This post is a part of the 2023 Selected Papers of the Consortium on the Revolutionary Era, which were edited and compiled by members of the CRE’s board alongside editors at Age of Revolutions.
By Jennifer Wells
After serving as a clerk in the Continental Army, Christopher McPherson, a free man of color, prospered in the wake of the Revolution, living the life of a man of wealth in Richmond, Virginia. He often interacted with elites, and in 1800, he visited James and Dolley Madison at Montpelier, dining with them “evening and morning” and enjoying “a full share of the conversation.”[1] At the end of their visit, James Madison lent McPherson his horses to travel from Montpelier to Louisa County, a distance of nearly forty miles. Madison’s generosity prompted McPherson to write a warm note of thanks, remarking that “The Horses performed Most admirably.”[2]
And yet, a mere ten years later, the atmosphere of possibility that made such an interracial social visit possible had dissipated. In 1810, the Richmond City Council passed an ordinance prohibiting free Black Americans from owning or riding as passengers in carriages in and around the city.[3] In the new republic, what mattered more than McPherson’s military service, wealth, or social standing was the color of his skin. He responded to the Council’s decision with a letter expressing his “great astonishment,” writing that the ruling had “led me to reflect on the whole tenor of my life and the services I had rendered my Native Country.”[4] He later launched an ardent campaign to protest the ordinance, collecting signatures from an eclectic mix of prominent politicians, preachers, and plantation owners. He even hired a white driver to bypass restrictions.[5]
Although historians have mentioned McPherson, he remains a relatively unknown historical figure—cited only occasionally and usually in passing.[6] Because of his varied experiences and extensive connections, he defies the typical categories used to group people in early American society. However, McPherson’s narrative provides valuable insight into the ambiguous social structure of the early republic. His life also reveals how one Black American came to demand equality for himself within the tumultuous landscape of the urban South.
Ira Berlin’s Slaves Without Masters (1974) was pivotal in bringing modern mainstream attention to the lives of free people of color following the Revolution.[7] Berlin argued that once free, former slaves “remained at the bottom of the social order,” suffering various forms of abuse and contending with an inflexible social hierarchy that categorized them as “slaves without masters.”[8] Since Berlin’s pathbreaking work, other scholars have deepened our understanding of the status of free Black Americans.[9] Warren Eugene Milteer Jr.’s Beyond Slavery’s Shadow: Free People of Color in the South (2021) follows Berlin’s theme, underscoring the ambiguous status and inconsistent treatment free people of color endured. Milteer, however, differs from Berlin by emphasizing the varied perspectives on race within shared spaces. He leans into the inconsistencies, chronicling how free Black individuals encountered “both financial success and economic exploitation, legal flexibility and discriminatory punishment, and social integration and de facto segregation.”[10] The case of Christopher McPherson, a man of mixed-race heritage born in 1763 who lived much of his life in and around Richmond, Virginia, documents these contradictions in action. He also offers a compelling example of the process of racialization that occurred in the urban South.
Although McPherson’s contacts and career were exceptional, his aspirations for America echoed broader national sentiments. Dizzy with the intoxication of their unlikely victory over Britain, Americans saw their future as ripe with promise. With their eyes on the motherland, they trumpeted their success—freedom from the shackles of monarchal lording. But their former kinsmen quickly called out the glaring paradox of American Independence. For many in the North and South, slavery became a failure of principles, a moral blight, and national discourse grappled with the disparity between ideals and reality.[11] Shouldn’t Americans, who spoke so eloquently of their right and duty to defend their liberties, fulfill the radical rhetoric of their nation’s inception?
An ebbing sense of potential led to a more expansive vision of equality, motivating many to challenge their marginalized positions. In 1781, for example, Elizabeth Freeman, an enslaved woman known then as Mumbet, filed and won a petition for freedom in Massachusetts. Freeman’s litigation established a precedent that set into motion the statewide ban on slavery in 1783.[12] By 1805, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island followed suit, enacting legislation for the eventual abolition of slavery.[13] In 1808, Congress passed the “Act Prohibiting the Importation of Slaves,” thereby banning the United States from engaging in the international slave trade.[14] This significant legislation demonstrated the widespread disapproval of a defining aspect of slavery – the importation of enslaved persons from Africa and the West Indies.[15]
Questions related to the status of Black Americans circulated in the Upper South as well. Several prominent Virginians outlined procedures for the eventual eradication of slavery. In Jefferson’s Autobiography, he writes that when revising Virginia’s laws following the Revolution, he, along with George Wythe and George Mason, prepared an amendment to an existing bill for the state-wide emancipation of slaves.[16] In Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson elaborates on the amendment, stating that it recommended educating enslaved children “at the public expence” and laid out plans to emancipate them upon adulthood, after which the state would facilitate their resettlement to “such place as the circumstances of the time should render most proper.”[17] In 1790, Ferdinando Fairfax, a like-minded planter contemporary of Jefferson, published a strategy for emancipation in the Philadelphia journal, American Museum.[18] Like Jefferson, Fairfax believed that white and Black Americans could not coexist in freedom, and his blueprint involved the deportation of freedmen to Africa.
