Volume 2, Chapter 31, The Quakers and the Abolition of Slavery
In 1688, Francis D. Pastorius, head of a colony of German Quakers in Pennsylvania, persuaded
his flock to issue a remonstrance against slavery. It was sent to the Philadelphia yearly
meeting of the Quakers, which promptly buried the protest. In stressing slavery as a violation
of the Golden Rule, Pastorius followed the teachings of the Reverend William Edmonston
in Maryland a dozen years before. Anti-slavery protest, even among people as individualistic
as the Quakers, had proved abortive. Some Quakers were still troubled about the issue,
but little was done. The Keithian Quakers denounced slavery in 1693, as did Cad Wallader
A few years later, but the most the yearly beating would do first in 1696 and more stringently
in 1715 was to criticize any further importation of slaves.
The Pennsylvania Assembly governed by Quakers placed prohibitory import duties on the importation
of slaves, but this was disallowed by the Crown under the influence of the slave trading
Royal African Company.
As more and more Quakers acquired slaves, protests within the order intensified.
The minister, William Sotheby, denounced the institution entirely and in 1712 vainly urged
the Pennsylvania legislature to outlaw slavery.
The Chester, Pennsylvania, quarterly meeting was the center of Quaker opposition to the
of Practice, and in 1711 it began a series of resolutions for the expulsion of Quakers
engaging in the importation of slaves. The Pennsylvania Yearly Meeting impatiently refused.
Furthermore, for repeatedly urging Quaker condemnation of slavery, Sotheby was expelled
from the Quaker Communion in 1716 and this suppression intimidated the more cautious Chester
meeting to keep silent. Meanwhile, similar protests were growing among New York and New
England Quakers. Abolition of slavery centered in the Flushing meeting in New York and the
Dartmouth and Nantucket meetings in Massachusetts. Sparking the protest was an English Quaker
Professor, Minister, John Farmer, who raised a protest against both slavery and the slave
trade at the Flushing Quarterly Meeting in 1717. The agitation was joined by Horsman
Mullinex and William Burling. Burling presented an attack on slavery at the New York Yearly
Meeting in 1718, though he himself balked at urging its abolition for fear of causing
In New England, the Nantucket Monthly Meeting in 1717 bravely condemned both the slave trade
and slavery per se, while Dartmouth and Greenwich confined themselves to criticizing the slave
trade. Newport, heavily involved in both slaveholding and slave trading, refused to condemn either
John Farmer came to New England to preach against slavery, thereby intensifying the gulf
between Newport and Nantucket.
After urging the New England Yearly Meeting to denounce slavery in a paper relating to
Negroes, Farmer succeeded only in bringing the meeting's wrath down upon his own head.
The meeting ordered Farmer to stop preaching against the slave trade, to turn over his
papers to its care, and to cease publicizing his essay. Farmer would not allow his rights
to be trampled on, and continued to preach his opposition to slavery. Appealing to the
Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, Farmer, like Sotheby, was ousted from the Quaker Society.
The Philadelphia meeting's only concession to anti-slavery sentiment was to threaten,
in 1719, the expulsion of any Quaker engaging in the importation of slaves. And even this
mild step was not followed by other regional yearly meetings for several decades. The Virginia
yearly meeting only began to advise against the slave trade in 1722, but not until 1768,
did it move over to discipline. New England advised against slave imports in 1717 and only made the prohibition mandatory in 1760. Maryland issued a hesitant prohibition in 1759-60. New York advised in 1718 and only prohibited the slave trade in 1774. The North Carolina Yearly Meeting only advised in 1770.
The high-handed treatment of Suthby and Farmer suppressed further anti-slavery agitation for over a decade. Finally, in 1729, the question was reopened by one courageous man, Ralph Sandeford. An English Quaker and businessman, Sandeford settled in Philadelphia, only to be revolted at the sight of slave auctions. In this year, despite refusal of permission to pay,
Sandeford bravely published his The Mystery of Iniquity, in which he bitterly attacked Quaker slaveholding.
The Quakers, he charged, had had it in their power to make their name glorious by spurning slavery.
Instead, they had shown a defect of spirituality by engaging in this evil practice.
Sandiford's booklet once again radicalized the Quakers of Chester, Pennsylvania.
The Chester Quarterly Meeting now called for the next step in restricting slavery.
Since slave importation was now prohibited to Quakers,
purchase of newly imported slaves would likewise be banned.
Two small Quarterly Meetings in New Jersey backed the Chester view.
The Bucks Quarterly Meeting failed to take a stand.
Philadelphia criticized any further changes in Quaker policy and the Burlington meeting compromised on advising against purchase but without any disciplinary prohibition.
This waffling suggestion was adopted by the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting in 1730.
