William Pitt (the Younger): Statesman and Prime Minister of Great Britain

William Pitt (the Younger): Statesman and Prime Minister of Great Britain

1776: Received his MA from Cambridge.

1778: His father made a speech in the House of Lords and Pitt who was in the gallery rushed down to help carry his dying father home.

1780: Failed to win a seat at Cambridge in the General Election.

1781: With the help of Sir James Lowther, Pitt became the Member of Parliament (MP) for Appleby-in-Westmoreland. His maiden speech was described by Lord North, later to become Prime Minister, as the best speech he had ever heard.

1782: Pitt supported a motion which would shorten the hours worked in Parliament and measures which would reduce the chances of government ministers being bribed. Lord North's government fell in March and was replaced by Rockingham's Whig Government.

1783: Pitt resigned and declared that he had no connections with the party whatsoever.

1784: Pitt had now built up a reputation in the country and called a General Election. Pitt stood for Cambridge University and Fox duly lost 160 of his supporters when the vote came around.

1785: Pitt proposed a Bill to remove thirty six rotten boroughs. He proposed seventy two seats in areas were populations were rising.

1790: At the General Election Pitt turned his eyes towards France.

1791: The Canada Act established a division between the English and the French.

Charles Garth: Crown Agent for South Carolina

Charles Garth, Member of Parliament, Colonial Agent in pre revolutionary America was born in about 1734, son of John Garth MP, and Rebecca, daughter of John Brompton and granddaughter of Sir Richard Raynsford, Lord chief justice of the Kings bench.

Education

Merton College Oxford, Inner Temple. Called to the Bar in 1758.
Career

Crown Agent for South Carolina, Georgia, briefly Maryland circa 1763-1775
1764 Succeeded father as MP for Devizes, re-elected 1765, 1768, 1780. His Devizes Home was Brownston House[1] - a grade 1 listed building.

Relinquished seat in November 1780 to become HM Commissioner for Exercise.
Recorder of Devizes

Family

1764; married Fanny, daughter of John Cooper of Cumberwell.
Brother; General Thomas Garth (1744–1829) chief equerry to King George III

Brother; General George Garth (abt 1735-1819) British General in American Revolutionary War, Colonel of the 17th Regiment of Foot

Children: Captain Thomas Garth RN,who married Charlotte Maitland, daughter of General Frederick Maitland.

Charles Garth lived at Brownston House, Devizes, in the 1760s and 1770s. He died in November 1784 while living at Walthamstow.

James Cameron: Aliens of the Deep (2005)

James Cameron: Aliens of the Deep (2005)

An Ophiacantha rosea colony in the Atlantic - they are relatives of sea stars and sea cucumbers

Comb jelly, Found in the Arctic off Canada

Midwater medusa This one was collected near Borneo



In this movie, James Cameron journeys to some of the Earth's deepest, most extreme and unknown environments in order to explore the strange and alien creatures there. Accompanying with him is a team of young NASA scientists and marine biologists.


Aliens of the Deep starts its explorations in the Atlantic and the Pacific. In these places, there are violent volcanic regions in which the interaction between ocean and molten rock creates plumes of super-heated, chemically-charged water that serve as oases for animals. Six-foot tall worms with blood-red plumes and no stomach, blind white crabs...

Whole Foods Market: Have Natural and Organic Foods

Whole Foods Market: Have Natural and Organic Foods

People like me are looking for a healthy, earth friendly diet, that's the reason why we spend more time and money to purchase foods from retailers like Whole Foods Market. Whole Foods, so far as I know, has at least 181 stores in the U.S. and the U.K. and over 32,000 employees around the world. Since it provides delicious and good-quality foods, it becomes one of the most popular supermarket in the world, which makes it rather welcome to its customers.

Guide to Fruits

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The Limit of the Enlightenment of Martha Laurens Ramsay

Martha read Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, but she understood it incorrectly. In the book, Mary Wollstonecraft mainly wanted to advocate women to have good education and struggle for the same legal rights as men in a world which was dominated by men. After reading it, Martha wanted to be an “obliged and grateful wife” rather than to be a radical female as Mary Wollstonecraft claimed. Obviously, Martha put an “obliged and grateful wife” to her husband at the most important place and she even didn’t consider how to be an independent woman. For Martha, we can see clearly that her enlightenment served for her religious faith of a good Christian, as well as an obliged and grateful wife.

Although Martha received well education and accepted enlightened ideas, she was weak to exert her own rationality. As a daughter, she obliged to her parental authority. In early August 1782, without her father’s permission, monsieur Caladon deVerne, a local fellow-Huguenot merchant, who was obviously well known to the James Laurens household and to Martha, dared to discuss the marriage between Martha and him. Martha’s father of course didn’t know it and when Henry finally knew it, he was very angry, because he thought that his parental authority was challenged by his daughter. During the remaining months of 1782, correspondence between Martha and Henry conveyed his deep unwillingness to recognize the powerful logic and appeal of matrimony for her and her refusal to simply fall in line with his wishes. Finally Henry asked Henry Laurens, Jr. to take words for him, he wrote, “if she continues to resist, speak to her very affectionately but pointedly……I shall hold [Uncle and Aunt] Criminal in preferring a little self convenience to the honor and happiness of my Daughter, of her Father, and her Brothers.” His last sentence gave Henry Laurens, Jr. an ultimate threat to deploy: his sister was shortening her father’s days, “say finally you apprehend [that her resistance] will cost me a Winter’s journey to Vigan, at the hazard of my life and the risqué of my reputation at home.” Considering her father’s authority, as well as her family’s reputation, although Martha was reluctant to obey her father’s instructions, she finally compromised with his father, cut down her link with monsieur Caladon deVerne and directly traveled straight across France toward her father in Bath, England at the beginning of February 1783. Regarding to her own marriage, she could not make her own choice. While instead, she had to respect her father’s authority and follow his instructions.

Martha Laurens Ramsay and the Predicament of Female Enlightenment in South Carolina, 1759-1811

Moreover, as a wife, she was subservient to her husband. At home, she nurtured her children with religious and enlightened books. She hoped to educate her children with the doctrines of Christianity and enlightened ideas. To support her husband, she copied materials and helped Ramsay to publish his historical, political and medical works. In Ramsay’s view, she idealized a competent woman whose principles “led her to make all her conduct subservient to her husband’s happiness.” Martha could manage her house and arrange everything so well that we can see she was a model of female excellence at that time. Although Martha was an enlightened Christian, she was not thoroughly enlightened. From the second half of the 18th century to the early 19th century, as a typical woman, she represented the limit of female enlightenment in South Carolina.

Martha Laurens Ramsay: an Enlightened Christian

Through examining Martha’s intellectual trajectory and her world of readings, we can draw a conclusion that Martha was a real enlightened Christian. Born in a political family, she got opportunities to accept enlightened ideas. Compared with other ladies who were living in the same period, Martha was lucky to go abroad and read books written by European enlightened thinkers. Meanwhile, through continuing letter connections with her father and family members, she directly accepted political instructions during the turbulent era. On the other hand, following God’s instructions, she read the Bible and obeyed the rules and disciplines of Christianity and became a model of female excellence. For Martha, religion and enlightenment both worked on her and they were compatible with each other.

However, we should notice the fact that Christianity played much more important role in Martha’s life. Martha read books written by European Enlightenment thinkers, but she did not accept their radical ideas and became a radical woman. She read John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding rather than Two Treatises on Government. She read Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Emile rather than The Social Contract. For Martha, both Locke and Rousseau’s books served for her children’s education rather than for her own enlightenment, because she firstly considered that she should be a good mother rather than an enlightened woman. In an era when American revolutionaries were reading Locke and Rousseau’s revolutionary theories, it was so ridiculous that Martha were not interested in their radical political theories.

The Enlightenment of Martha Laurens Ramsay

Believing God's providence extends to every event and every circumstance of the life of every human being, and subscribing to the doctrine of Dr. Leechman’s Sermon on Prayer, which she highly valued. She assumed that “it is as absurd to expect we shall arrive at virtue and happiness without prayer, as it would be for the husbandman to hope he shall have his usual crop, though he bestow none of his usual labour and industry.” She practically conformed to the apostolic precept "pray without ceasing," and daily prayed for her family, friends, neighbours, as well as strangers.
As we can see clearly, Martha was not only familiar with European enlightened thinkers, but pious to the doctrines of Christianity. She assimilated enlightened ideas from European Enlightenment thinkers and applied them for her children’s education. Moreover, as a Christian, she cultivated her children a pious hearts with variously religious classics. Taking herself as an example, Martha told us that Christianity was compatible with enlightened thinking.

Martha Laurens Ramsay's Religious Education on Her Children

As a Christian mother, Martha provided religious education to her children at home. Before they were born, they were the subjects of her prayers. At a time when private baptisms were common, she devoted them all to God in baptism, publicly in church, because “she rejoiced in every proper opportunity of declaring to the world her firm belief of the Christian religion, and her respect for all its institutions.” As soon as they were capable of receiving religious instruction, she liberally imparted it; and early taught them their miserable and corrupted state by nature; that they were born into a world of sin and misery; surrounded with temptations, and without a possibility of salvation, but by the grace of God, and a participation in the benefits procured for sinners, by the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

When her children could read, she taught them to read religious texts. According to Ramsay, “she early taught them to read their Bibles. That this might be done pleasantly she connected with it Mrs. Trimmer's prints of scripture history; that it might be done with understanding, she made them read, in connexion with their Bibles, Watts's short view of the whole scripture history, and, as they advanced to a proper age, Newton on the Prophecies, and such books as connect sacred with profane history, and the Old with the New Testament; so that the Bible, though written in periods widely remote from each other, might appear to them a uniform, harmonious system of divine truth.” Of this blessed book she enjoined upon them daily to read a portion, and to prize it as the standard of faith and practice; as a communication from heaven on eternal concerns; as the word of God pointing out the only way to salvation; as a letter of love sent from their heavenly Father to direct their wandering feet to the paths of truth and happiness. In her family, “she was the head of the family, and in health, she daily read to her domestic circle, a portion of the holy scriptures, and prayed with them;” Moreover, she also instructed her children to read Burkitt's Help and Guide to Christian Families. In performing this duty, she placed her children around her, and read alternately with them verses in the Bible, and Watts's Psalms and Hymns, or sentences in other religious books, so as to teach them at the same time, by her example, the art of reading with emphasis and propriety. The exercise was occasionally varied by reading in the same manner the New Testament in Greek, with her sons, and in French with her daughters.