St. George Tucker, a judge and law professor at the College of William and Mary, submitted his own emancipation proposal to the General Assembly in 1796.[19] While largely ignored by the legislature, it explicitly criticized the hypocrisy of revolutionary ideals. Tucker emphasized that even as white patriots fought to form an “empire of freedom” for themselves and offered up “vows at the shrine of Liberty,” they simultaneously imposed upon their fellow man “a slavery ten thousand times more cruel” than their own grievances, merely on the basis of skin color.[20] However, his plan—taking place over a century—relegated freedmen to a less-than-equal status with limited legal and civil rights. While noble in their pursuits to call out the blatant injustice of chattel slavery and suggest plans for its end, fear of retaliation by the planter class, economic dependence on slavery, and an underlying assumption of Black inferiority all conspired to temper egalitarian impulses and limit legal steps forward.
Although state-mandated abolition remained out of reach in Virginia, individual routes toward emancipation emerged. In 1782, the Assembly nullified an almost six-decade-old prohibition regarding private acts of manumission.[21]Slaveholders were now permitted to free slaves younger than forty-five via wills and deeds. In her deed emancipating two young women named Amey and Leddy, Sarah Gary affirmed the belief that “freedom is an inherent right.”[22] In one of the largest manumissions of this period, Robert Carter III, a wealthy planter, displayed his disdain for slavery when he filed plans with the Northumberland District Court for the incremental emancipation of 452 men, women, and children. Carter’s “deed of gift” condemned slavery as “contrary to the true principles of Religion & justice.”[23]
Black Americans also took steps toward securing their liberty, arranging with enslavers to purchase their freedom and that of their loved ones. In one instance, John Charleston of Virginia bought his freedom for 110 pounds and that of his enslaved wife, Ursley, and their two children, Asberry and Caroline, for ninety pounds.[24] As a result of increasing anti-slavery sentiment, between 1790 and 1810, the number of free people of color in Virginia rose from 12,766 in 1790 to 30,570 in 1810 (an increase of 139.5%).[25] The percentage increase was even higher in Richmond, rising from 265 in 1790 to 1,189 in 1810 (an increase of 348.7%).[26]
The progression of Christopher McPherson’s life reflects this escalating aversion to slavery. Born the son of a Scottish merchant and an enslaved woman, McPherson received his Deed of Emancipation from David Ross in 1792 at the age of 29 (but it noted that he had “long since” been freed).[27] Ross collected five shillings as compensation from McPherson but disparaged the degraded situation of enslaved individuals, stating that McPherson had been “doomed to slavery under the laws of this State.”[28]
Like others in the early national period, McPherson’s hope was abundant, merging personal ambitions with religious fervor. As the millennial religious movement swept across the nascent nation, McPherson underwent a spiritual experience of his own in 1799. He came to believe that America was becoming “the new Zion” and that he himself was chosen by God to be a “messenger to the world.”[29] After his inner awakening, he moved to Philadelphia, where he worked as a clerk in Congress while seeking, without success, an audience with then-President John Adams and the U.S. Senate to “deliver a message from Omnipotence.”[30]
In 1800, McPherson relocated back to Virginia and labored with “uncommon ardor, night and day” for courts, attorneys, and merchants throughout Richmond. He was also engaged in a “mercantile line of life,” owning “lots and houses in and about the city, a farm near this city and part of a ship” that had exported 40,000 pounds of tobacco to Europe in the spring of 1810.[31] McPherson saw himself as an ordained example of the possibilities for advancement available in the freshly formed United States.
His rosy outlook, bolstered by his own accomplishments, helps explain McPherson’s shock over the Richmond City Council’s decision to ban Black Americans from carriage use. In his initial letter to the Council, he urged its members to live up to America’s founding principles. He insisted that the ordinance denied “the Fundamental Laws of the Land, which protect the rights and liberties of every Citizen.”[32] He also asked if “it [was] compatible with the genius of our constitution, which breathes clemency, generosity, and justice.”[33] McPherson concluded that the ordinance must have been “passed through the Hall in a Hurry” but that upon thoughtful deliberation, council members, he predicted, would revoke it.[34] After his initial letter went unanswered, McPherson petitioned the Virginia General Assembly to repeal the odious ordinance.[35]
Because of their sacrifices in the war, Black veterans like McPherson were often among the most vocal in asserting their civil rights. In 1783, legislators in Virginia passed an act emancipating enslaved soldiers who fought in the Revolution.[36] However, not all who served received their freedom. James Armistead Lafayette, for example, had been excluded from the ruling because he served as a spy rather than a uniformed soldier. In response, he submitted a petition appealing his status to the Assembly. Framing his argument as one of revolutionary valor, Lafayette testified that he had rendered his service “at the peril of his life,” delivering the “most useful communication to the army of the state.”[37]Having risked so much during the war, he requested “that he may be granted that freedom, which he flatters himself he has to some degree contributed to establish.”[38] Armistead Lafayette won his freedom and later was granted an annual pension of $40.[39] Saul Mathews, also a veteran and former spy, had been re-enslaved after the war as well. Mathews petitioned the Assembly for his freedom in 1792. He emphasized that instead of joining British troops to gain his freedom, he had “shouldered his Muskit” with the Patriots and rendered “essential Service to his Country.”[40] The Assembly accepted his argument and granted Mathews his freedom.
In his own petition, McPherson cited his war contributions as a clerk for the Commercial Agent of Virginia and the Commissary General at the Siege of Yorktown.[41] By establishing his allegiance and service during the war for American Independence, McPherson followed the precedent set by fellow veterans and sought to sway policymakers sympathetic to his case.