Also cautioned against was the sale of previously purchased imported slaves, as this would be profiting from slave imports.
For Quakers, the slave trade was easier to attack as inducing and profiting from the booty of war in Africa, and further profit from such imports could also be condemned as grounded in war.
Of course, if the Quakers had cared to pursue the logic further, they would have found further contradictions between slavery and peace.
1. Even domestic slaves originated in Africa and war, and 2. Enforcing of slavery itself rested on violence and hence on aggressive force against the slaves.
Ralph Sandeford, heartbroken at his defeat at the yearly meeting, soon died, but his suit was quickly taken up by his friend and fellow English businessman Benjamin Lay.
Lay Lay blasted Quaker slaveholders in his magnificently hard-hitting, All-Slave Keepers
That Keep the Innocent in Bondage, Appostates Pretending to Lay Claim to the Pure and Holy
Christian Religion, 1737. Lay denounced Quaker slaveholders as a parcel of hypocrites and
The Quaker ministers who held slaves especially raised his ire, for their hypocrisy set an
example for all Quakers.
Lay pointed out that slavery, just as in the case of murder, was a criminal assault
on Christ's gospel of love.
Lay not only went unheeded, but was forcibly ejected from Quaker meetings.
Into this atmosphere of repression and of general evasion of moral responsibility came
the young man who would almost single-handedly free the Quaker slaves.
John Woolman was a tailor, farmer and shopkeeper in New Jersey, a colony containing many slaves.
In 1742, as a young apprentice making out a bill of sale for a negros, Woolman realized
with a shock, the true nature of the pervasive slave system.
He thereupon decided to devote his life to crusading for the abolition of slavery.
Upon becoming a Quaker minister in 1743, Wolman went up and down the colonies, exhorting
Quakers to take a principled stand against the institution of slavery.
In his influential and beautifully written journal, 1757, emanating a spirit of Christian
love, Wolman wrote of the slaves, These are a people by whose labor the other inhabitants
are in a great measure supported. These are a people who have made no agreement to serve
us and who have not forfeited their liberty. These are the souls for whom Christ died,
And for our conduct towards them, we must answer before that Almighty Being, who is
no respecter of persons.
The great impact of John Woolman is eternal testimony to the effect that ideas and moral
conscience can have upon the actions of men.
For while many Quakers had a vested economic interest in slaves, this interest and its
This ally, natural inertia, could not prevail against the spiritual, moral principles proclaimed
by the lone Quaker.
By 1750, a young teacher in Philadelphia, the Quaker Huguenot, Anthony Benazze, had
joined wholeheartedly in the crusade.
In 1754, Woolman published his influential Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes.
Renouncing slavery as a violation of man's natural rights.
Wolman punctured the usual rationalization of slavery as being for the benefit of the
slaves.
Instead, slavery is precisely to enable the masters and their families to live in luxury
off the exploited labor of their human property.
Furthermore, slave-keeping corrupted and demoralized the slave-owners themselves.
It is not surprising that John Woolman, the man of principle, also stuck to the Quaker
belief in peace during the French and Indian War, even attacking any war that might be
waged against an unjust invasion. When a soldier was quartered upon Woolman against his will,
He refused the payment that the government allowed him as compensation.
Under Woolman's mighty influence, more and more Quakers took up the cause.
Such prominent Quakers as Israel Pemberton, Samuel Fathergill and John Churchman came
out for abolition and various monthly meetings in New Jersey and Pennsylvania condemned the
purchase and keeping of slaves.
The great climax of the abolitionist movement in the Quaker society came at the Philadelphia
Yearly Meeting of 1758. While conservatives and slave owners insisted on the old formulas
of only barring slave imports and enjoining kind treatment of the existing slaves, Woolman
and his fellow radicals launched a principled moral attack on slavery itself. At the Yearly
In the early meeting, it seemed as if the conservatives and the temporizers, with their
pleas of wait until a way would be opened, were going to win. At this point, the great
woolman rose to remind the assembled Quakers once again of principle. Many slaves on this
continent are oppressed, and their cries have entered into the ears of the Most High. It
is not a time for delay. Should we now, through a respect to the private interest of some
Some persons neglect to do our duty in firmness and constancy, still waiting for some extraordinary
means to bring about their deliverance, God may by terrible things in righteousness answer
us.
Woolman swept the day.
The historic yearly meeting of 1758 called upon Quakers to free their slaves and, besides,
to grant them a terminal allowance.
Thus the Quakers took upon themselves the financial loss not only of freeing the slaves,
but even of compensating them, to some extent, for their prior servitude.
