Jones and Allen turn to this broader sense of potential in their appendices as they take on the epistemologies that enabled black exclusion and enslavement and one of their most famous purveyors: Thomas Jefferson. Scholars have tended to read the “Censures Thrown upon them in some late Publications” in the title as an extension of this local discussion and direct reference to yellow fever accounts positing black theft and immunity, Carey’s Account most prominently among them. The rhetorical resonances with Banneker’s pamphlet and signal words throughout the appendices, such as “experience” and “experiment,” however, also signal that these “late publications” included Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia. As Gene Jarrett notes, Jefferson’s language and tone “must have been specter” for black intellectuals “as haunting as that of English intellectuals, who looked down on colonial America” and compelled Jefferson to write Notes in the first place.158 And while work on Narrative has consistently tied Jones and Allen’s arguments to Jefferson implicitly, I think it is important to note that the two men may have had Jefferson in mind very explicitly in much the same way that David Walker and subsequent writers appropriate him as representative (both as a type and as a political voice) of white supremacy.159
The “Address to Those Who Keep Slaves, and Approve of the Practice” in particular builds on Narrative’s examples of the individual and collective efforts of black citizens during the fever and its model of an incorporative neighborly ethics of citizenship to propose an “experiment.” “We believe,” they write, “if you would try the experiment of taking a few black children, cultivate their minds with the same care, and let them have the same prospect in view, as to living in the world, as you would with your own children, you would find upon the trial, they were not inferior in mental endowments.”160 The proposal responds to Jefferson’s wish in his reply to Banneker “to see a good system commenced, for raising the condition, both of their [slaves’] body and mind, to what it ought to be.”161 “No body wishes more than I do,” he proclaims in the opening lines, “to see such proofs as you exhibit, that nature has given to our black brethren talents equal to those of the other colors of men; and that the appearance of the want of them, is owning merely to the degraded condition of their existence, both in Africa and America.”162 Jones and Allen’s framing their response to racist logics as an experiment based on observation and experience signifies on late eighteenth-century empiricism and views of character as malleable, open to “cultivation” through proper care.163
Ultimately, “Address” harnesses neighborliness as both citizenship practice and empirical method to produce a formula for black citizenship. Read next to Query 14, Banneker’s “Letter,” and Jefferson’s response, “Address” appears to be not only borrowing from (or echoing) Banneker’s rhetorical strategy but also refuting Jefferson specifically point by point. The neighborly argument extends to slave owners as a plan for emancipation and to former slaves, on whom Jones and Allen “feel the obligation” to “impress” on their minds the doctrine that “we may all forgive you, as we wish to be forgiven.” The passage may seem overly obsequious, but set against Jefferson’s use of “natural enmity” as justification for not emancipating slaves or, at best (relatively speaking), the raison d’être for colonization projects, Jones and Allen are clearly and methodically answering specific objections already in circulation in the same way that Narrative responds to specific accusations during the recent epidemic.
Where Jefferson posits black inferiority as a given—whether as a natural trait in Notes or as a result of “condition” in his reply to Banneker—the “Address to Those Who Own Slaves” sees confirmation bias and faulty data, suggesting that neither inherent inferiority nor racial degradation 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
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