While preparing his petition for the right to travel by carriage, McPherson utilized print culture to his advantage. Throughout the eighteenth century, rising literacy rates and increased access to cheaply printed materials transformed how ordinary people interacted with and understood their expanding world. During and after the Revolution, newspapers became even more influential in shaping public opinion.[42] For petitioners like McPherson, issuing paid newspaper advertisements of their intent to petition allowed them to communicate directly with their communities.[43] It also gave their claims greater credibility, making lawmakers more likely to address their requests.[44] The press thus became a powerful means of rallying popular support and putting pressure on the government to protect the rights and liberties of its citizens.[45] Between October and December, McPherson advertised his petition at least seven times in two local papers, the Virginia Argus and the Enquirer.[46] In line with other petitioners, McPherson used newspaper advertisements to foster public awareness and secure support for his cause.
While McPherson sought public support for his petition, conditions for free people of color were deteriorating across the South. The increasing population of free Black Americans demanding their civil rights posed an existential threat to slavery. Tensions escalated as slavery expanded south and west following the invention of Eli Whitney’s cotton gin in 1793. Fresh justifications for maintaining the slave system surfaced—including paternalistic arguments of innate Black inferiority and bondage as a “civilizing” force.[47] As a result, the General Assembly passed more statutes and regulations restricting the rights of free people of color.
In 1793, for instance, the Assembly approved an act requiring free Black Virginians to be “registered and numbered” with information of their “age, name, colour, and stature” stored in town halls across the state.[48]Furthermore, the law required them to purchase and keep freedom papers or risk fines and arrest.[49] Two days later, policymakers passed a law making it illegal for free people of color to move to Virginia.[50] The Haitian Revolution (1791-1804), a rebellion fought and won by bondsmen in pursuit of freedom, only exacerbated planter anxieties. Closer to home, news of Gabriel’s Rebellion, a meticulously planned slave uprising in Richmond in 1800, sparked further retaliation. By 1806, newly freed Virginians had to leave the state within a year or face re-enslavement.[51]
As a free man of mixed-race heritage, McPherson was forced to navigate this precarious position. But unlike movements that challenged the existing social structure, McPherson’s vision of liberty did not entail a violent overthrow of power. In a plan to strengthen the legitimacy of his petition, McPherson sought the support of prominent Richmonders by organizing his “Certificate of Character.”[52] To prepare it, he traveled around town, knocking on doors and meeting potential supporters face-to-face—a strategic and personal approach. His efforts resulted in a certificate with over 100 signatures attesting to his respectability and describing him as “a person of Integrity, Industry, and general good conduct.”[53]
Among the signers of the certificate was the Reverend John D. Blair, who confirmed McPherson’s “good behavior.”[54] Julius Burbridge Dandridge boasted that in an astonishing feat, McPherson had completed two weeks’ worth of work in a mere three days.[55] Another signatory, J. Gibson, noted that he “was well satisfied of both [McPherson’s] capacity and good conduct.”[56] McPherson built an upstanding reputation on the strength of his moral character and his work ethic. He had learned to finesse a system in which adhering to community standards of behavior allowed him access to economic opportunities and social respectability.
In addition, McPherson included an affidavit from Major John Quarles detailing his role in suppressing a slave rebellion in 1798.[57] In recounting the incident, Quarles admitted his initial fear that McPherson, “being a Mulatto, might be concerned [involved] in the riot.”[58] However, Quarles stressed that McPherson commanded the rioters to maintain order. Quarles also wrote that he “always found [McPherson] a well behaved, orderly and peaceable man.”[59]McPherson curried the favor of prominent Whites through his deferential manner, and yet, as Quarles’s statement suggests, as a man of color he was continually perceived as a possible threat.
After months of preparation, McPherson, now 47 years old, submitted his petition to the Assembly on December 12, 1810. He highlighted his military service during the Revolution and his reputation as the “owner of real property of considerable value [in Richmond], acquired by a life of long and laborious industry.”[60] He also explained that because he and his wife were “advanced in life and occasionally subject to disease,” even at times unable to walk, “the occasional use of a carriage” was indispensable to their welfare.[61] McPherson described the ordinance as “unjust” in that it “deprives him of rights to which he is entitled under the laws and Constitution of this Commonwealth.”[62] In concluding his petition, he expressed hope that the “Honorable Body will be pleased to take his case into consideration” to “enact such regulations as will prevent those rights from being infringed.”[63]
At first, McPherson’s arguments resonated with legislators. On January 21, 1811, the Assembly ruled his petition reasonable, and the Committee on Courts of Justice began drafting a bill. But McPherson’s hopes were dashed on February 2, when the bill, after its second reading, was “ordered to lie on the table.” After its third reading on February 8, the Assembly “Resolved, that the bill be rejected.”[64]
The Assembly’s ruling on February 8 threatened not only McPherson’s mode of transportation but also his status within the community. Carriages were the luxury vehicles of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a symbol of elite status in a society where birth did not dictate social standing. As drivers navigated the increasingly crowded streets of the state’s capital, elevated and ornate carriage cabins separated passengers from those on foot, the upper crust from the common man.[65] Although Americans routinely touted social equality in their republic, the culture of elitism established a rift between the haves and have-nots, with a rising middling-sort clamoring for inclusion.[66] McPherson had been a conspicuous example of social mobility, but for jealous whites trudging along on foot, this high-riding man of color disgusted their sense of racial superiority. By denying McPherson’s right to ride in carriages, the Assembly laid bare the limits of polite culture and forced McPherson to come to terms with the unfulfilled social expectations of the Revolution.