The meeting resolved that, excluding temporal considerations or views of self-interest,
we may do unto others as we would they should do unto us, which would induce such friends
as have any slaves to set them at liberty, making a Christian provision according to
their ages. Discipline was to be imposed upon Quakers who persisted in buying, selling or
keeping slaves, but in ways short of actual expulsion. Particularly important was the
meeting's appointment of an energetic committee, headed by Woolman, to persuade and help Quaker
By 1774, all the willing Quakers in New Jersey and Pennsylvania had freed their slaves. In that year, disciplinary threats of expulsion were imposed for slave purchasing, holding, or selling, and as a result, all the Quakers had freed their slaves from slavery.
by 1780. In consequence, there was, by the end of the colonial period, an appreciable
decline of slavery in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. More important, the example of the
voluntary abolition of slavery by the Quakers held up a beacon light of freedom to all Americans.
of Freedom to All Americans.
The action of 1758 at the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, by far the most important Quaker
meeting in the colonies, provided an immediate inspiration to Quakers in the other colonies.
Richard Smith, one of the few Quakers in Connecticut, had already announced the freeing of his own
slave.
Woolman's trip to New England in 1760 inspired the monthly meeting in South Kingston, Rhode Island, in the Narragansett area, where slavery was widespread, to outlaw slavery two years later on pain of expulsion.
Boston, Lynn, and Salem Quakers moved to prohibit slavery, but other areas proved far more resistant,
especially Newport and New York City, which resisted pressure from upstate New York meetings.
Maryland and Virginia Quakers split sharply on the issue. Gradually all the Quaker meetings
were moved around to the full abolitionist position, but this could only be done by their
and the fair adoption of the great libertarian and rationalist doctrine of natural rights, increasingly sweeping the colonies.
With the aid of natural right theory, the Quakers now realized that not only benevolent Christian morality, but also basic justice, required freedom for every man.
Justice in the very nature of man required freedom for all.
John Woolman had already proclaimed that liberty was a natural right of all men equally.
And now the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of 1765, reaffirming its decree of seven years before,
In 1764 reasoned the necessity of abolition so that all Quakers might acquit themselves
with justice and equity toward a people who by an unwarrantable custom had been unjustly
deprived of the common privileges of mankind.
And a New York Yearly Meeting of 1768, even while temporizing on abolition, conceded that
This appeal to justice raised Quaker arguments from concern about initial enslavement through
war to the continuing enslavement of the Negroes.
For now, the Quakers saw fully that aggression against the natural liberty of Negroes occurred
not only at the time of their initial enslavement or importation, but all the time that they
were kept in bondage.
Gradualist arguments about preparing the Negroes for freedom had now also to be swept aside.
This insight widened Quaker horizons from religious concern for their fellow slave-owning
and Members to Concern for Slavery in the Society at Large. As the historian Sidney
James puts it, if Negroes had been deprived of natural liberty not only when they had been
forcibly transported from Africa, but every minute that they were held in bondage under
In this light, a master conferred no boon when he liberated a slave. He gave belatedly what he had hitherto withheld, and simply ceased to detain a person who was, and who always had been, free.
This idea soon pervaded official Quaker language and provided friends with an unfailing encouragement
to fight slave-holding in the world at large.
Ending a wicked usurpation of control over a man's life was as clearly a public duty
as saving him from drowning.
An obligation so positive as to relegate the spiritual or economic preparation of the slave
The Quakers were thus led to shift from their previous pessimistic view of unregenerate and sinful natural man to an optimistic view of man as possessing the natural and God-given liberty to choose the Christian in moral life for himself.
in alignment with developing rationalist and libertarian thought in England and America.
The old pessimistic emphasis on man's natural depravity had bred a passive and quiescent
attitude in many Quakers. The plea of the conservative anti-abolitionist Quakers was
was not to disturb the society and to wait for God to act against any worldly evils.
But the new rationalist libertarianism of the Enlightenment demonstrated that individual
freedom was a good in itself and a necessary condition for leading a virtuous life.
It showed that where man had been invading this freedom, man himself could now act to
to remove the invasion. Furthermore, they now saw that reason and justice need not balk
at the weight of irrational and oppressive social custom. As James declares, reformers
could proceed to restore natural liberty without waiting for inward transformations which would
make the freed worthy of their freedom, or to combat social injustice without waiting
and for divine interference to correct it. Furthermore, convinced that natural rights
existed apart from the will of the civil community, or even in the face of contrary laws, the
Quaker reformers could use a right to liberty as grounds for defying a legal protection
of slavery. Before long, all the Quaker meetings north and south had followed Philadelphia's
Quakers lead and abolished slavery, finally enforcing the decree with threat of expulsion.
By the late 1770s and early 1780s, slavery among the Quakers in America had been voluntarily
Totally and Totally Abolished.