The Religious Texts of Martha Laurens Ramsay

Of course, as a pious Christian, Martha also read a large number of religious texts. Old Testament, New Testament and Bible were the most important religious texts for her and she read them quite frequently. Among the list of her religious texts, they included Philip Doddridge’s Rise and Progress of Religion, John Owen’s On the Nature, Power, Deceit and Prevalence of Indwelling Sin in Believers, John Flavel’s A Treatise on Keeping the Heart, Jeremy Taylor's Holy Living and Dying, Mrs. Trimmer’s Scripture history, Isaac Watts's Divine and Moral Songs for Children, A Short View on the Whole Scripture History, The Psalms and Hymns and World to Come, Richard Allestree's The Whole Duty of Man, William Law's Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, William Burkitt’s A Help and Guide to Christian Families, Henry Bullinger’s Exposition of the Scripture, Thomas Boston’s The Crook in the Lot, or A Display of the Sovereignty and Wisdom of God in the Affliction of Men and so on. She was a high-minded Christian who knew "nearly the whole" of Edward Young's Night Thoughts from memory. Moreover, her diary also reflected imagery from other women's devotional writings and memoirs, including such self-referents as "a monument of forbearing mercy" or the sin of "unrecorded mercies" from the English poet Elizabeth Singer Rowe.

In Martha’s mind, Christianity occupied a very important place. On December 23, 1770, when Martha was 14 years old, she made a self dedication and solemn covenant with God. She wrote: “I DO this day, after full consideration, and serious deliberation, and after earnest prayer for the assistance of Divine Grace, resolve to surrender and devote my youth, my strength, my soul, with all I have, and all I am, to the service of that great and good God.” At the end of the solemn covenant between Martha and God, she wrote a short poem:

Lord I am thine, for ever thine,
My soul doth cleave to thee;
My dearest, Lord be ever mine,
I'll have no love but thee.

Since she made this holy covenant with God, she belonged to God and determined to dedicate herself to be a pious Christian. As a Christian, Martha kept on reading the Bible. During her visit to Paris, “her Bible was her companion and counsellor. She read it by day, and meditated on it by night. It had taught her to bear adversity with patience, resignation, and fortitude.”

Christian Enlightenment: Martha Laurens Ramsay as a Case Study

Through reading Mary Wollstonecraft’s The Rights of Women, Martha realized the significance of becoming an “obliged and grateful wife.” Moreover, she put them into practice. In order to achieve her goal, according to Ramsay, she made all her-conduct subservient to her husband’s happiness:

To this end she gave up every separate scheme, and identified her views and pursuits with his, and arranged all her domestic concerns, so as most effectually to promote his comfort, anticipated his wishes, alleviated his cares, charged herself with the education of her children, the management of her servants and family affairs, so as to leave for him little else to do than to follow the bent of his own inclinations, with as complete exemption from the burden of domestic cares as was possible.

Mary Wollstonecraft argued that women were not naturally inferior to men and advocated good education for women, because she believed that both men and women should be treated as rational beings and imagined a social order founded on reason. Late scholars treated her as one of the most important predecessors of feminism and her book was greatly appreciated by women who were struggling for more equal rights as men. However, for Martha, she was a perfect model and Martha would like to follow her and became an “obliged and grateful wife.”


She also read Rousseau’s Emile for educating her children. She was well acquainted with the plans of Rousseau, who argued for discarding the rod and substituting confinement, and other visionary projects in its place. Following Rousseau, she considered these methods were inferior in efficacy to the prudent use of the rod. Instead, she “believed that nothing injured the temper less, or more effectually promoted the proper end of punishment in young subjects, than corporal pain, applied judiciously and simultaneously with the offence.” Martha paid attention to educate her children with suitable courses and methods. As her children advanced in years, she conducted her sons through a course of education fitting them to enter college. With the help of her friend Miss Futerell, she carried her daughters at home through the several studies taught in boarding schools.

Martha Laurens Ramsay’s World of Readings

In 1775, assuming the good climate at England could help him to improve his poor health, James and his wife sailed for England with Martha and Polly. In the following ten years, Martha stayed with her Uncle and Aunt in Europe. When Martha resided in England, she formed an acquaintance with many persons eminent for their piety, and particularly with the Countess of Huntingdon, by whom she was very much noticed. She highly prized the company of such persons, and from them received both pleasure and improvement. During her visit in Europe, her father was taken a prisoner, and confined on a charge of high treason in the Tower of London in 1780, and his life staked on the success of the American Revolution. Moreover, the disorder of her uncle became daily worse, and required unceasing attention by night and by day. Meanwhile, Charles Town was taken by the British and her beloved brother John Laurens had fallen in battle in a small skirmish in 1782. She suffered so much that she missed her hometown very much. Hearing the news that South Carolina restored its peace in 1783, Martha returned to Charleston with her aunt and sister in 1785. After leading an unsettled life for ten years, they found that it was the time that they should return their home. Two years later, on the 23d of January, 1787, Miss Laurens was married to Dr. David Ramsay.

During her visit in Europe, she read various books written by European Enlightenment thinkers, from which she was illuminated a lot. She read John Locke’s Essays on the Human Understanding, Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Emile, Mary Wollstonecraft’s The Rights of Women, Newton’s Prophecies, as well as Scottish Enlightenment thinker Drs. Witherspoon and Smith’s books.

Enlightend Christianity: The Influence of David Ramsay on Martha Laurens Ramsay

Ramsay was an enlightened Christian and he greatly helped her wife to be an Enlightened Christian too. As a politician, Ramsay hated the tyranny of the British government and supported the American Independence. In delivering an Oration on the Advantages of American Independence to his fellow citizens in July 1778, Ramsay expressed his political views. He said: “We are now celebrating the anniversary of our emancipation from British tyranny; an event that will constitute an illustrious area in the history of the world, and which promises an extension of all those blessings to our country, for which we would choose to live, or dare to die.” Moreover, as a Federalist, he advocated to strengthen the power of the national government to deal with the inefficiency of the confederate government. In a letter to Thomas Jefferson, he wrote, “unless they make an efficient federal government [at Philadelphia] I fear that the end of the matter will be an America monarch or rather three or four confederacies.”

As a historian, Ramsay wrote several revolutionary books, in which he explained his revolutionary ideas. Martha wrote very fast, which made her father pronounced her “to be the best clerk he ever employed,” although he had many, and some of them were very good ones. After she married to Ramsay, she assisted her husband in writing his revolutionary histories. In addition to many minor services in copying, she helped him in transcribing his History of the American Revolution, Life of Washington, Review of the Progress of Medicine in the Eighteenth Century, and the early part of his Universal History, and other works. At the turn from the late 18th century to the early 19th century, Ramsay's life experiences and thought suggested the dynamics of post-revolutionary American culture, which helped Ramsay to transform his political view from republicanism to liberalism. According to Eve Kornfeld, “Ramsay's intellectual journey from republicanism to liberalism also eloquently attest to the fundamental dissonance of these two cultural systems, and to the strength of republicanism in the minds of revolutionary intellectuals.” Ramsay's intellectual career illustrated the emerging regional allegiances of American intellectuals may have helped to mediate between American republicanism and liberalism, by fostering intellectual toleration for heterogeneous cultural sources, local economic interests, and cultural diversity. Lacking of documents, we could not know how much Martha was influenced by her husband’s political views, but we can assume that Martha agreed with her husband’s political views and became an enlightened Christian.

The Silence of Martha Laurens Ramsay on Slavery

Over the issue of slavery, Martha was silent. In Martha’s Memoirs and her personal letters, she rarely discussed the issue of slavery, but it was an unavoidable issue that she had to confront with. Her father was ambivalent to it, while her Uncle James frankly resisted to it. Their close friend Benjamin Rush fiercely opposed to the slavery system and advocated colonial Americans to “put a stop to slavery” in terms of “all mankind as equal,” and pointed out that slaves should be entitled “all the privileges of free-born British subjects” and the children of the slaves should be embraced “in one great Family.” Following Rush, Ramsay firstly opposed to the slavery, because he assumed it was inhuman and immoral. When he arrived at Charles Town and made new friends who were slave owners, “Ramsay's ambition did not weaken his opposition to slavery nor did his views make him a social or political pariah.” However, living in an economy based on slavery, befriended by slaveholders he respected, Ramsay became an honored member of Charleston's tight knit elite and, eventually, a slaveowner, his view on slavery became ambiguous. Martha assisted his husband and copied his revolutionary books, from which she absolutely knew Ramsay’s view on slavery. But why was Martha reticent to it? Gillespie assumed that “her silence about slavery was, it appears, the result of choice rather than unconscious omission.” Without enough documents, it is rather difficult for us to explain the reasons behind Martha’s choice. But there were two reasons which could explain her silence. One reason was probably because she was a woman who was not allowed to take part in political affairs at that time. Another reason was probably because she didn’t want to propose her view on slavery, because she didn’t want to challenge her father, Uncle, as well as her husband’s authority.