McPherson refused to accept the Assembly’s decision as final and turned his attention to the citizens of Richmond in an attempt to mobilize collective support. Between February and March 1811, he published four notices in the Enquirer and Virginia Argus, touting his recent acquisition of a “new, strong and easy HACK [carriage].”[67] Because vendors repeatedly refused to sell him a carriage, he hired John Townly, a white man, to register one for him. In his newspaper notice, McPherson appealed “to the generous public, for all their aid and encouragement for the benefit of their humble servant, Christopher McPherson.”[68] His active participation in the public sphere through print culture demonstrated his faith in the shared values of his fellow Americans. He considered a free press “one of the great bulwarks of liberty” and thought that through its use, “mankind would readily detect and expose any attempt towards imposition.”[69]
Around this same time, on March 12, McPherson, to preserve some measure of Black status within Richmond, issued a notice in the Virginia Argus announcing the creation of a Night School for Black men, enslaved and free. The school, McPherson boasted, currently had “twenty-five scholars” with “frequent applications since.”[70] McPherson wanted his school to serve as a model for others and urged all “who [love] his Country” to establish similar institutions. “The essential benefits,” he explained, “will no doubt accrue to the public at large.”[71]
McPherson was not unique in his belief that education promoted prosperity and laid the foundation for citizenship. Both the Sharp Street African Church in Baltimore and the Minor Moralist Society in Charleston sought to create similar educational opportunities for Black southerners. Like many Americans at this time, McPherson believed that access to education was essential to maintaining the integrity of the republic since a well-informed citizenry, like a free press, could combat the oppression of despotic rule.[72]
But not all shared such sentiments. Samuel Peasants, editor of the Virginia Argus, pulled the Night School ad before it ran a second time. Peasants regretted its suppression but justified his decision by reporting that “several citizens” of Richmond “deem it impolitic and highly improper that such an institution should exist in this City.”[73] Herbert Hughes, the school’s white tutor, responded in the Virginia Argus on March 18. He argued that “the cultivation of the mind” benefited both an individual and society at large as the “public must partake in that happiness.” [74] Hughes concluded, “I thought that I should have enlisted every philanthropic heart on my side” in “executing the mandates of justice, truth, and humanity, by being the humble vehicle of conveying a small portion of light and knowledge.” [75]
Instead of support, however, such pleas for Black educational opportunities were met with backlash. In restricting access to education, the people of Richmond effectively cut off the very qualities deemed fundamental to citizenship. When McPherson refused to give up on his school, white Richmonders retaliated by taking him to court and demanding that he defend himself against accusations and fines associated with being a “nuisance.”[76] His continual objections to what he perceived to be an encroachment on his liberties and those of other free Black Americans rendered him a pariah in the eyes of high society.
With his efforts thwarted, McPherson lamented the decline in republican virtues and refocused his arguments on religion. Although he had a history of embracing unorthodox religious views, his convictions had not prevented him from rising up the social ladder or attaining considerable financial success. Far from exceptional, his spiritual claims reflected the religious zeal of the time as a host of self-proclaimed prophets emerged, each promising eternal salvation for true believers.
Throughout the Age of Revolution, in fact, insecurities about the rise of new social movements and political hierarchies surfaced. In America, postcolonial anxieties and looming uncertainties related to escalating tensions with Britain, unprecedented public catastrophes, such as the Richmond Theatre fire in December of 1811 (which killed 79 people, including the governor of Virginia), and a wave of natural disasters created an atmosphere ripe for apocalyptic conspiracies.[77] McPherson embraced this doomsaying movement, backing the popular Virginian prophet Nimrod Hughes, whose pamphlet, A Solemn Warning to All the Dwellers Upon the Earth, predicted that the “DESTRUCTION” of “ONE THIRD OF MANKIND” would occur on June 4, 1812.[78] Although McPherson never met Hughes, he gave “the fullest belief to his prophecy.”[79] When a bright comet appeared in the night sky in 1811—and remained visible for months—McPherson braced himself for the end-times.[80]
The prophetic pamphlets of Hughes and McPherson piqued the interest of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson when, in 1812, Adams wrote Jefferson a letter inquiring about them. Adams commented that the works were well-written and “not much more irrational” than those of other doomsayers he had encountered.[81] Adams added that “fresh Prophets” emerge “whenever any great Turmoil happens in the World.”[82] Offering simple yet often terrifying explanations for the unexplainable, prophets tapped into existing doubts about the present but also provided a measure of security to those hungry for certainty in an otherwise chaotic world. Adams observed this phenomenon firsthand when the arguments put forth by Hughes and McPherson caused a stir among his neighbors, as they “Spread a great deal of terror and a Serious Apprehension.”[83]
Jefferson replied in a somewhat dismissive tone, noting that he had not met Hughes but had known McPherson for some twenty years, remarking that as of late, he had become “crazy, foggy, his head always in the clouds, and rhapsodizing.”[84] While the two former presidents ultimately discounted the seers and their ominous predictions, their letters indicate the widespread interest in and notoriety of end-of-times forecasts in the early republic.
