a trial of educating children, rather than the trial of unaided emancipation (gradual or immediate) or a trial of indentureship, the “Address to Those Who Own Slaves” subtly critiques the efficacy of gradual emancipation programs (or at least the logics of pupilage underwriting them), suggesting that emancipation and equal access to central institutions like education were inseparable. Just as the Samaritan of the New Testament or Narrative’s poor black man attended to the suffering beyond the immediate, short-term, injuries, so too must any project of emancipation be accompanied by a program of structural adjustment. This experiment requires an approach to policy that rejects conventional wisdom, producing the fellow citizenship that racist logics preempt by encouraging a view of free and enslaved Africans as neighbor-citizens rather than potential threats. Such a program follows the neighborly logic and challenge to white nationalism articulated in both Banneker’s letter and Narrative: make the good neighbor’s incorporative move; do unto black children as you would your own, and they will become as your own children in the process.
Jones and Allen’s call for an educational experiment requires less a leap of faith on the part of white citizens and more a larger study building on the data that Jones and Allen’s Philadelphia and other like “experiments” already provide.176 In the short time during the epidemic and under intense duress, Jones, Allen, and others learn bleeding techniques from Rush (or, more accurately, from “copies of the printed direction for curing the fever”); coordinate a corps of nurses, carters, and other relief workers; and manage convict laborers.177 Individual black Philadelphians and black societies acted out of an ethics of neighborhood
