When the Ideas Shifted but the Movement Endured: William Whipper and Black Temperance in Antebellum Philadelphia
- Michael Clemmons
- Feb 1
- 19 min read
Updated: Feb 1
In the 1830s, Black Philadelphians were building something new.
Beyond churches and beneficial societies, Black-led organizations formed to confront the most intimate and destructive forces shaping daily life, enslavement, poverty, violence, and addiction.
Among the most urgent of these struggles was alcohol abuse. Freedom from intemperance was not understood as a private moral choice, but as a collective survival strategy tied to emancipation, political power, and the future of Black civilization itself.
Black temperance societies organized parades, built halls, founded schools, and convened conventions. They argued that addiction functioned as a form of internal enslavement, capable of undoing freedom from within.
Black newspapers became sites of vigorous debate about public philosophy. Questions about morality, race, discipline, and strategy spilled into print, turning newspapers into arenas where the future of Black public life was argued line by line.
At the center of one of the most consequential debates was William Whipper, a man remembered today less for what he built than for what he was accused of believing. His clash with newspaper editor Samuel Cornish played out in the pages of The Colored American and The National Reformer.
This blog revisits those competing ideas, to rehabilitate our understanding of William Whipper, the arguments he made, the movement they inspired, and what that conflict tells us about the birth of Black public life in the United States.
Who Was William Whipper?
William Whipper was born free on Feb. 22, 1804 in the small rural village of Little Britain, Lancaster County, PA. He was raised with 2 brothers and 2 sisters. Although there is no record of him having any formal education, he was well read and knowledgeable.
At the age of 24 he moved to Philadelphia and began working as a steam scourer, cleaning clothes, while living at 32 N. 6th street. Early in 1835 he opened a free labor and temperance grocery store “next door to Bethel church” that also sold anti-slavery pamphlets and books.
Shortly after arriving he showed his intellect through his association with one of the first Black literary societies in America, the Colored Reading Society in Philadelphia for Mental Improvement.
William Whipper has most notably stood out in history for his philosophy of moral reform which argued that Black temperance and moral influence would persuade white acknowledgment of Black humanity, and even end enslavement.
A Life Dedicated to Freedom Seekers
Even though Whipper's ideas were controversial, his actions were clear. He was unequivocally dedicated to the freedom of his people.
After the 1834 Colored Convention in New York, Whipper relocated from Philadelphia to Columbia, Pennsylvania. We believe that he was influenced to move by Stephen Smith, a community leader and an incredibly successful Black lumberyard owner, who offered him a job opportunity at the convention. The 1834 Colored Convention was the first recorded instance of them being at the same venue and they probably even returned to Pennsylvania together. Whipper gave up his store in Philadelphia and moved within months.
Together Whipper and Smith operated as a sort of dynamic duo, engineering an Underground Railroad system that freed hundreds using actual trains that they owned; the above ground underground railroad.
Columbia’s economic role as a transportation hub (where bridge, rail, canal, river and turnpike met) made it a strategic location along the Susquehanna River and its thriving commerce presented new avenues for both activism and entrepreneurship.
They later owned stock in the train line and the bridge over the Susquehanna River. They operated lumber yards at both Columbia and Philadelphia. The Philadelphia lumberyard was at Broad and Noble, directly across the street from the current Philadelphia School District Building. This is most likely where people hidden in compartments of Smith and Whipper's train cars, hopped off the train and into a new life in Philadelphia. Read more about that here.
Whipper spent decades actively engaged in the real work of helping people escape enslavement. His house in Columbia was at the end of the bridge over the Susquehanna River. People escaping enslavement would arrive by boat but sometimes they arrived by foot and had to cross the bridge. When they crossed, they arrived at Whipper's house and were helped on their way to freedom.
He wrote in a letter to William Still, after the Civil War:
"My house was at the end of the bridge and as I kept the station, I was frequently called up in the night to take charge of the passengers. On their arrival, they were generally penniless and hungry. I have received hundreds im that condition, fed and sheltered from one to 17 at one time in a single night. Some I sent west by boats, to Pittsburgh, and others to you in our cars to Philadelphia" (Page 736, William Still, The Underground Railroad)
We have some material evidence of this work thanks to the curatorial work and foresight of William Dorsey, Leon Gardiner and the American Negro Historical Society. On April 6, 1839 Whipper sent the following brief letter to Jacob C. White, a prominent Black business owner and abolitionist, in Philadelphia.