As Jefferson implied, McPherson’s religious eccentricities left an opening for those seeking to invalidate him. In the summer of 1811, an exasperated McPherson took to the streets, singing and dancing to attract the attention and support of “influential characters.”[85] Instead of gaining him support, however, his peculiarities led to his arrest. At his court hearing, McPherson claimed a new name—”Pherson, son of Christ, King of Kings, and Lord of Lords”—purporting to be ordained from the Bible’s Book of Revelations. In response, McPherson recounted, the court “listened not to my argument, and doomed me a lunatic.”[86] After spending three weeks in jail, he was committed to the Williamsburg Lunatic Asylum (later renamed the Eastern State Hospital).[87] McPherson’s longings for America and faith in its potential as a New Zion had been reframed as the deranged cries of a madman. While languishing in confinement, he learned that his estate had been “put into the hands of others,” leading to financial difficulties and distress for his family.[88] McPherson later described the consequences of this harrowing episode, remarking that “the whole of my affairs were on the high road, going fast to ruin.”[89] His account became a cautionary tale to those who would challenge established structures of power and invoke apocalyptic language.
McPherson’s life illuminates a decisive moment in America’s founding. His early successes spotlight the sense of possibility for some free people of color. His later years, however, reveal how those prospects were undercut as the racial divide became increasingly impassable. McPherson’s tenacity in pushing back against the carriage ordinance, calling on distinguished acquaintances, and employing both media outlets and legal avenues indicates the extent to which he felt empowered by the times. Obstructed at every turn, he became acutely aware of the limits of freedom and equality for Black Americans. Despite his previous achievements, the petition and its ensuing fallout ushered in a disheartening reality for McPherson, causing him to reflect that “although ‘man is man, and all the sex are one,’ yet I considered that under existing circumstances, in the State of Virginia, a man of colour at present, had but a slender chance of success, in going to law with weighty officers of the land.”[90]
From his asylum cell, McPherson looked to a higher power, interpreting the events around him as evidence of the end of times. He regarded Judgement Day as the ultimate corrective to the injustices he had suffered. When a comet did not strike in June 1812, McPherson reassessed his situation and eventually resettled in New York City. After his death on August 31, 1817, a heartfelt obituary praised him as a “generous soul” and cautioned the living to “tread lightly on his ashes, ye men of genius, for he was your kinsman.”[91]
McPherson’s life is crucial for historical examination because it provides a window into a time and place when the Declaration’s assertions “that all men are created equal” served as an aspirational ideal for some free Black Americans in the South. The premises of McPherson’s petition and its consequences revealed how many of the Revolution’s most inspiring promises were abandoned in the early nineteenth century. Yet McPherson’s crusade for equality did not end in total defeat. Following his incarceration and commitment to the asylum, McPherson self-published an autobiography titled A Short History of the Life of Christopher McPherson. Through this self-depiction, his aspirations for dignity and equality survived his death, and in 1855, Christopher McPherson Smith, a likely relative, republished McPherson’s autobiography. McPherson’s story features periods of painful social rejection and an ongoing struggle to maintain his civil rights, but more critically, it is suffused by hope and continued resistance to injustice. It calls for the best in the American spirit, reminding us that our task is to carry the inspired rhetoric of our founding documents into reality for us all.
Jennifer Wells is a Ph.D. candidate in History at Texas A&M University specializing in British colonial North America, the American Revolution, and the Early American Republic. Her research explores the social ambiguities of the urban South following the Revolution, a transformative period when questions of national identity and belonging swirled. Specifically, her dissertation analyzes the petition of Christopher McPherson, a free man of color who launched an ardent campaign to repeal an ordinance prohibiting Black Americans from using or owing carriages in Richmond, Virginia. Using the petition as a lens into the early national period, she investigates veteran affairs, the influence of polite culture on race and class, the impact of mass media, educational reforms, apocalyptic prophets, and the history of early American psychiatric institutions.
Title Image: Soldiers at the siege of Yorktown, including a black soldier of the 1st Rhode Island Regiment. Source: Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection, Brown University Library.
Endnotes:
[1] Christopher McPherson, A Short History of the Life of Christopher McPherson, Alias, Pherson Son of Christ, King of Kings and Lord of Lords: Containing a Collection of Certificates, Letters, &c. Written by Himself, 2nd ed. (Lynchburg: Christopher McPherson Smith, 1855), 12, Documenting the American South, accessed December 28, 2023, https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/mcpherson/mcpherson.html. Hereafter cited as McPherson, Life.
[2] McPherson to James Madison, April 13, 1800, Founders Online, accessed December 28, 2023, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-17-02-0226.
[3] Petition of Christopher McPherson, December 10, 1810, Legislative Petitions in the Library of Virginia Online, accessed December 28, 2023, http://rosetta.virginiamemory.com:1801/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE2886037. Documents included in this petition will hereafter be cited as McPherson, Petition.
[4] McPherson, Petition. Along with pleasure carriages, the ordinance restricted Black Richmonders from owning or using wagons, drays, and carts (unless as servants or enslaved coachmen). However, McPherson’s case focuses on pleasure carriages, which at the time signified prestige for people of means.
[5] McPherson, “The Subscriber hereby gives notice, that his new, strong and easy HACK,” Enquirer (Richmond), February 22, 1811, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, accessed December 28, 2023, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84024736/1811-02-22/ed-1/seq-4/; McPherson, “The Subscriber hereby gives notice, that his new, strong and easy HACK,” Virginia Argus (Richmond), March 5, 1811, Chronicling America, accessed December 28, 2023, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84024710/1811-03-05/ed-1/seq-4/.