The Impace of Thomas Day on John Laurens

As John’s good friend, Day in particular influenced John’s view on slavery. In 1776, at the request of John Laurens who wanted to know Day’s sentiment on the slavery, Day sent his letters to him, in which Day exposed the hypocrisy of American slave owners. The letters were finally collected into a political tract which was entitled as Fragment of an Original Letter on the Slavery of the Negroes and finally published in 1784. Day attacked slavery system, because he believed that slavery as “a violation of natural rights and God’s will for the happiness of mankind.” Day wrote it and hoped his arguments would convince the slave owner to free their slaves.

In John’s short life, he was known for proposing a plan of setting up a black regiment of 3000 slaves. When the American Revolutionary war was broken out, John was just 23 years old, but he joined General George Washington's camp as a volunteer without hesitation. As an American soldier, John devoted himself to the independence war. In early 1778, it was a harsh winter that General George Washington’s Continental Army endured a lot at Valley Forge. On the contrary, British adversaries enjoyed the relative security and comfort of Philadelphia. Observing the military situation, on January 14th, John, an aide to Washington, wrote to his father and asked him to release slaves in his plantations, rather than leave him as a fortune. In the letter, he wrote, “I am sure of rendering essential Service to my County. I am tired of the Languor with which so sacred a War as this, is carried on.” Finally the Continental Congress approved his proposal to recruit a regiment of 3000 slaves by promising them freedom in return for fighting in 1779. As a patriotic soldier, as well as an enlightened revolutionary, John put his ideas into practice and sacrificed himself in a small skirmish in 1782. By setting himself as a good example, John encouraged Martha to devote herself to achieve her goals and make contributions to the new country.

The Impace of John Laurens on Martha Laurens Ramsay

Furthermore, Martha was greatly illuminated by his dearest brother John Laurens. In her father’s mind, John Laurens had set a good example for Martha. In 1770, accompanying with his father, John and his two younger brothers left their hometown and went to England for education. John completed his studies in Europe, first in London in 1771, then in Geneva, Switzerland in 1772, finally in London to learn laws in 1774. When Martha arrived at England in 1775, John picked her up on her landing. Being older, John would like to share his views with his sister and help Martha to continue her education. According to Ramsay, John “had taken great delight in forwarding her education, and particularly in forming her mind to be superior to the common accidents of life, and the groundless fears of some of her sex.”

Living in abroad for almost five years, John accepted well education and became an enlightened man. He was a good friend to both John Bicknell and Thomas Day, who “formed part of the link between the culture of sensibility and the growing English antislavery movement.” Bicknell and Day collaborated on literary works, most notably the antislavery poem, The Dying Negro, published in 1773. In the poem, they described the destiny of an African Negro who was enslaved by Europeans, could not obtain his freedom and finally committed suicide. Illuminated by Dicknell and Day, John was very sympathy to the African slaves.

The Religious Education of Martha Laurens Ramsay

Moreover, Martha liked books very much and formed a good habit of reading. She was not only “indefatigable in cultivating an acquaintance with books, but successful in retaining much of what she read “by means of abridging, transcribing, and committing to memory.” On 26 September 1769, in a letter to his British partner and relative George Appleby, Henry bragged to his friend of Martha’s accomplishments. He mentioned to his friend that Martha “reads well & begins to write prettily, is not dull in the French Grammar and Plays a little on the Harpsichord.” Henry was very proud of his daughter. According to him, Martha was “better than all,” because “she handles her needles in all the useful branches & some of the most refined parts of Women’s work,” and promised him “to learn to make minced Pies and to dress a Beef Steak.” In 18th century South Carolina, females rarely had opportunities to accept good education, but Martha was an exception.

In Martha’s life, her Uncle James and Aunt Mary played very important roles for her youth education. In 1770, when Martha was just 11 years old, her mother was died. One year later, in order to provide good education to his sons, Papa Henry took her brothers to England and asked her Uncle and Aunt to take good care of her and his baby Polly. Although Martha lost her mother and was separated from his father and brothers, her Aunt and Uncle greatly helped her to educate herself. Her aunt’s sound judgment, refined manners, and eminent piety well fitted her for training up her orphan niece for both worlds. Moreover, it was Uncle James who took her to Europe and helped her to broaden her scope.

Martha Laurens Ramsay as An Enlightend Christian

During her adolescent years, Martha was physically separated from her father due to the Revolutionary war, but she persisted on her family education from her father. Unlike girls with less education and less confidence in their own authority, Martha maintained the letter connection with her father. Through letter correspondence with her father, Martha received father’s instructions. As an enlightened father, Henry encouraged her daughter to be “a wise and virtuous woman:”

Let all your reading, your study, and your practice tend to make you a wise and a virtuous woman, rather than a fine lady; the former character always comprehends the latter; but the modern fine lady, according to common acceptation, is too often found to be deficient both in wisdom and virtue. Strive then, my dearest girl, to be virtuous, dutiful, affable, courteous, modest; and be assured that you will become a fine lady.

Henry hoped her daughter to shape her own personality and to be a wise and virtuous woman rather than a fine lady. In his opinion, the former character included the latter, while the latter character was insufficient.

Martha also received political education from her father. When the thirteen colonies in North America claimed their independence, Henry hoped his daughter to take every advantage which the new country afforded for her to improve her mind. For Henry, his duty was to cultivate her daughter as “a woman of an honest and a pious heart; a woman who has not been affectedly nor fashionably religious.” In order to achieve his goal, he would like to alarm his daughter again and again. When the colonies finally declared their independence from the Great Britain, Henry told her daughter that the separation would greatly benefit the Great Britain, as well as the "united, free and independent states.” During the turbulent era, Martha accepted her political education directly from her father. Irrigated by his father’s enlightened and revolutionary ideas, Martha was familiar with political affairs in North America.

The Making of Martha Laurens Ramsay as an Enlightened Christian

On 3 November, 1759, Eleanor Ball gave birth to a daughter to her husband Henry Laurens in Charles Town, South Carolina. As parents to the girl, Henry Laurens and Eleanor Ball named her Martha Laurens. By the father's side, her great grandparents were born in Rochelle. As faithful Huguenots rather than Catholics, they suffered religious persecution in France. Then they came to America in the later 17th century. By the mother’s side, her maternal ancestors migrated from Devonshire in England, and settled in South Carolina about the same time. In Charles Town, Henry Laurens was an eminent businessman and could make a good living for his family. What’s more, as was an outstanding politician, he was the president of the Continental Congress, then a diplomatic prisoner of war in the Tower of London, and finally, in 1782, one of four official negotiators of the peace treaty that ended the war between the Great Britain and the United States. Born in such a family, Martha had good opportunities to accept well education.

When Martha was young, she showed great interest in learning. As a three years old girl, she “could readily read any book, and, what is extraordinary, in an inverted position, without any difficulty.” As she grew up, she made great progress in her education. She not only acquired a grammatical knowledge of the French language, but knew geometry and mathematics very well. In order to know the world, she even asked her father to purchase a pair of globes for her. On May 18, 1774, in a letter to her daughter, Henry Laurens told her that he recollected a pair of globes for her and asked Mr. Grubb to ship “a pair of the best eighteen inch, with caps and a book of directions” to her uncle James Laurens who would deliver them to her.

The Friendship between Benjamin Rush and David Ramsay

When Ramsay was going to settle down at Charles Town in 1773, Rush did a great favor for him. In writing a letter to recommend Ramsay for the same post he had declined, he wrote:

He is far superior to any person we ever graduated at our college; his abilities are not only good, but great; his talents and knowledge universal; I never saw so much strength of memory and imagination, united to so fine a judgment. His manners are polished and agreeable — his conversation lively, and his behaviour, to all men, always without offence. Joined to all these, he is sound in his principles, strict, nay more, severe in his morals, and attached, not by education only, but by principle, to the dissenting interest.

With the help of Rush, Ramsay was introduced to Charles Town and started his career as politician, historian, as well as physician. Although Ramsay left Philadelphia, Ramsay continued his correspondence with Rush and maintained their friendship until Rush’s death on April 19, 1813. Even if Rush was died, at the request of The Medical Society of South Carolina, Ramsay published An Eulogium upon Benjamin Rush, M.D to praise his great contribution in the history of American medicine.

In fact, Ramsay took his practical work under Dr. Thomas Bond. However, it was Rush who exerted the greatest influence on him. In Ramsay’s life, he “never broke the magical spell that Rush cast upon him in these years, and he continued to venerate his teacher and champion his ideas during the remainder of his life. This friendship without doubt provided the most important personal influence on his professional life.” For Ramsay and his wife Martha, Rush was an important friend, from whom they owned their intellectual debts. Therefore, to understand the inner minds of Martha, as well as Ramsay, it is necessary for us to put them into the context of Philadelphia’s Christian Enlightenment.

David Ramsay on Slavery

In discussing slavery with Thomas Jefferson, Ramsay asserted his antislavery view. Ramsay appreciated Jefferson's “generous indignation at slavery.” But Ramsay argued that Jefferson had “depressed the negroes too low.” Then he proclaimed his radical view on slavery. According to him, “all mankind . . . [is] originally the same & only diversified by accidental circumstances,” and that “human nature is certainly radically the same in. . . [all humans].” In Ramsay’s view, all mankind was the same, they were just diversified by the environment. Therefore, the Africans were not destined to be slaves due to their race. Then he stepped further, arguing that social environment could even change physiology. He believed that the Africans were less black in Jersey than in Carolina and predicted that “in a few centuries the negroes will lose their black color.”