“I send to your Society (vigilance) a man, & woman, the latter is free, the former is in a very perilous situation having seen his Master this afternoon. You will endeavor to render them the usual facilities. “
Here we see Whipper interacting with the Vigilance Committee, a Black led group that helped people to freedom. He most likely put this couple on one of the 22 train cars that he owned and sent them to start a new life in Philadelphia.
Primarily used to move lumber and coal between Columbia and Philadelphia, these railcars also had secret compartments for moving freedom seekers. The use of above ground railcars for Underground Railroad work was a network that started in York with another Black business owner William C. Goodridge, who also owned railcars. From York to Columbia and then to Philadelphia. All on trains.
These records and others documented in William Still’s Journal C, complicate the idea of Whipper as detached from struggle or insulated from risk
.
His Ideas Challenged
Much of Whipper’s controversial reputation stems from two closely related ideas that became shorthand for his politics, and which were later flattened into something far more enduring than he may have intended.
Intemperance as an Evil Equal to Enslavement
Whipper’s moral reform argument is primarily focused on intemperance (alcohol addiction), which he treats as a force structurally equivalent to slavery.
In his January 8, 1834 Presidential Address to the Colored Temperance Society of Philadelphia, Whipper argued that slavery and intemperance are “concomitant,” mutually reinforcing systems of domination.
While slavery destroys the humanity and civilization of both the enslaver and enslaved, Intemperance, he argues, is not merely a vice. It becomes a new more powerful master.
He describes it as a demon “more ferocious in his character and despotic in the cruelty of his inflictions,” one whose power is made more dangerous by the fact that “those whom he oppresses most, love him best.” In this framing, the formerly enslaved person who gains freedom only to lose it to drink has not escaped domination. He has simply changed masters.
For Whipper, drink was the Forbidden Fruit offered in Eden. Liquor threatened not only individual well-being but the survival of Black institutions themselves. He warns that “uncontrollable liberty,” the unchecked freedom to drink, would “destroy our institutions and overthrow the foundations of government.”
Whipper further argues that the way out of this new enslavement is the power of a whole people becoming sober ("temperate"). 300,000 temperate free Black people would, he argued, create a moral force, changing white public opinion so much so that it would “disperse slavery from the land”.
He argued that intemperance prevented Black people from occupying “the highest situation in the order of intellectual beings,” and that only through moral purity could “our sable hue be changed from a badge of degradation to a badge of honor.”
For him, the control of alcohol was not just about interpersonal relationships. Rather the move into temperance should be something that is orchestrated by government.
But he’s probably not referring to the municipality of Philadelphia. He’s referring to moral governance in the Black institutions - churches and beneficial societies. He also suggested that a new type of organization - a “governmental power” - would help usher in these changes.
This argument, however, carried serious consequences. By claiming that universal Black temperance would create a “moral force” capable of dispersing slavery and reorganizing public opinion, Whipper implicitly placed responsibility for emancipation on Black behavior.
Even when not intended as blame, this language created gates to humanity. It suggested that freedom, equality, and respect depended on moral qualification, and that Black people must become more morally sound than white Americans before they could be accepted as equals. This is one of the reasons his ideas later hardened into a reputation for elitism.
Rejecting Racial Categorization as a Basis for Rights
Running alongside his temperance argument was Whipper’s rejection of race as a signifier of identity.
Whipper attended the first six Colored Conventions and his ideas started to gain traction. At the 1835 Convention he (seconded by his friend Robert Purvis) made the following motion,
“to abandon the use of the word “colored” and “Africans”, when either speaking or writing concerning themselves: and especially to remove the title of African from their institutions, the marbles of churches, etc.”
To many contemporaries, and to later readers, this sounded like an attempt to erase Black identity, assimilate, or even pass.
Whipper framed this idea not as a rejection of Black people, but as a rejection of the political power of racial categorization itself. He believed that racial labels hardened prejudice and locked Black Americans into a permanent defensive posture.