[6] Edmund Berkeley Jr.’s “Prophet Without Honor” provides an eleven-page biographical sketch of McPherson’s life. It remains one of the only publications exclusively focused on McPherson. More often, scholars include McPherson as one example among many in their studies detailing the lives of free people of color. See Edmund Berkeley Jr., “Prophet without Honor: Christopher McPherson, Free Person of Color,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 77, no. 2 (1969), accessed December 28, 2023, https://www.jstor.org/stable/4247472. For a brief overview of McPherson’s life, see Brendan Wolfe, “Christopher McPherson (ca. 1763-1817),” Encyclopedia Virginia, accessed December 28, 2023, https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/mcpherson-christopher-ca-1763-1817/.
[7] Ira Berlin, Slaves without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South, 2nd ed. (New York: New Press, 2007).
[8] Berlin, Slaves without Masters, xxv.
[9] Recent notable studies include: Michael P. Johnson and James L. Roark, Black Masters: A Free Family of Color in the Old South (New York: W.W. Norton, 1984); Gary Nash, Forging Freedom: The Formation of Philadelphia’s Black Community, 1720-1840 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988); Sidney Kaplan and Emma Nogrady Kaplan, The Black Presence in the Era of the American Revolution (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1989); Sylvia Fry, Water from the Rock: Black Resistance in a Revolutionary Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991); W. Jeffery Bolster, Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997); James Sidbury, Ploughshares into Swords: Race, Rebellion, and Identity in Gabriel’s Virginia, 1730-1810 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Judith L. Van Buskirk, “Claiming their Due: African Americans in the Revolutionary War and Its Aftermath,” in War and Society in the American Revolution: Mobilization and Home Fronts, eds. John Resch and Walter Sargent (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2007), 132-160; Doug Egerton, Death of Liberty: African Americans and Revolutionary America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009); W. Caleb McDaniel, Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019); Daina Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross, A Black Women’s History of the United States (Boston: Beacon Press, 2020); Alexandra Findley, An Intimate Economy: Enslaved Women, Work, and America’s Domestic Slave Trade (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020); Kate Masur, Until Justice Be Done: America’s First Civil Rights Movement, From the Revolution to Reconstruction (New York: W. W. Norton, 2021); and Warren Eugene Milteer Jr., Beyond Slavery’s Shadow: Free People of Color in the South (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2021).
[10] Milteer, Beyond Slavery’s Shadow, 12.
[11] Jefferson ‘From Jefferson to William Short, 8 September 1823,’ Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/98-01-02-3750. See also, David Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making of American Nationalism, 1776-1820 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press), 309-313; Egerton, Death or Liberty, 130; Appleby, Inheriting the Revolution, 46; and Gary B. Nash, The Unknown Revolution: The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America(New York: Penguin Books, 2005), 41-42.
[12] Berry and Gross, A Black Women’s History of the United States, 41-42.
[13] Berlin, Slaves without Masters, 21; Berry and Gross, A Black Women’s History of the United States, 67.
[14] Act to Prohibit the Importation of Slaves into any Port or Place Within the Jurisdiction of the United States, From and After the First Day of January, in the Year of our Lord One Thousand Eight Hundred and Eight (1807), Avalon Project—Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy, accessed December 28, 2023, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/sl004.asp.
[15] For a thoughtful discussion by Eric Foner regarding the implications of the ban, see Eric Foner, interview by Michel Martin, NPR Tell Me More, January 10, 2008, accessed December 28, 2023, https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17988106#:~:text=FONER%3A%20The%20ban%20of%201808,and%20fairly%20large%20slave%20trade.
[16] It should be noted that aside from Jefferson’s recounting, no manuscript of the suppressed amendment has been located. However, such statements provide evidence for the debates taking place by political leaders regarding slavery in the early republic. The continuation of slavery was not a foregone conclusion. See Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson, 1743-1790: Together with A Summary of the Chief Events in Jefferson’s Life (New York, G.P. Putman’s Sons, 1914), 76-77, accessed December 31, 2023, https://www.google.com/books/edition/Autobiography_of_Thomas_Jefferson_1743_1/5lG7ISgjvr0C?hl=en&gbpv=0. See also, Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (Philadelphia: Prichard and Hall, 1785), 146-154, accessed December 28, 2023, https://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/jefferson/jefferson.html. See also Egerton, Death or Liberty, 136-137.
[17]Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 147.
[18] Ferdinando Fairfax, “‘Plan for Liberating the Negroes within the United States'” (1790), Encyclopedia Virginia, accessed December 28, 2023, https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/ferdinando-fairfax-plan-for-liberating-the-negroes-within-the-united-states-december-1-1790/.
[19] St. George Tucker, A Dissertation on Slavery with a Proposal for the Gradual Abolition of It, in the State of Virginia (Philadelphia: Mathew Carey, 1796), Gutenberg Project, accessed December 28, 2023, https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/32239/pg32239-images.html.
[20] Tucker, A Dissertation on Slavery.
[21] An Act to authorize the manumission of slaves (1782), Encyclopedia Virginia, accessed December 28, 2023, https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/an-act-to-authorize-the-manumission-of-slaves-1782.
[22] Prince George County Deed Book, 1787-1792, Utah State University Libraries, accessed December 28, 2023, https://libguides.usu.edu/ld.php?content_id=1893831.