In terms of the use of strong drink, Rush also influenced Ramsay’s view on it. As an enlightened Christian, Rush objected to the use of strong drink. In 1772, Philadelphia printer John Dunlap produced Sermons to Gentlemen upon Temperance and Exercise. Dunlap’s name was the only one that appeared on the front of the 42 pages tract. While in fact, the anonymous author was Dr. Benjamin Rush. It included chapters on “Temperance and Eating,” “Use and Abuse of Wine and Strong Drink,” and “Exercise,” in which Rush discussed the benefits of walking, running and swimming. In order to help Philadelphians to keep their health, Rush warned them not to drink strong drinks. In 1785, he published his pamphlet —— An Inquiry into the Effects of Ardent Spirits Upon the Human Body and Mind, in which he argued that the effects of ardent spirits caused various diseases and vices of the body and mind. Then he enumerated the symptoms, which included unusual garrulity, unusual silence, captiousness, uncommon good humour, and an insipid simpering, or laugh, profane swearing and cursing…… as well as certain extravagant acts which indicate a temporary fit of madness. Ramsay disliked the use of strong drink, Robert L. Brunhouse assumes that it was “probably because of the influence of Benjamin Rush, who crusaded for temperance at a time when there was little sympathy for the cause.”

Enlightened Christianity:The Impact of Benjamin Rush on David Ramsay

As David Ramsay’s mentor, Rush transmitted his ideas of Christian Enlightenment to him. In 1770, Ramsay was just 21 years old and entered the new medical school associated with the College of Philadelphia, in which he was pursuing his degree of Bachelor of Physic. In Revolutionary era, Rush was a famous physician in Philadelphia. With the help of him, Ramsay started his medical career at Charles Town, South Carolina and became a famous physician too.

As an enlightened Christian, Rush disliked slavery, which directly shaped Ramsay’s view on slavery. In 1773, Rush informed a friend that he had refused a thousand guineas a year to move to Charles Town because of his antipathy to slavery. On February 3rd, 1779, in a letter to Rush regarding to slavery, he wrote, “to speak as a Christian, I really fear some heavy judgment awaits us on that very score. Culpam sana prenuit comes (an appropriate cause produces the sin).” He also mentioned that although he hadn’t read Grenville Sharpe’s book, he was informed that “he proves by instances that slavery has always proved the bane of countries that gave into that illicit practice,” and he wished that he could have an opportunity to read it. Moreover, when Ramsay announced that he was contemplating marriage to a young Charleston heiress, he promised to Rush that "her fortune does not consist in negroes, but is reducible to an annuity from the rent of houses and interest of money.”

Benjamin Rush: an Enlightened Christian

Philadelphia was also known as a Kingdom of Christ. Philadelphia thinkers were faithful Christians, believed in God and worked hard to deal with the social evils in Philadelphia. They thought religion was compatible with the enlightened rationality and argued “an enlightened science of nature was possible only when grounded in things known by faith: the existence of a deity both transcendent and immanent; the fall of human nature and the efficacy of Christ’s atonement; the reality of a particular and general providence, and the wondrous possibilities of a world transformed by grace.” Rather than measure everything merely based on rationality, Philadelphians believed the Christianity played a very important role in their studies on nature. In the Philadelphia circles, the enlightenment and the Christianity were compatible with each other, which greatly shaped the characteristics of Philadelphia thinkers.

As one member of this circle, Benjamin Rush was a typical Enlightened Christian. In Reid-Maroney’s view, Rush represented “the most articulate and complete expression of those modes of thought which we have identified to this point as the foundation of Philadelphia’s Christian Enlightenment.” In his early life, Rush was greatly influenced by the New Side, first at the Arch Street Church of Gilbert Tennent, then in the Nottingham Academy run by his uncle Samuel Finley, and at the College of New Jersey under Samuel Davies and John Redman. When Rush went abroad, he persisted his engagement with New Side culture. He not only visited the home of George Whitefield in London, but persuaded the Scottish divine John Witherspoon to accept the presidency of the College of New Jersey. In Reid-Maroney’s opinion, “the New Side tendency to regard medicine and divinity as callings with a common and sacred purpose in the imitation of Christ shaped his emerging sense of professional identity.” For Rush, he doubtlessly believed that his search for the practice of enlightened medicine was aided by grace.

Christian Enlightenment: From Philadelphia to Charles Town

Christian Enlightenment: From Philadelphia to Charles Town

In the 18th century, Scotland witnessed an explosion of intellectual and scientific accomplishments, which was called as the Scottish Enlightenment. Among the Scottish luminaries, there were David Hume, Adam Smith, Hugh Blair, William Robertson, Adam Ferguson, Lord Kames, William Cullen, Thomas Reid, Francis Hutchison, James Boswell, Robert Burns and so on. Although they shared the rationalist outlook as the continental Enlightenment thinkers, they emphasized the significance of human reason combined with questioning authority. Guided by reason and empiricism, they optimistically believed in the potentiality of human beings to exert their capabilities to improve the society. The Scottish Enlightenment had a great impact on the world, which was beyond Scotland itself. It not only influenced Europe, but transmitted its ideas and achievements to North America by the Scottish diaspora, as well as the American students who went for learning in Scotland. In North America, it produced no David Hume or Adam Smith, but in Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Adams, Benjamin Rush, James Wilson, Benjamin West and other well-known characters it boasted men of impressive accomplishment.

In the second half of the 18th century, Philadelphia was closely connected with the Scottish Enlightenment. Under its influence, Philadelphia took part in the widespread American practice of sending medical students to Edinburgh, which made it an Empire of Reason. From 1750 to 1790, “at least 177 Americans studied at the Edinburgh Medical School. The enclave of Edinburgh graduates in Philadelphia provided a direct link to ideas flowing out of the Scottish Enlightenment.” In the Philadelphia circles, it included medical men such as Benjamin Rush and John Redman; ministers and dabblers in natural philosophy, such as Francis Alison and John Ewing, the botanists John and William Bartram, and Ebenezer Kinnersley, Baptist minister and electrical experimenter. These Philadelphia thinkers were thoroughly enlightened and believed that reason and the proper scientific method would spring progressive ideas.

Martha Laurens Ramsay: A Model of Female Excellence

Martha definitely was a model of female excellence, through reading and traveling in Europe she became an enlightened Christian. Rather than consider how Martha became a Christian, in this paper I am going to contextualize Martha’s enlightened Christianity in the late 18th and early 19th century and examine the limit of her enlightenment. Firstly I would like to discuss Philadelphia’s enlightened Christianity and explore how David Ramsay became an enlightened Christian under his mentor Dr. Benjamin Rush’s influence; then focus on Martha’s Memoirs, I will consider how enlightened Christianity worked on her and her reading worlds; finally, taking Martha as a good example, I will discuss the predicament of Martha’s enlightenment in South Carolina.

Martha Laurens Ramsay: An Enlightend Christian?

In her Memoirs, Martha read various books, which served as the ground for her to build a dense and diversified mental life. Through reading she made books a site for experiments in personal meditations. Martha made reading a vehicle for her self-fashioning: “the achievement of a distinctive personality, a particular address to the world, a way of acting and thinking.” Mary Kelley believes that Martha’s Memoir presents “a woman fully engaged with reading.” Moreover, she presumes “reading could be a highly self-conscious act. Employed to achieve a variety of ends, it could be a means of education, a source for self-fashioning, or a basis for collective practice. Simultaneously, reading could be much more anarchic.” Kelley argues readings could offer her a good lens to enter Martha’s mind and examine how she constructed her own self-fashioning.


Joanna Bowen Gillespie also plays a very important role for us to understand Martha’s mental world. On the one hand, Gillespie pays attention to the Enlightenment ideas penetrated in her Memoirs. In interpreting the correspondence letters between Martha Laurens Ramsay and her son David Ramsay Jr., Gillespie explains that “the Enlightenment article of faith animating it is evident: knowledge itself should produce good behavior,” and her rationale was specific to the era. Moreover, she points out, “Martha Laurens Ramsay styled herself a woman of reason, a female who gloried in the use of her own mental powers and enjoyed epistolary oversight of a citizen under construction— a duty usually regarded as male. We see her touting reason as its own value as well as being a family standard.” On the other hand, she notices the significance of the leadings of Providence in shaping her own character. According to her, Martha “was less visionary and more theologically rational than seventeenth-century Puritan and Quaker prophetesses, and more domestically circumscribed or constrained than her nineteenth-century successors would be.” Through considering the intellectual trajectory, Gillespie touches the tension of her inner mind, but she doesn’t explore how enlightened Christianity worked on Martha’s mentality, as well as her intellectual tension between the enlightened thinking and religious faith.

Christian Enlightenment: Benjamin Rush as a Case Study

In the eighteenth century Philadelphia, the enlightened medical science was thought to be compatible with the principles of Christianity. Accompanying with the maturing of Philadelphia’s scientific community, Philadelphia’s Protestant culture cultivated pious Christians. As a member of the Philadelphia’s scientific community, Rush accepted religious, as well as enlightened thinking, which shaped him the characteristics of Christian Enlightenment.


As an enlightened Christian, Rush defended his views in terms of Christianity and Enlightened thinking when he was debating with Nisbet over the issue of slavery in Philadelphia. On the one hand, Rush criticized the evil of the slavery based on the spirit of Christianity. In his view, “Christianity will never be propagated by any other methods than those employed by Christ and his Apostles. Slavery is an engine as little fitted for that purpose as Fire or the Sword. A Christian Slave is a contradiction in terms;” on the other hand, the law of nature which derived from the Scottish and the continental Enlightenment were also used to support his arguments. According to him, “Nothing of the dissolution of marriage vows, or the entire abolition of matrimony, which the frequent sale of them introduces, and which are directly contrary to the laws of nature and the principles of Christianity.”