In the same period, and later in The National Reformer, Whipper insists that rights should not flow from color, identity, or racial distinction.
He writes:
“For ourselves we solicit neither favor nor patronage on the ground of complexional merit. We are unable to discover why the different shades of the human form should inculcate in us feelings of glory or shame.” National Reformer, April 1839, Vol. 1
His proposal to abandon racial naming at the 1835 Colored Convention grew directly out of these beliefs.
This position was explosive.
To contemporaries, and to later readers, it sounded like erasure, assimilation, or an attempt to distance himself from Black identity altogether.
In practice, it also underestimated how deeply race structured law, violence, and political economy. Rejecting racial categorization did not prevent racialized punishment, as the events of racialized mob violence of 1838 and 1842 would soon make clear.
Why These Two Arguments Made Him a Target
After the 1835 Convention, Whipper founded the American Moral Reform Society (AMRS). The organization emphasized temperance, education, and self-discipline, and challenged members to consider how individual behavior affected collective society.
To bolster his movement Whipper established an AMRS newspaper The National Reformer in Sept. 1838.
This newspaper offered a direct line to the public, allowing him to advocate for the AMRS' principles. For the next year, The National Reformer was the voice for those who believed that discipline, education, and communal virtue would pave the road to social transformation. Whipper’s partner Stephen Smith was the Columbia agent.
His ideas from 1834 and 1835 now had a growing platform in the AMRS.
His temperance argument framed freedom as something that could be lost from within, and his language often dehumanized the very people he sought to protect.
His rejection of racial categorization challenged the emerging politics of Black solidarity at a moment when shared racial identity was becoming a tool of survival.
Both arguments assumed that moral force could overcome structural power.
Debate in the Newspapers
Samuel Cornish, the influential editor of The Colored American newspaper, openly critiqued Whipper’s philosophies within its pages. Historian Van Gosse even suggests that Cornish used the word 'Colored' in the name of the newspaper as an open revolt against the AMRS contention that racially based names like “African” or “Black” should not be used. (page 92).
It will be remembered that Cornish spent significant time in his adult life at 7th and Bainbridge at the First African Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. So he was well familiar with most of the Philadelphia leadership players. Cornish left Philadelphia in 1824 after the death of First African Presbyterian founding pastor John Gloucester. Gloucester's death caused a split in the congregation with some favoring Cornish to become the next pastor, instead of John Gloucester's son Jeremiah. This situation eventually resulted in Cornish removing himself from consideration and moving to New York where he founded The Colored American.
Even though he had endorsed Whipper’s ideas at the 1834 Convention, by 1837 Cornish wrote somewhat respectfully (Whipper was the Columbia agent for his newspaper) but critically in The Colored American, of Purvis, Whipper and their philosophy as it was delineated at the annual meeting:
“We found a Purvis, a Whipper, and others, (of whose Christian benevolence and cultivated intellect, we have so many and such strong evidences,) vague, wild, indefinite, and confused in their views. They created shadows, fought the wind, and bayed the moon, for more than three days.”
He even called for the President, James Forten, to resign. He contended that the AMRS should focus on more practical benefit to Black people, rather than promoting a moral reform to benefit all of American society.
He wrote:
“the Society [AMRS] will never do any good, unless it be re-organized and adopt some definite objects of benevolence and definite measures of action.”
He continued to critique the group’s emphasis on complexional philosophy and naming over practice :
“It is merit, and not complexion, virtue and not name, that makes the man or magnifies the nation”
Whipper willingly engaged in the philosophical debate by responding to Cornish with a letter penned on Sept. 18, 1837, in which he accepts Cornish’s invitation to discuss (not debate) and states his case using the principles of the American Anti-Slavery Society and the Bible.
Whipper's missive did not sway Cornish. Cornish’s response printed in The Colored American on Feb. 10, 1838, immediately after Whipper’s letter, states:
“Brother Whipper is a good philanthropist IN PRACTICE; efficient and constant in effort, but in theory he has not learned his A-B-C’s- he is as visionary as the wind”.
Their discussion was sometimes biting, but mixed with a healthy dose of respect, recognition of common goals and acknowledged as being theoretical.