[23] Robert Carter III, “Deed of Gift” (1791), Encyclopedia Virginia, accessed December 28, 2023, https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/robert-carter-iiis-deed-of-gift-august-1-1791. See also Egerton, Death or Liberty, 139-140.
[24] Petition of John Charleston, October 13, 1814, Legislative Petitions in the Library of Virginia Online, accessed December 28, 2023, http://rosetta.virginiamemory.com:1801/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE2580467.
[25] Berlin, Slaves without Masters, 46.
[26] Berlin, Slaves without Masters, 55.
[27] McPherson, Petition.
[28] McPherson, Petition.
[29] McPherson, Life, 5. For more on the rise of evangelicalism and the millennialist movement, see Gordon Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 582, 600, 616; Appleby, Inheriting the Revolution, 8; Ruth Bloch, Visionary Republic: Millennial Themes in American Thought, 1756-1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989); and Susan Juster, Doomsayers: Anglo-American Prophecy in the Age of Revolution (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003).
[30] McPherson, Life, 5.
[31] McPherson, Life, 21.
[32] McPherson, Petition.
[33] McPherson, Petition.
[34] McPherson, Petition.
[35] Wood, Empire of Liberty, 59; also see Gregory A. Mark, “The Vestigial Constitution: The History and Significance of the Right to Petition,” Fordham Law Review 66, no. 6 (1998), 2154, accessed December 28, 2023, https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/flr/vol66/iss6/4. For how petitions empowered individuals to seek justice via legal means, see Maggie McKinley, “Petitioning and the Making of the Administrative State,” Yale Law Journal 127, no. 6 (2018), 1609, accessed December 28, 2023, https://www.yalelawjournal.org/pdf/18.McKinleyMEProof2_clean_ft2skc5k.pdf.
[36] An Act Freeing Enslaved Peoples Who Served as Soldiers (1783), Document Bank of Virginia, accessed December 28, 2023, https://edu.lva.virginia.gov/dbva/items/show/138. Also see Berlin, Slaves without Masters, 19.
[37] Petition of James Armistead Lafayette, November 30, 1786, Legislative Petitions in the Library of Virginia Online, accessed December 28, 2023, http://rosetta.virginiamemory.com:1801/view/action/ieViewer.do?search=hide&is_mobile=false&is_rtl=false&dps_dvs=1703806690957~356&dps_pid=IE2829670#.
[38] Petition, Armistead Lafayette, November 30, 1786.
[39] Petition of James Armistead Lafayette, December 28, 1818, Legislative Petitions in the Library of Virginia Online, accessed December 28, 2023, http://rosetta.virginiamemory.com:1801/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE2859042. In his 1818 petition, Armistead Lafayette sought and received a pension for his wartime services.
[40] Petition of Saul, October 9, 1792, Legislative Petitions in the Library of Virginia Online, accessed December 28, 2023, http://rosetta.virginiamemory.com:1801/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE2846091.
[41] McPherson, Life, 5.
[42] Wood, Empire of Liberty, 253.
[43] For more on how petitioners raised publicity for their cases, see Mark, “The Vestigial Constitution,” 2194.
[44] Mark, “The Vestigial Constitution,” 2194.
[45] Wood, Empire of Liberty, 253; For the impacts of print culture on fostering a collective will, see Appleby, Inheriting the Revolution, 6.
[46] McPherson, “The Subscriber gives notice,” Virginia Argus (Richmond), October 16, 1810, Chronicling America, accessed December 28, 2023, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84024710/1810-10-16/ed-1/seq-3/; McPherson, “The Subscriber gives notice,” Virginia Argus, October 19, 1810, Chronicling America, accessed December 28, 2023, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84024710/1810-10-19/ed-1/seq-1/; McPherson, “The Subscriber gives notice,” Virginia Argus (Richmond), October 23, 1810, Chronicling America, accessed December 28, 2023, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84024710/1810-10-23/ed-1/seq-1/; Christopher McPherson, “The Subscriber gives notice,” Enquirer (Richmond), October 26, 1810, Chronicling America, accessed December 28, 2023, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84024736/1810-10-26/ed-1/seq-1/; McPherson, “The Subscriber gives notice,” Virginia Argus (Richmond), November 16, 1810, Chronicling America, accessed December 28, 2023, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84024710/1810-11-16/ed-1/seq-4/; McPherson, “The Subscriber gives notice,” Virginia Argus (Richmond), December 7, 1810, accessed December 28, 2023, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84024710/1810-12-07/ed-1/seq-4/; McPherson, “The Subscriber gives notice,” Virginia Argus (Richmond), December 14, 1810, Chronicling America, accessed December 28, 2023, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84024710/1810-12-14/ed-1/seq-4/; McPherson, “The Subscriber gives notice,” Virginia Argus (Richmond), December 28, 1810, accessed December 28, 2023, Chronicling America, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84024710/1810-12-28/ed-1/seq-4/.
[47] Jefferson, ‘From Thomas Jefferson to Chastellux, 7 June 1785,’ Founders Online, accessed December 31, 2023, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-08-02-0145. See also Wood, Empire of Liberty, 538-539; and Egerton, Death or Liberty, 130-132, 144-147.
[48] An Act for regulating the police of towns in the commonwealth, and to restrain the practice of negroes going at large (1793), in Statues at Large of Virginia: From October 1792, to December 1806, ed.
