New York blacks in the early Republic therefore traded revolution for hopes of reform. After 1788, blacks who remained in New York (and in all northern states) gambled that slavery was increasingly in decline, and that such decline would create the possibility of greater rights. They hoped that the language of liberty that patriots invoked in the Revolutionary struggle would truly include a universal promise that would accrue to them. Blacks first pushed for greater reform in the one arena open to them: the church, especially the Anglican and Methodist churches that previously accepted black participants. For churchgoing blacks, this also meant accepting white local church leadership, whether or not such leaders recognized black rights. Eventually, many blacks would form their own, separate, church, representing a possibility of a new revolutionary act. But in the Revolution’s immediate aftermath, black religion would appear less confrontational or dangerous than before.47
Anglican and Methodist church leaders probably assumed that their congregations could continue as they had before the Revolution. Trinity Church continued to house society’s most important members, who would dispense the gospel and gradual humanitarian reform as they saw fit.48 Cooperation in poor relief and among missionary efforts would be more informal and unofficial than before. The Methodists faced greater possibilities for change, as they now existed institutionally separate from their Anglican mother, but clung to their goals of reaching lost souls with the gospel, and encouraging saved souls to progress toward moral perfection.
New York City’s Methodists and Anglicans could not foresee the greater changes that were in store with the dramatic growth of the city. These changes would strain the conceptions of Episcopalian social prominence and Methodist mission, and ultimately would cause deep fissures between white and black coreligionists. Such problems were not immediately apparent, for after the Revolution most churchmen were simply happy that they had averted complete disaster, that Trinity had not been divested of its property, and that the churches could continue with their missions.
3. Creating Merchant Churches: The 1790s
During the 1790s, America’s economic recession lifted, as the new federal government offered a secure platform from which commerce boomed. When war between Britain and France revived in 1793, the neutral United States benefited by assuming the carrying trade around the globe. With its fine harbor and expansive hinterland, New York capitalized on the opportunity. Between 1790 and 1800, the city’s population doubled, growing from thirty thousand to sixty thousand inhabitants.1
By 1790, both Methodist and Episcopal churches could celebrate tangible signs of postwar recovery. In 1790, Rector Samuel Provoost consecrated a new Trinity Church, rising from the ashes of the old site to proclaim a new grandeur. Following Trinity’s example, Episcopalians erected new churches throughout the state, and the denomination’s numbers grew. The American Episcopal Church’s prestige renewed with the election of Samuel Provoost as bishop of New York, emphasizing that hierarchy still had a place, even if it no longer emanated from the Crown of England.2
The Methodists also prospered. By 1784, the Methodist Episcopal Church was no longer an ambiguous branch of the Anglican Communion but a denomination in its own right. Shortly after the war, Methodist records first referred to John Street as a “church” instead of a “meeting house,” suggesting a greater stability and permanency. In the expanding city, New York’s Methodists added to their numbers. In 1789, they built a second chapel on Second Street (now Forsyth), near Division—also known as the Bowery church—to accommodate their growing membership. The Bowery church was the site of several revivals, in which new members joined in great numbers. By the end of the 1790s, New York’s Methodists had built two more chapels.3
The city’s growth posed new challenges to the churches. The Episcopal Church confronted an increasingly complex and divided community, one that defied the inclusive yet homogeneous vision that Anglicans had championed before the Revolution. The massive influx in immigrants strained conceptions of an organic society. The decline of deference by common people to their betters also challenged political elitism. After the Revolution, Anglicans ceased to automatically dominate political office. Church officials could not expect society’s wealthiest and most prominent members, who sat in the front pews, to govern the city.
For the Methodists, the challenges of growth led to greater internal divisions within the church. Now several hundred members, and growing, Methodists were no longer the close-knit body of believers of the 1760s. The familial, communal nature of late-colonial Methodism necessarily strained as the church incorporated large numbers of rich and poor. During revivals, the poorer wards to the north generated more new members. Methodist leaders built a new chapel to accommodate them in 1789; these new converts thus had decreasing contact with the older, wealthier members downtown. In the 1790s, social stratification began to appear among the Methodists.
Episcopalians and Methodists also dealt with the challenges of being multiracial communities in a society that increasingly feared such as threats to the social order. Free blacks occupied an undefined space in a republican society, and often faced white hostility. Before the 1790s, both churches accepted blacks but relegated them to marginal positions. As the number of free blacks increased, the presence of blacks in both churches grew less welcome. In the first years of prosperity following independence, both groups encouraged racial separation in worship. Leaders in both groups, however, contended that blacks remained under their institutional oversight, a separate but unequal body of believers.
Black worshipers made steps to assert themselves in their respective congregations. Tensions over race at Trinity seemed less pressing in the decade, as many loyalist blacks had left the city. Black Anglicans who remained affirmed their denominational identity, accepting messages of obedience and promises of future liberation. They did so under the title of the African Society, which offered hints of a larger heritage and resistance, but as yet had little public presence, and firmly identified with white benefactors. Among Methodists, a group of skilled black males sought independent worship, taking steps to be not just Methodists, but African Methodists. Even so, these black Methodists remained connected to white church leaders. Further, black churchmen remained silent in the public sphere, whether due to the widespread presence of slavery in New York, or the lack of significant literate leadership to initiate debate. In 1790s New York, blacks were not able to disrupt the white churches’ self-images as reflecting the religious norm.
In facing these social and racial challenges, both Trinity and John Street fashioned themselves as merchant congregations. They exemplified a preference for hierarchy, and organic connection, among their members. All had a place in the church—laborer or professional, black or white—but elites offered both bodies most of their stability and leadership. As such, the congregations exemplified connections to Federalism prominent in the era, albeit less in a political way than in a cultural and social preference. Therefore, in this decade the city’s growth challenged, but did not disrupt, church leadership.
Federalists at Prayer: Trinity’s Social Hierarchy
The wounds that the Revolution inflicted upon Trinity parish healed by the 1790s, as the parish’s patriots genially embraced their former opponents. The radical bent of the city council demanded that in 1784, the parish’s Whigs depose the Tory vestry and its hand-picked rector, Benjamin Moore. But the victors did not lord their triumph over the vanquished. This shakeup was temporary, and had few lasting effects on the church’s governance. Shortly after this action, loyalists trickled back into positions of church leadership.4 More important, the church retained its wealthy members, and its insistence that hierarchy, privilege, and wealth should persist.
Most of Trinity’s Whigs became Federalists. During the later 1780s and 1790s, Federalists dominated political events. Having successfully framed and ratified the Constitution, Federalist officeholders occupied the majority position in state and federal legislatures. Federalism