Nevertheless, in order to defense his antislavery views, he appropriated humanity, the Laws of justice or humanity, virtue and general Liberty of the British Constitution. As an Enlightened Christian, Rush told us that both the Christian beliefs and enlightened thinking contributed to his views on slavery.
Devoting himself to the antislavery movement in pre-revolutionary Philadelphia, Rush proclaimed his antislavery views in terms of Christianity, the Enlightenment thinking and the enlightened medical science, which made him rather different from other abolitionists. Based on these assumptions, Rush claimed that “all mankind as equal” and advocated North Americans to “put a stop to slavery.” Although the Africans had black skin, in Rush’s view, they still should have the same rights as other humankinds.

David Ramsay and Martha Laurence Ramsay: Memoirs of the life of Martha Laurens Ramsay

On June 7th, 1811, when Martha Laurens Ramsay was ill in bed, she told her husband Dr. David Ramsay a secret that she kept her diary, letters and other private papers in a drawer secretly for a long time. Predicting she would leave the world soon, she requested her husband to find them and keep them “as a common book of the family or divide among its members” after her death. Then three days later, Martha was dead. When Ramsay found and carefully read them, he realized that “they exhibited an example which teaches more compendiously and forcibly than precept, the value of piety, and the comfort of submission to the will of God.” Shortly after her wife’s death, he sent them to their intimate friends Rev. Drs. Hollinshead and Keith and consulted them whether he should publish them or not. In replying to Ramsay, Dr. Hollinshead believed that “the publication of these devout exercises of her heart, with a sketch of her life, might contribute much to the establishment and comfort of many pious exercised Christians, who walk in fear and darkness.” After reading them, Dr. Keith told Dr. Ramsay that they irresistibly led him to “wish and earnestly to desire that they may be permitted to appear in print.” They both strongly recommended the publication that Ramsay finally made his decision to publish them. In the same year, after editing them, they were published in a book entitled Memoirs of the life of Martha Laurens Ramsay in Charles Town.

Although Ramsay agreed with Drs. Keith and Hollinshead, he read them rather differently from them. Ramsay suggested the rational piety rather than Christianity was a good lens for readers to enter into her wife’s inner mind. He pointed out, “God grant that their publication may be the means of exciting in others, and especially the connections and friends of their author, the same lively sentiments of fervent rational piety with which she was animated.” Unlike him, Hollinshead believed that “her example, while she abode with us, was a living lecture on the importance of the human character in every part it has to act upon the stage of life, and eminently recommended the maxims and habits of our holy religion, as worthy of all acception.” Dr. Keith shared the same view as Dr. Hollinshead and argued that “through the succeeding course of her life, she exhibited in the view of all attentive and judicious observers, a bright and attractive example of the temper and conduct of a real Christian.” In their opinions, Martha was a typical representative of pious Christians and her writings should be read from the perspective of Christianity. Ramsay was also a Christian, he didn’t deny the significance of Christianity played in her wife’s mind, but he read them in another way. Dr. Hollinshead and Keith were good friends to Martha and Ramsay, but why did they read them differently from Ramsay? The main reason was because both Ramsay and Martha were enlightened Christians, while Drs. Hollinshead and Keith were merely fetish Christians.

Richard Nisbet: The Capacity of Negroes for Religious and Moral Improvement Considered

In 1789, based on the Rush-Nisbet slavery debate, as well as his experiences in West-Indies and political tracts on slavery, Nisbet published a book, in which he paid more attention to the capacity of Negroes for religious and moral improvement. Disagreeing with Philadelphia’s abolitionists who thought the African slaves had their own capabilities for religious and moral improvement, Nisbet believed that they were destined to be slaves. In the cover of Nisbet’s book, he made a quotation from James Thomson’s Seasons, which said: “The light that leads to Heaven, Kind equal Rule, the Government of Laws……These are not theirs.” Obviously, Nisbet argued that “the light that leads to Heaven,” “kind equal rule,” “the Government of Laws” were not suitable for African slaves. In this book, Nisbet insisted on the argument that their destinies were slaves, which had been arranged by the God. For African slaves, they should be industrious, obliging, and believing in God.


Richard Nisbet, The Capacity of Negroes for Religious and Moral Improvement Considered (Westport: Negro Universities Press, 1970[1789]).

European Enlightenment Thinkers on Benjamin Rush's Antislavery Views

In the pamphlet, Rush mentioned several Enlightenment thinkers to support his arguments on slavery. He wrote, “Montesquieu, Franklin, Wallis, Hutchinson, Sharp, Hargrave, Warburton, and Forster, who have all employed their Talents against them.” Rush also explained his intellectual debt to the Enlightenment thinkers. He pointed out, “Without availing myself of the Authorities of Smith, Adanson, Astley, Bosman, and others who speak in high Terms of the Africans, I shall allow that many of them are inferior in Virtue, Knowledge, and the love of Liberty to the Inhabitants of other parts of the World.” Influenced by these eminent Enlightenment thinkers, Rush naturally disagreed with Nisbet’s view that the African Negros were an inferior Race of Men. Instead, he asserted, “I honour the West-Indians for their Hospitality, Generosity, and Public Spirit. I have had the Pleasure of knowing many of them, who were distinguished for their Humanity, and every other Virtue that could adore human Nature.” When witnessing “human Nature is now aiming to regain her Dignity, amongst the Slaves, in the Brazils, Surinam, and Chili, who have at last asserted their Liberty,” Rush was naturally happy and supported these deeds.

Compared with other abolitionists who generally proposed their antislavery arguments based on religion, enlightened medical knowledge also supported Rush’s views on slavery. In his pamphlets, Rush argued that Negroes were not by nature intellectually or morally inferior. Any apparent evidence to the contrary was only the perverted expression of slavery, which “is so foreign to the human mind, that the moral faculties, as well as those of the understanding are debased, and rendered torpid by it.” Based on the medical science he learnt at Edinburgh, in 1792, Rush presumed that the black skin of Africans could be cured under medical care. In a paper he presented before the American Philosophical Society, he believed that the “color” and “figure” of blacks were derived from a form of leprosy. He was convinced that with proper treatment, “blacks could be cured (i.e. become white) and eventually... assimilated into the general population.”

Personal Slavery Established and the Slavery Debate Between Benjamin Rush and Richard Nisbet

When Rush and Nisbet were in hot debate, an anonymous writer joined their debate. On November 15 1773, a political tract entitled Personal Slavery Established, by the Suffrages of Custom and Right Reason appeared. Till now nobody knows who wrote it. However, it is an undeniable fact that the tract was a response to the Rush-Nisbet slavery debate. In Lester B. Scherer’s view, the anonymous writer gave readers three clues. On the title page, the anonymous writer wrote an epigraph: “However amiable Justice and Virtue may be in our abstract ideas of them: the policy of Kingdoms and Commercial States, ought ever to be regulated by the more important considerations of necessity and convenience.” It explained that the policy of Kingdoms and Commercial States should be based on necessity and convenience rather than Justice and Virtue, which directly echoed to the “political necessity” in Nisbet's work and the principles of justice and virtue in Rush’s pamphlet. Moreover, the author highly praised the Committee-Men of the Royal African Company and claimed that the slave trade was a “generous disinterested exertion of benevolence and philanthropy.” Finally, the author pointed out that he would like to make “some corrections, transpositions, and emendations” based on Nisbet’s pamphlet. It was highly possible that Richard Nisbet was the original author. However, lacking of strong evidences, we cannot harshly draw such a conclusion.


Although we cannot figure out what was the purpose of the anonymous author, we can notice that it directly responded to Nisbet's attack on Rush. In publishing it, the anonymous writer pointed out: “I will only say, that in gratitude to the author of ‘Slavery not Forbidden by Scripture, &c.’ I have endeavoured to adopt this plan so fully, that the following pages may answer the purpose of a second edition of that celebrated work, with some corrections, transpositions, and emendations.” Moreover, he also mentioned that he wanted to reconsider Rush’s Address: “I shall proceed to consider the Address not only as it relates to Slavery, but also as a most scandalous and audacious libel on every individual inhabitant of every island in the West-Indies.” It was rather clear that he disagreed with Rush’s arguments on slavery in the Address, because the author claimed that it “never giving himself time to consider our natural frailties — the impossibility of absolute perfection — that there are faults in every human institution, and that till self-interest ceases to have influence over the actions of men, proposals that strike at the very root of their temporal interests — their ease — their convenience and grandeur, will never be listened to.” Noticing “the impossibility of absolute perfection” and “the faults in every human institution,” the anonymous writer thought that Justice and Virtue should not be applied to the slaves. Rather, they “ought ever to be regulated by the more important considerations of necessity and convenience.” By saying “necessity and convenience,” the anonymous writer supported the necessity of the slavery in West-Indian islands.

Richard Nisbet Defended Slavery

Determining to expose Rush’s errors, Nisbet opened his tract with the charge that “abuse leveled at an entire body of people, seems so contrary to reason, and every charitable maxim, that a man who undertakes it, though of the first rate genius, lays himself open to be refuted by every school boy.” Unlike Rush who thought Negro slaves were rational, Nisbet argued that they were irrational. Nisbet contended that West Indian slavery was not as heartless or as cruel as described by Rush, yet, he still thought they were “naturally inferior to whites” and slavery was economically necessary, not only because Africans had produced no art, science, or product and had worshiped no Supreme Being, but because “they seem utterly unacquainted with friendship, gratuity and every tie of the same kind.” To further support his argument, Nisbet pointed out the “stupidity of the natives” and charged that the example “of a negro girl writing a few silly poems,” presumably Phillis Wheatley, was a strong evidence that “black are not deficient in understanding.”