While Cornish respected Whipper’s abolitionist work, he took issue with the emphasis the AMRS placed on Black morality leading the forefront of an American revolution in values. He felt that the 'object' of the work of Black people should be Black people - that there was enough work there.
He writes:
"We think it TOO MUCH for brother Whipper to carry the whole nation upon his shoulders, in pioneering the improvement of our colored citizens."
Cornish's challenges opened the way for other Black leaders to criticize the AMRS and for another competing organization, the Association for Moral and Mental Improvement (AMMI) to form. (Van Gosse 92)
Transformation and the Last Issue
In Oct. 1838 the state of Pennsylvania ratified a new state constitution that removed the right of Black men to vote.
This devastating blow to all Black people in the state did not immediately discourage Whipper from emphasizing his philosophy on moral reform and colorblindness.
However, change is inevitable.
By 1839, Whipper’s life had shifted profoundly. He had married and started a family, and the responsibilities of fatherhood began to shape his outlook. At the same time, his work with Stephen Smith in the lumberyard progressed, bringing new demands and opportunities. The time and energy once dedicated to reform and publishing were redirected by the needs of his wife, child, and burgeoning career.
A Change in Philosophy
In the last issue of The National Reformer (December 1839) as his following was in decline, Whipper changed his ideas completely in an extended essay, to the point of asking forgiveness for his errors.
This reversal must be understood in context. In 1838, the Black community, alongside white allies the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, undertook extraordinary efforts to prove moral worth and civic responsibility in defense of the Black vote. A detailed census documented homeownership, mutual aid, stable churches and schools, and hundreds of Black-owned businesses in Philadelphia. Despite this evidence of citizenship in practice, white Pennsylvanians still chose to disenfranchise Black people.
This approach - to provide proof of worth through economic and social signifiers - echoed Whipper’s moral reform beliefs.
It must have been quite a shock and a clarifying moment for Whipper when despite this evidence of worthiness, white Pennsylvanians still chose to disenfranchise Black people.
By 1839, he writes:
“We, too, have been allured by false idioms. We have been advocates of the doctrine that we must be “elevated” before we could expect to enjoy the privileges of American citizenship. We now utterly discard it, and ask pardon for our former errors.”
This was a testament to Whipper’s ability to observe reality, listen to reasoned arguments and critically examine his own philosophies.
Whipper’s business in Columbia facilitated his transition from theory and philosophy to the practicalities of business, abolition and family life. This is not to say that he abandoned his intellect. He continued to correspond with other thought leaders for many years. But he recognized the power of a steady and lucrative income to allow him to impact the lives of himself, his family and those liberating themselves from bondage.
There were very few Black men who could “have freely given one thousand dollars”, “borrowed $1400 on [their] own individual account” or “from 1847 to 1860, contributed…one thousand dollars annually” to aid in the cause of freedom as Whipper did. He put his money where his mouth was. (The Underground Railroad, p. 739-740).
After the Civil War, he bought the house on Lombard Street next door to Stephen Smith's house. Both houses still exist and were used as Underground Railroad stops.
Moral Reform After Whipper
Although Whipper focused on Underground Railroad support after the 1830s, Black temperance reform took on new life.
In Philadelphia, leaders such as James Forten Jr. and James J.G. Bias continued temperance and improvement work through the American Moral and Mental Improvement Association. The AMMI held a convention in June 1838 at Union Baptist church on Little Pine (now Addison between 6th and 7th). And in 1843, Black leaders convened a temperance convention that drew directly from the foundation laid by the AMRS and the AMMI.
We could say that Whipper’s legacy is that Moral reform did not fail entirely when he moved away from leading these ideas - rather it adapted.
AMMI for example focused less on the ability to shift white public opinion and more on the role of temperance in undergirding a stable Black community,
The 1838 AMMI conference acted as a hub to bring churches and beneficial societies together around community issues including practical needs like clothing for school children, and the collection of statistics on the Black community.
The Attack on the Temperance Parade and Temperance Hall Destroyed
The limits of the idea of that Black moral propriety would facilitate a growing white acceptance were made painfully visible in 1842 when the ultimate symbols of Black morality, a parade celebrating sobriety and a hall dedicated to education and community uplift, were attacked by white mobs.