Samuel Shepherd (Richmond: Samuel Shepherd, 1835), 238, Hathi Trust, accessed December 28, 2023, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.35112104867306&view=1up&seq=244&q1=to+restrain+the+practice+of+negroes+going+at+large.
[49] An Act for regulating the police of towns (1793), 238. See also Berlin, Slaves Without Masters, 92-93.
[50] An Act to prevent the migration of free negroes and mulattoes into this commonwealth (1793), in Statutes at Large of Virginia, ed. Samuel Shepherd, 239, Hathi Trust, accessed December 28, 2023, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.35112104867306&view=1up&seq=245&q1=free.
[51] An Act to amend the several laws concerning slaves (1806), 252, Encyclopedia Virginia, accessed December 28, 2023,https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/an-act-to-amend-the-several-laws-concerning-slaves-1806.
[52] McPherson, Petition.
[53] McPherson, Petition.
[54] McPherson, Petition.
[55] McPherson, Petition.
[56] McPherson, Petition.
[57] Berkeley Jr.’s “Prophet Without Honor,” 182.
[58] McPherson, Petition.
[59] McPherson, Petition.
[60] McPherson, Petition.
[61] McPherson, Petition.
[62] McPherson, Petition.
[63] McPherson, Petition.
[64] McPherson, Petition.
[65] For the significance of carriages as status symbols, see Richard L. Bushman, The Refinement of America, Persons, Houses, Cities (New York: Vintage Books, 1992), 168, 369.
[66] For the emphasis polite culture had on class distinctions, see Wood, Empire of Liberty, 22.
[67] McPherson, “HACK,” Enquirer (Richmond), February 22, 1811; McPherson, “HACK,” Virginia Argus (Richmond), March 5, 1811.
[68] McPherson, “HACK,” Enquirer (Richmond), February 22, 1811; McPherson, “HACK,” Virginia Argus (Richmond), March 5, 1811.
[69] McPherson, Life, 4.
[70] McPherson, “The Subscriber hereby gives Notice, that lately he has founded a Night School,” Virginia Argus (Richmond), March 12, 1811, Chronicling America, accessed December 28, 2023. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/data/batches/vi_otters_ver02/data/sn84024710/00414184248/1811031201/0093.pdf.
[71] McPherson, “Night School,” Virginia Argus (Richmond), March 12, 1811.
[72] Public access to education was particularly significant to Thomas Jefferson and his followers. For a thoughtful analysis, see Brian Steele, Thomas Jefferson and American Nationhood (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 135. Also see, Wood, Empire of Liberty, 476.
[73] Samuel Peasants, “At the request of several citizens of this place, whose opinions we highly respect, we have discontinued the Advertisement of Christopher McPherson, announcing he had opened a School,” Virginia Argus (Richmond), March 14, 1811, Virginia Chronicle, accessed December 28, 2023, https://virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=VAR18110314.1.3&e=——-en-20–1–txt-txIN——–.
[74] Herbert H. Hughes, “Night School,” Virginia Argus (Richmond), March 18, 1811, Chronicling America, accessed December 28, 2023, https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/data/batches/vi_otters_ver02/data/sn84024710/00414184248/1811031801/0101.pdf.
[75] Hughes, “Night School,” Virginia Argus (Richmond), March 18, 1811.
[76] McPherson, Life, 7.
[77] See Juster, Doomsayers, vii-ix, 22, 73-75, 196-203; and Wood, Empire of Liberty, 600.
[78] Hughes, Nimrod. A Solemn Warning to all the Dwellers Upon Earth, given forth in obedience to the express command of the Lord God, as communicated by Him, in several extraordinary visions and miraculous revelations, confirmed by sundry plain but wonderful signs, unto Nimrod Hughes, of the county of Washington, in Virginia. Upon whom the Awful Duty of making this Publication has been Laid and Enforced, by many Admonitions and severe Chastisements of the Lord, for the space of Ten months and Nine days of unjust and close Confinement in the Prison of Abingdon, wherein he was shewn that the Certain Destruction of one third of Mankind, as foretold in the Scriptures, must take place on the Fourth Day of June, 1812 (New York: Printed by Largin & Thompson 1812), Library of Congress, accessed December 28, 2023, https://www.loc.gov/item/46030282/.
[79] McPherson, Life, 20.
[80] Juster, Doomsayers, 202-203.
[81] John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, February 10, 1812, Founders, accessed December 28, 2023,
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-04-02-0372.
[82] Adams to Jefferson, February 10, 1812.
[83] Adams to Jefferson, May, 3 1812, Founders, accessed December 28, 2023, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-05-02-0011.
[84] Jefferson to Adams, April 20, 1812, Founders Online, accessed December 28, 2023, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-04-02-0517.
[85] McPherson, Life, 7.
[86] McPherson, Life, 8.
[87] McPherson, Life, 8.
[88] McPherson, Life, 8.
[89] McPherson, Life, 8.
[90] McPherson, Life, 7.
[91] “Mortuary Notice,” Alexandria Herald (Virginia), September 17, 1817, America’s Historical Newspapers, accessed December 30, 2023, https://infoweb-newsbank-com.srv-proxy1.library.tamu.edu/apps/readex/doc?p=EANX&docref=image/v2%3A109C88921BFD5C08%40EANX-10A290917B146F78%402384965-10A29091F2111BB0%402-10A2909438F446C8%40Mortuary%2BNotice.
Age of Revolutions 