Nisbet believed in the Old Testament and claimed that the slavery should be existed according to it. “Slavery, like all other human institutions,” Nisbet pointed out, “may be attended with its particular abuses, but that is not sufficient totally to condemn it, and to reckon every one unworthy the society of men who owns a Negro.” Moreover, he made a quotation from the Scripture and proclaimed that slavery was supported by it. In the Scripture, Moses said that there was a relationship between bond-men and the bond maids and this relationship should be maintained. According to Moses, “both the bond-men and the bond maids, which you shall have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall you buy bond-men and bond-maids……of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you……they shall be your possession. And you shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession, they shall be your bond-men forever.” Therefore, in Nisbet’s opinion, “the scriptures, instead of forbidding it, declare it lawful.”

Benjamin Rush Mocked Slavery

In September, Rush immediately wrote another pamphlet in response to Nisbet’s criticism. In Nisbet’s tract, he explained that domestic slavery “was not forbidden in the New Testament,” “domestic Slavery had existed in every Age and Corner of the World,” and by treating his slaves well, slave planters “committed no Crime in keeping them.” However, Rush did not think so. “If domestic Slavery is agreeable to the Will and Laws of God,” Rush wrote, then the “British Constitution was obtained unjustly.” Finally Rush negatively evaluated Nisbet’s tract:

You have called in question the Justice and goodness of the Supreme Being. You have charged the Father of Mankind with being the Author of the greatest Evils to his Children. You have aimed to establish Principles, which justify the most extensive and cruel Depradations which have been made by Conquerors and Tyrants, upon the Liberties and Lives of Mankind, and which at the same time condemn those glorious Events, and illustrious Men, that Britain and her Colonies, are indebted to for their Liberty and Prosperity.

In refuting Nisbet’s arguments, Rush defended his views in terms of “justice and goodness of the Supreme Being,” “the most extensive and cruel Depradations,” “Liberties and Lives of Mankind,” as well as “Liberty and Prosperity.” As a faithful Christian, it was reasonable for Rush to defend his views in terms of religion.

Yet, unlike Woolman and other abolitionists who defended their antislavery views just in terms of the Scripture and the Old Testament, Rush asserted his understanding of slavery in terms of the Enlightenment thinking he received when he was in Edinburgh. He believed that slavery violated the “Law of Nature” and liberty. Also, human nature or humanity was also a standard for him to criticize the evils of slavery. In reply to Nisbet’s description of the punishments on the Negroes, Rush pointed out that it explained “the Weakness, and Depravity of Human Nature,” and “no Accounts of the Cruelty of these Punishments will appear exaggerated.” To support his statement, he explained the Domestic Slavery greatly violated the natural Love of Liberty and the humanity:

“The natural Love of Liberty which is common to all Men, and the Love of Ease which is peculiar to the Inhabitants of Warm Climates, can only be overcome by severe Laws and Punishments. While Slaves are employed in a Climate and Labor, and treated with an Inhumanity…… While they are denied so many of the Necessaries and Comforts of Life, and lastly while their Proportion is so much greater than that of the white People, nothing but the Whip, melted Wax, Brine, the Gallows, the Stake, and the Gibbet, will long prevent Insurrections among them.”

The slaves were treated so humane in the West-Indian islands that Rush was very sympathetic to them.

Benjamin Rush Attacked Slavery

Furthermore, Rush opposed to the slavery in terms of the law of equity in the New Testament. According to him,

If in the Old Testament “God swears by his holiness, and by the excellency of Jacob, that the Earth shall tremble and every one mourn that dwelleth therein for the iniquity of those who oppress the poor and crush the needy, who buy the poor with silver, and the needy with a pair of shoes,” what judgments may you not denounce upon those who continue to perpetrate these crimes, after the more full discovery which God has made of the law of Equity in the New Testament.

Rush considered that God asked people to be sympathetic to the poor and the oppressed according to the law of Equity from the New Testament. Therefore, it was unfair for Europeans to enslave Africans.

Finally Rush drew his conclusions that colonial Americans should “put a stop to slavery” in terms of “all mankind as equal” and the slaves should be entitled “all the privileges of free-born British subjects.” On 1 November 1774, in a letter to Granville Sharp, Rush advocated the emancipation of slaves in Southern colonies. Rush pointed out, “the climate and toils in the Southern colonies will soon eradicate slavery there. If a more gentle treatment should be adopted it will prepare their slaves for emancipation. I now feel a new attachment to my native country, and I look forward with new pleasure to her future importance and grandeur. ” As a radical abolitionist, Rush not only proclaimed the emancipation of slavery in North America, but considered the future of colonies without slavery in North America.

The Great Plan of Benjamin Rush to End Slavery

In order to terminate the slavery in North America, Rush proposed his great plan and designed the blueprint for the African slaves. He presumed that magistrates should “exert the authority they are invested with, in suppressing this evil.” Meanwhile, legislators should “reflect upon the trust reposed in them.”


In addition, their laws should be made in terms of the Spirit of Religion, Liberty and the English Constitution. Rush hoped the magistrates to exert their authority to suppress the evil of the slavery, the legislators should make righteous laws. If legislators and magistrates could cooperate with each other, the slavery would be over sooner or later. Then “population, and the accession of strangers, in which the Riches of all countries consist, can only flourish.” As for the future of the Africans, Rush claimed that they should be embraced into “one great family.” Colonial Americans, “as an asylum for freedom,” highly valued Humanity, virtue and general Liberty, rather than various vices, with which human beings would be degraded. In such a land for freedom, it should not be constructed on the slavery. Rather, it should be based on benevolence, with which “all the children of men together in one great Family.” Therefore, there should be no difference between white colonial Americans and the African slaves and the slavery in North America should be ended.

Responding to Rush’s pamphlet, Nisbet wrote a tract entitled Slavery Not Forbidden by Scripture and asserted his disagreements with Rush on slavery in it. In the preface, Nisbet pointed out that Rush’s antislavery arguments were “exaggerated beyond the most distant bounds of probability.” Assuming Rush’s arguments were biased, he thought it was very necessary for him to debate with Rush. He wrote, “I never should have attempted to contradict the author of the address, merely from being a native of the West-Indies, for I hate national partiality; but as I have many valuable friends in that part of the world, I could not, patiently, hear them so unworthily traduced, without endeavouring to undeceive his readers.” Although he admitted that he was “infinitely inferior to the author of the address, in the qualifications of a writer,” he still believed that he had “many advantages over him.” In order to defend his points of view on the slavery, he finally published his political tract.

The Slavery Correspondence Debate Benjamin Rush and Granville Sharp

On 1 May 1773, Rush wrote a letter to Granville Sharp, in which he was going to send him an antislavery pamphlet. It was in this pamphlet Rush firstly asserted his views on slavery. Although slavery was very popular in colonial America, Rush argued that the slave-keeping was evil and “the evil still continues” in North America. As Rush pointed out, “slavery and vice are connected together, and the latter is always a source of misery.” Europeans who assumed the African slaves caused these vices, but Rush claimed that it was the evil of the slavery rather than the evil of the African slaves caused them:

Slavery is so foreign to the human mind, that the moral faculties, as well as those of the understanding are debased, and rendered torpid by it. All the vices which are charged upon the Negroes in the southern colonies and the West-Indies, such as Idleness, Treachery, Theft, and the like, are the genuine offspring of slavery, and serve as an argument to prove that they were not intended for it.

In his opinion, the idleness, treachery, theft and so on were all caused by slavery. Slavery, then he further explained, “While it includes all the former Vices, necessarily excludes the practice of all the latter Virtues, both from the Master and the Slave.” Europeans thought Africans were inferior to them. However, Rush did not think so. In The Spirit of Laws, Montesquieu argued that the African Negroes were suitable for slaves and they should not be admitted as men:

The Europeans having extirpated the Americans, were obliged to make slaves of the Africans for clearing such vast tracts of land. Sugar would be too dear, if the plants which produce it were cultivated by any other than slaves. These creatures are all over black, and with such a flat nose that they can scarcely be pitied. It is hardly to be believed that God, who is a wise being, should place a soul, especially a good soul, in such a black ugly body…… It is impossible to us to suppose these creatures to be men, because, allowing them to be men, a suspicion would follow, that we ourselves are not Christians.

Under Montesquieu’s influence, Europeans thought the Africans should be slaves due to their black color. Assuming that the African slaves had the same capacities and moral faculty as the white Christians, Rush thought the intellects of the Negroes were not inferior to them. Rush explained that the blackness was endowed by the providence. Disagreeing with Montesquieu, Rush refuted the statement that the Africans were subjected to slavery due to their black skin. He pointed out, “I need hardly say anything in favour of the Intellects of the Negroes, or of their capacities for virtue and happiness, although these have been supposed, by some, to be inferior to those of the inhabitants of Europe.” Instead, Rush proclaimed that God gave them the black color, with which “the ravages of heat, diseases and time, appear less in their faces than in a white one.” While for those Europeans, they suffered heat, diseases and other sufferings.

Benjamin Rush on Slavery

Rush also praised the contribution African slaves had made to the North Americans. “It has been urged by the inhabitants of the Sugar Islands and South Carolina, that it would be impossible to carry on the manufactories of Sugar, Rice, and Indigo, without negro slaves.” In Rush’s mind, without the help of Negro slaves, the manufactories of Sugar, Rice, and Indigo would be impossible.

In North America, of course, there were a large number of people who defended the slavery system in terms of Christianity and Scripture. For these people, they believed that “slavery is not repugnant to the Genius of Christianity, and that it is not forbidden in any part of the Scripture.” Regarding this statement, Rush disputed it in terms of Christianity and the laws of nature. Rush thought employing African Negroes would admit “the least violation of the Laws of justice or humanity” and the slave trade was a “direct violation of the Laws of nature and Religion.” He claimed that slavery violated the principles and spirits of the Christianity, because “Christianity will never be propagated by any other methods than those employed by Christ and his Apostles. Slavery is an engine as little fitted for that purpose as Fire or the Sword. A Christian Slave is a contradiction in terms.” To support his arguments, he explained that the “Slavery is an Hydra sin, and includes in it every violation of the precepts of the Law and the Gospel.” Obviously, unlike those who defended the slavery in terms of Christianity, Rush believed that the slavery was not compatible with the principles of the Christianity.