The Temperance movement enjoyed growing numbers in the 1840s. By 1843, there were seven Black temperance groups in Philadelphia. Dr. James J.G. Bias was the president of the largest - the Moyamensing Benevolent Temperance Society of Philadelphia which claimed 1100 members in 1843.
In 1841 a hall dedicated to temperance was opened at the corner of 8th and Bedford (now 8th and Kater).
Bias, who notably was a Philadelphia agent for Cornish's Colored American, may have been working at this site full time. In 1842 he moved from his home at 2 Acorn Alley to 8th and Bedford, which is the corner where Temperance Hall was located. This move may have been in response to his growing responsibilities in the temperance movement.
Abolitionist Henry Clarke Wright described ‘Temperance Hall’ on Bedford Street as “being in the midst of brothels, grog-shops, gambling hells, kept by whites and blacks -mainly whites”. Despite the environment, the small brick hall had successfully become “a comfortable little place in which to gather” with an attached sabbath school where meetings were held weekly.
This hall was attacked during the Lombard Street attack and then was torn down by white magistrates of Moyamensing, who complained of its ties to anti-slavery and that it's existence in the neighborhood would lead to additional violence. In their write up in the press they complained about anti-slavery documents buried in the cornerstone of the building. While trying to appear gracious and patrician, they instead revealed their anti-Black leanings. As government officials, they then used their influence to tear down a perfectly good hall and school.
Black leaders went to the press with thier read of the situation; that Temperance Hall was torn down because of the success of the Temperance movement and its deleterious effect on liquor den profits. In 1842, Dr. James Bias estimated that 450 rum sellers in Moyamensing experienced a 90% reduction in average daily receipts (from $5 a day to $.50 a day) due to the movement's influence. (Philadelphia Daily Chronicle)
The biased nature of this episode did not escape public notice. Temperance Hall is one of the victims of violence called out the famous satirical 1842 political cartoon "View of the City of Brotherly Love"
Temperance has been the hidden player in much of Black Philadelphia history.
For example, what we now know as the Lombard Street Riot was an attack on a Temperance parade of over 1000 Black men, women and children.
It was this temperance parade that was attacked by white mobs, starting two days of wanton racialized violence and destruction.
Despite the mob violence, in 1843 AMRS also established the “Moral Reform Retreat" - a shelter by Black women AMRS leaders Amy 'Hetty' Reckless and Hetty Burr with the intention to rehabilitate Black women involved in sex work. The Retreat also had an attached school. Notably William Still attended adult education classes at this school when he first moved to Philadelphia in the 1840s. Located at the corner of 7th and Lombard, it served additionally as an Underground Railroad safe house.
WilliamWhipper's Legacy
William Whipper’s story is one of conventions and transitions, between cities, between philosophies, and between the personal and the political. His journey from reformer and editor to family man and entrepreneur exemplifies the constant negotiation between ideals and reality that defined nineteenth-century Black activism.
His nephew, William J. Whipper, who grew up in the Philadelphia region, later emerged as an important Reconstruction leader in Beaufort, South Carolina. It is likely that ideas about civil rights, strategy, and organizing circulated through family and business networks, relaying experience and lessons from the Black Metropolis of the North to the Reconstruction South.
This influence was also made manifest when Whipper's niece Francis stood up for her civil rights in 1867, refusing to give up her seat on South Carolina public transit.
Francis' son Leigh (Whipper's grand nephew) had a successful Hollywood acting career and was one of the founders of the Negro's Actors Guild of America. Here is his portrait by Loïs Mailou Jones.
The debates between Whipper and Cornish, preserved in their newspapers, remain touchstones in African American intellectual history. Whipper’s change of heart, recorded in the final issue of his paper, underscores that even the firmest visionaries are reshaped by life’s transitions, by love, family, and historical rupture.
Ultimately, the story of William Whipper and the American Moral Reform Society is not just a chronicle of moral philosophy. It is a meditation on the enduring balance between hope and circumstance, theory and practice, a lesson as relevant now as it was in the 1830.
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