Benjamin Rush: an Enlightened Christian and an Abolitionist

Rather than assume the Africans were inferior to the white, Rush argued that they had the same capability to read and write. In 1773, African American poet Phillis Wheatley published his Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, which made him rather happy. Born in Gambia, Senegal, Wheatley became a slave when she was just seven years old. Then Wheatley was purchased by the Wheatley family of Boston, who taught her to read, write and encouraged her to write poetry. When her Poems were published, George Washington highly praised it. For Rush, Wheatley was a good example for African slaves to prove that they had the same capabilities as the white to accept education.


Rush believed that the African slaves were not inferior to the white in intellects and the case of Dr. James Durham could demonstrate it. On May 1, 1762, James Durham was born as a slave in Philadelphia. While he was still a young boy, he was sold to John A. Kearsley, Jr., an expert on sore throat diseases, who introduced him to medicine. Durham continued to work in medicine with different masters and finally bought his freedom before his twenty-first birthday. In 1788, Durham traveled to Philadelphia and met Dr. Benjamin Rush. At their first meeting, Rush was impressed with Durham’s medical knowledge and praised him for his language skills, because he could speak French and Spanish. Since abolitionists attempted to change the belief that the Negro was inferior and lacking in intelligence, Rush was interested in interviewing him and gladly to introduce him to his family, his academic colleagues, and his friends. Later, they became good friends and corresponded to each other for many years.

Benjamin Rush as an Radical Abolitionist

As one of the earliest black physicians, Durham was held in the highest regard by many medical practitioners of his era and Rush was not surprised the competence of a former slave in the practice of medicine. When Rush was in need of nurses and Dr. Durham was absent, other black men helped them to take good care of his patients. Witnessed the brevity and intelligence of the African slaves, Rush requested his friends and humanitarians Absalom Jones, Richard Allen and William Gray attempted to provide positions to Negro nurses and workers for the stricken city to deal with the yellow fever.

In Rush’s mind, he wanted to emancipate the African slaves in North America. In order to turn it to be true, Rush started his Negro farm settlement project. Named “Benezet” in honor of the dead Quaker reformer, who influenced Rush in his career as a benefactor of the Negro, the model farm colony was planned for Bedford County, Pennsylvania. Assuming yeoman farming was the best way of life for the Negro, Rush purchased 20,000 acres in February 1794. Moreover, Rush presented 5,200 acres of his Bedford holdings to the Pennsylvania Abolition Society. Along with his offer, Rush suggested a plan to distribute land to worthy Negro farmers. In Rush’s opinion, even if his project failed, the Negroes could still benefit, only as long as the lands could be sold and the proceeds “applied for the emancipation and melioration of the condition of the blacks.” Apparently, Rush's programs to help the Negro were “carefully reasoned and planned.” Meanwhile, Rush employed his enlightened medical science “to destroy fear and superstition and to advance the civilization of man.”

Rush was a radical abolitionist. However, it was until 1773 that Rush firstly published his antislavery pamphlet — An Address to the Inhabitants of the British Settlements in America, upon Slave-Keeping. As an enlightened Christian, he attacked the slave trade in terms of the Enlightenment thinking and the principles of Christianity. But how did his Christian Enlightenment shape his view on the slavery? In order to answer this question, let’s take a look at the Rush-Nisbet slavery debate.

Granville Sharp as an Abolitionist and His Influence on Benjamin Rush

Benezet played a very important role in shaping Rush’s antislavery views, so did Sharp. On 29 October 1773, in a letter to Sharp, Rush expressed his sympathy to the sufferings of the poor Negroes and hoped the Providence could help them. Rush wrote, “I can add with pleasure, that a spirit of liberty and religion with regard to the poor Negroes spreads rapidly thro' this country. Providence I hope is at work in bringing about some great revolution in behalf of our oppressed Negro brethren. Let this encourage us to persevere in adding blow to blow to the monster of British tyranny in America.” Although Sharp had the same feeling as Rush, he realized that their career of abolishing the slavery was never easy. On 10 January 1774, Sharp replied to Rush with a letter, in which he mentioned that he had recommended further petitions to the King against the slave trade and had tried to persuade Messrs Duly to reprint Rush’s pamphlet without success.

Under the political influences of Benezet, Sharp and other abolitionists in the eighteenth century Atlantic world, Rush became an abolitionist and devoted himself to the abolitionism in Pre-Revolutionary Philadelphia. In Rush’s whole life, he disliked slavery very much. In the Spring of 1773, Rush informed a friend that he had refused a thousand guineas a year to move to Charles Town because of his antipathy to slavery. Moreover, he pledged to the Continental Congress to prohibit the importation of African slaves in America. In October 1774, Rush wrote a letter to Granville Sharp and asked the Continental Congress “never to import any more slaves into America,” because he believed that it could do more honor to the Congress. Rush hated slavery system so much that he naturally supported the African slaves.

Anthony Benezet as an Abolitionist and His Influence on Benjamin Rush

Regarding to the contribution Benezet made to the antislavery movement in the eighteenth century Atlantic world, Rush highly praised him. In a letter to Sharp, Rush wrote: “Anthony Benezet stood alone a few years ago in opposing Negro slavery in Philadelphia and now 3/4ths of the province as well as the city cry out against it. I sometimes please myself with the hopes of living to see it abolished or put upon another footing in America.” Rush appreciated Benezet’s effort in helping “the poor Negroes” and hoped the slavery in North America could be abolished in one day. On 13 May 1774, in another letter to Sharp, Rush highly evaluated the contribution Benezet made for the African freedom:

The cause of African freedom in America continues to gain ground. Our worthy friend Mr. Benezet is still indefatigable in it. His letters I presume breathe a great deal of the true spirit of Christianity…… He is not only a good man, but a great man in the full import of those words. He appears in everything to be free from prejudices of all kinds, and talks and acts as if he believed all mankind however diversified by color — nation — or religion to be members of one grand family. His benevolence and liberality are unbounded? — I believe he has not spent an idle hour for these forty years.

Noticing the contribution Benezet made to the African slaves and Rush’s intellectual debt to him, Donald J. D’Elia assumes that “if there was any one person who inspired Rush's crusade against slavery, there was no doubt that it was Anthony Benezet.

Meanwhile, Benezet also appreciated Rush’s effort in abolishing slavery. On April 28, 1773, in a letter to John Fothergill, Benezet sent Rush’s antislavery tract to him and highly valued it. Benezet wrote, “I have also enclosed a number of copies of a pamphlet wrote at the time we presented the petition, in order to lay the weight of the matter briefly before the members of the assembly, and other active members of government in this and the neighbouring provinces. It was written by Benjamin Rush, a young physician of the Presbyterian communion, a person who I understand thou was acquainted with, when pursuing hi studies three or four years past with you.”

Anthony Benezet as an Abolitionist

Benezet determined to be an abolitionist and finally he became an important representative of Philadelphia’s antislavery movement. In his first work, Observations on the Inslaving, Importing and Purchasing of Negroes (1760), Benezet argued that slavery was contrary to the laws of man. Two years later, shifting from the economic to the social and philosophical, in his Short Account of That Part of Africa Inhabited by the Negroes (1762), he wrote that “Negroes are generally sensible, humane, and sociable, and that their capacity is as good, and as capable of improvement as that of White People.” Nevertheless, in Short Observations on Slavery (1785) Benezet made a strong-person assertion of full racial equality. According to him, A. Benezet,

Had the opportunity of knowing the temper and genius of the Africans; particularly those under his tuition, who have been many, of different ages; and he can with truth and sincerity declare, that he has found among them as great variety of talents, equally capable of improvement, as among a like number of whites.

Apparently, in the eighteenth century Atlantic world, Benezet was a pioneer who changed the nature of antislavery movement. Before him, activists of the early years relied almost exclusively on religious arguments. However, with the help of Benezet’s effort, early Quaker antislavery sentiment was transformed into a broad-based transatlantic movement. Moreover, he “translated ideas from diverse sources ─ Enlightenment philosophy, talks with enslaved and free Africans, Quakerism, practical life, African travel narratives, and the Bible ─ into concrete action, and in doing so became universally recognized by the leaders of the eighteenth-century antislavery movement as its founder.” In the history of antislavery movement of the eighteenth century Atlantic world, Benezet brought the collective spirit across the Atlantic to Britain and France and “laid the foundations for a truly pan-Atlantic antislavery movement.”

Antislavery Movement in the 18th Century Atlantic World

Before the Atlantic slave trade was finally abolished, Anglo-American abolitionists supported the antislavery movements with each other. In the early of the eighteenth century, over the issue of slave importation, the Philadelphia Friends who believed it was “not a commendable, nor allowed practice.” After consulting the Philadelphia Friends, the London Quakers distributed their attitudes to other English Friends in 1727. In 1761, Philadelphia Quakers proposed a provincial tax on the importation of slaves and asked the British Quakers to support their actions. Hearing the good news in the other side of the Atlantic world, London Quakers sent a message to North Carolina and Virginia Quakers to support their antislavery movements. Moreover, in April, 1773, in a letter to Granville Sharp, Benezet wrote, “I herewith send thee some pamphlets, and in a confidence of thy goodness of heart, which by looking to the intention, will construe the freedom I have taken in the best light.” In order to let “the rising youth might acquire knowledge, and at the same time a detestation of this cruel traffic,” Thomas Clarkson claimed the London Yearly Meeting to circulate his pamphlets particularly among the students in English schools. As a result of this correspondence, Philadelphia and London Quakers separately petitioned to Parliament and to the Continental Congress in 1783, which made the London Meeting for Sufferings to appoint a special committee on the slave trade to consider steps “for the Relief & Liberation of the Negro Slaves in the West Indies, & for the Discouragement of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa.” Obviously, in order to struggle for the African slaves, abolitionists in the Atlantic world cooperated with each other.


As a Quaker in Philadelphia, Benezet was very sympathetic to the sufferings of African slaves. When he was young, he experienced religious persecutions of French government on his family members. In a letter to a friend, Benezet wrote, “one of my uncles was hung by these intolerants, my aunt was put in a convent, two of my cousins died at the galleys, and my fugitive father was hung in effigy for explaining the gospel differently from the priests and the family was ruined by the confiscation of his property.” In an increasingly intolerant French society, he witnessed the subjugation of the Huguenots, which made him natural to help the enslaved Africans who were suffering inhuman tortures in North America. In Benezet’s life, his father had a great impact on his antislavery view. Elder Benezet was an associate of George Whitefield, a leader of the Great Awakening of the 1730s, who protested the slave system and called for more humane treatment of human property. He assisted Whitefield’s project of establishing Christian school for Negroes in Pennsylvania and started the Nazareth training school for Blacks on 5,000 acres near the Delaware River. Whitefield didn’t object to the institution of slavery, nor did he suggest emancipation, because he believed that Christian training could create a more efficient slave labor force without the use of brutal coercion. Although the project was failed, elder Benezet passed on his view on the African slaves to his son. Benezet believed in the rights of the Blacks, probably because of his father’s participation of Whitefield’s project.

The Atlantic Abolitionism and the Making of Rush as an Abolitionist

The Atlantic Abolitionism and the Making of Rush as an Abolitionist

But how did Rush apply his ideas of Enlightened Christianity to his antislavery movement? Before answering this question, let’s firstly discuss how he became an abolitionist in the eighteenth century Atlantic world.

In the second half of the 18th century, slavery as a problem was greatly discussed in the British Atlantic world. In 1729, Philadelphia Quakers opposed to purchase slaves. Leaders like John Woolman and Anthony Benezet believed that slaveholding violated the spirit of Christianity. Woolman even addressed to his fellow Quakers Some Consideration of the Keeping of Negroes in 1754, which exerted great influence in leading the Society of Friends to recognize the evil of slavery. Anthony Benezet, a Huguenot who escaped religious persecution and migrated to North America, published Observations on the Inslaving, Importing and Purchasing of Negroes in 1759, which was treated as the first of many antislavery works by the most influential antislavery writer in the eighteenth century North America. In Great Britain, as a famous abolitionist, Granville Sharp took part in the Jonathan Strong case, as well as James Somerset’s case, and struggled for the rights of the African slaves in England and highly supported the abolition of the slavery in the British Empire. Sharp finally published his tract ─ A Representation of the Injustice and Dangerous Tendency of Tolerating Slavery, which was treated as the first antislavery tract in England. These people argued that “slaveholding and slave trafficking were incompatible with a Christian way of life and offense against that ‘sweetness of freedom’ which should be recognized in every fellow creature.” Following Sharp, Thomas Clarkson, William Wilberforce and the Clapham Sect continued the antislavery movement in England and its overseas colonies. With the help of these abolitionists, the Atlantic slave trade was finally ended in England in 1807 and in the United States in 1808.

The Enlightenment of Benjamin Rush at Edinburgh

So how did Rush accept the scientific Enlightenment and became an enlightened Christian? In order to answer this question, let’s consider his travel in Edinburgh and its importance to him. In Rush’s life, his sojourn at Edinburgh was a key factor for him to be an Enlightened Christian. When he journeyed to Edinburgh in 1766 to study medicine, Rush’s friends there were “chiefly those who are governed by the principles of virtue and religion.” He was only twenty-one years old when he embarked for Edinburgh. At that time, he was occupied with his religious and educational experiences and his apprenticeship to Dr. John Redman in Philadelphia. However, during his visit in Edinburgh, he was greatly enlightened. As a visitor there, Rush made various new friends who were distinguished for their learning, taste, or piety. Among them, there were the Reverend Dr. John Erskine, an evangelical divine and friend of Jonathan Edwards; Mr. Thomas Hogg, the banker; Sir Alexander Dick, a prominent and wealthy physician, in whose house he dined with the philosopher and historian, David Hume; and he was received in the home of Professor Gregory, where he met Dr. William Robertson, author of History of Scotland, and later of a History of America, and at that time the principal of the University of Edinburgh. Rush mentioned that he was frequently made happy by the company of the blind poet, Thomas Blacklock, whose store of literary information and pleasant manners impressed him greatly. Rush reminisced his life at Edinburgh, “The two years I spent in Edinburgh,” he wrote in the summer of 1800, “I consider as the most important in their influence upon my character and conduct of any period of my life.” When Rush returned to Philadelphia, he transmitted the Enlightenment thinking and medical knowledge to young Philadelphians. Then Rush recognized that “their culture of science was no longer considered a provincial echo of Enlightenment in Europe. Rather, they found themselves and their enlightened Christianity now firmly established at the center of the divine plan for human salvation.” Obviously, Rush’s visit in Edinburgh helped him to be an enlightened Christian.

Rush’s early religious training, as well as the Scottish Enlightenment thinking he received greatly shaped his views on slavery. Rush not only received well religious education in the New Side Presbyterian Churches, but was greatly enlightened by the Scottish Enlightenment, as well as the continental Enlightenment. During his time in Europe, he visited Paris, London, Leiden and other cities and met several abolitionists and Enlightened thinkers, like Granville Sharp, Anthony Benezet, Montesquieu, Voltaire and so on, whom greatly shaped his rationalized attitudes towards the world. Unlike those radical abolitionists in the Great Britain who defended their views of abolitionism based on Enlightenment thinking and those who advocated the antislavery movement for the African slaves in terms of Christianity, Rush argued for the abolition of the slavery in terms of Enlightened Christianity.

Philadelphia's Enlightenment and the Making of Benjamin Rush as an Enlightend Christian

Although Rush accepted advanced medical knowledge, he still thought the power of rationality was insufficient. During the yellow fever epidemic of 1793, Rush applied his infamous combination of mercurial powder and the liberal use of the lancet, but he privately cried out to providence for help and prayed the divine intervention to cope with the diseases in Philadelphia. As a Christian who was cultivated with modern medical knowledge, Rush recognized the limit of the enlightened medical science, although he did not think it was in contradiction with Christianity.

Under the influence of the New Side Presbyterians in Philadelphia, Rush became a typical Christian. Rush was much impressed with the English Evangelist and filled entire pages of his correspondence with enthusiastic descriptions of George Whitefield’s preaching. He once expressed the wish to engage in the “sublime study of divinity,” declaring that “every pursuit of life must dwindle into nought when Divinity appears.” Rush finally made his decision to take medicine as his profession. However, he was always deeply religious and discovered “how full of comfort are the Holy Scriptures to those reconciled to God!” In reminiscing his boyhood training under the New Side Presbyterian Churches, he highly valued their influences on him. On the 27th of May, 1809, in a letter to his cousin Dr. Finley, he mentioned the Divine education he received in Philadelphia:

The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church is now in session in Philadelphia. It is composed of many excellent men, some of whom are highly distinguished by talents and learning as well as piety. I have had some pleasant visits from a number of them, and have been amply rewarded for my civilities to them, by their agreeable and edifying conversation. They remind me of the happy times, when their places in the church were filled by your venerable father, and his illustrious cotemporaries and friends, Messrs. Tennent, Blair, Davies and Rodgers.

It was in the New Side Presbyterian Churches that Rush formed a religious sensibility. In his student David Ramsay’s view, Rush’s religious faith promoted him to accept the Enlightened thinking. As Ramsay put it, “Rush’s religious sensibility turned upon both the profound awareness of grace and a good-natured skepticism about humanity’s ability to prepare for it. Both came to guide his concept of scientific Enlightenment.”

The Rationalized Religion：Samuel Davies and John Redman's Influences on Benjamin Rush

Samuel Davies, a Presbyterian schoolmaster of the College of New Jersey at Princeton, played an important role for Rush’s religious education, too. Davies’s sermon for Rush was “a call for personal conversion, regeneration, and reform — in the tradition of the Great Awakening — but it was more. It was a call for social conversion, regeneration, and reform — in the tradition of the Enlightenment as well.” In September 1760, when Rush was awarded the Bachelor of Arts degree at the College of New Jersey, Davies wrote a letter of recommendation to Dr. John Redman, a “Log College” alumnus and Philadelphia’s leading physician, and asked him to offer an apprenticeship for Rush. With the help of Davies, Rush got an opportunity to work with Redman and learn medical knowledge from him, which made good preparation for pursuing his medical degree at Edinburgh.

In Rush’s life, Dr. John Redman helped him to know enlightened medical science. In February, 1761, Rush became a medical apprentice to Dr. Redman and served him for six years until he finally made his decision to pursue his medical degree at Edinburgh. Dr. Redman had taken his medical degree at Leyden and became a prominent physician in Philadelphia. As Hermann Boerhaave’s student, Redman naturally asked Rush to study Boerhaave’s works on physiology and pathology “with the closest attention.” In fact, at Dr. Redman’s house, Rush not only read the standard medical works of Hermann Boerhaave, the great Leyden teacher, but read Thomas Sydenham, the “English Hippocrates.” Sydenham’s texts, especially those dealing with the epidemiological theories, was lately adopted by Rush. Recognizing the fact that Sydenham’s contribution to the medicine was neglected and “many invaluable truths” contained in his works, Rush even promoted the publication of The Works of Thomas Sydenham M. D. in Philadelphia in 1809.