WEBVTT NOTE 31. The Quakers and the Abolition of Slavery 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.640 Volume 2, Chapter 31, The Quakers and the Abolition of Slavery 2 00:00:06.640 --> 00:00:14.200 In 1688, Francis D. Pastorius, head of a colony of German Quakers in Pennsylvania, persuaded 3 00:00:14.200 --> 00:00:21.520 his flock to issue a remonstrance against slavery. It was sent to the Philadelphia yearly 4 00:00:21.520 --> 00:00:28.120 meeting of the Quakers, which promptly buried the protest. In stressing slavery as a violation 5 00:00:28.120 --> 00:00:34.920 of the Golden Rule, Pastorius followed the teachings of the Reverend William Edmonston 6 00:00:34.920 --> 00:00:42.760 in Maryland a dozen years before. Anti-slavery protest, even among people as individualistic 7 00:00:42.760 --> 00:00:48.800 as the Quakers, had proved abortive. Some Quakers were still troubled about the issue, 8 00:00:48.800 --> 00:00:57.800 but little was done. The Keithian Quakers denounced slavery in 1693, as did Cad Wallader 9 00:00:57.800 --> 00:01:07.080 A few years later, but the most the yearly beating would do first in 1696 and more stringently 10 00:01:07.080 --> 00:01:13.800 in 1715 was to criticize any further importation of slaves. 11 00:01:13.800 --> 00:01:21.200 The Pennsylvania Assembly governed by Quakers placed prohibitory import duties on the importation 12 00:01:21.200 --> 00:01:27.420 of slaves, but this was disallowed by the Crown under the influence of the slave trading 13 00:01:27.420 --> 00:01:30.380 Royal African Company. 14 00:01:30.380 --> 00:01:37.220 As more and more Quakers acquired slaves, protests within the order intensified. 15 00:01:37.220 --> 00:01:45.220 The minister, William Sotheby, denounced the institution entirely and in 1712 vainly urged 16 00:01:45.220 --> 00:01:49.300 the Pennsylvania legislature to outlaw slavery. 17 00:01:49.300 --> 00:01:54.860 The Chester, Pennsylvania, quarterly meeting was the center of Quaker opposition to the 18 00:01:54.860 --> 00:02:02.980 of Practice, and in 1711 it began a series of resolutions for the expulsion of Quakers 19 00:02:02.980 --> 00:02:10.980 engaging in the importation of slaves. The Pennsylvania Yearly Meeting impatiently refused. 20 00:02:10.980 --> 00:02:17.420 Furthermore, for repeatedly urging Quaker condemnation of slavery, Sotheby was expelled 21 00:02:17.420 --> 00:02:24.420 from the Quaker Communion in 1716 and this suppression intimidated the more cautious Chester 22 00:02:24.920 --> 00:02:31.600 meeting to keep silent. Meanwhile, similar protests were growing among New York and New 23 00:02:31.600 --> 00:02:38.180 England Quakers. Abolition of slavery centered in the Flushing meeting in New York and the 24 00:02:38.180 --> 00:02:44.360 Dartmouth and Nantucket meetings in Massachusetts. Sparking the protest was an English Quaker 25 00:02:44.360 --> 00:02:50.600 Professor, Minister, John Farmer, who raised a protest against both slavery and the slave 26 00:02:50.600 --> 00:02:57.880 trade at the Flushing Quarterly Meeting in 1717. The agitation was joined by Horsman 27 00:02:57.880 --> 00:03:04.040 Mullinex and William Burling. Burling presented an attack on slavery at the New York Yearly 28 00:03:04.040 --> 00:03:10.640 Meeting in 1718, though he himself balked at urging its abolition for fear of causing 29 00:03:10.640 --> 00:03:20.440 In New England, the Nantucket Monthly Meeting in 1717 bravely condemned both the slave trade 30 00:03:20.440 --> 00:03:27.160 and slavery per se, while Dartmouth and Greenwich confined themselves to criticizing the slave 31 00:03:27.160 --> 00:03:35.560 trade. Newport, heavily involved in both slaveholding and slave trading, refused to condemn either 32 00:03:35.560 --> 00:03:46.440 John Farmer came to New England to preach against slavery, thereby intensifying the gulf 33 00:03:46.440 --> 00:03:49.480 between Newport and Nantucket. 34 00:03:49.480 --> 00:03:54.720 After urging the New England Yearly Meeting to denounce slavery in a paper relating to 35 00:03:54.720 --> 00:04:01.120 Negroes, Farmer succeeded only in bringing the meeting's wrath down upon his own head. 36 00:04:01.120 --> 00:04:06.080 The meeting ordered Farmer to stop preaching against the slave trade, to turn over his 37 00:04:06.080 --> 00:04:12.740 papers to its care, and to cease publicizing his essay. Farmer would not allow his rights 38 00:04:12.740 --> 00:04:18.460 to be trampled on, and continued to preach his opposition to slavery. Appealing to the 39 00:04:18.460 --> 00:04:25.120 Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, Farmer, like Sotheby, was ousted from the Quaker Society. 40 00:04:25.120 --> 00:04:31.280 The Philadelphia meeting's only concession to anti-slavery sentiment was to threaten, 41 00:04:31.280 --> 00:04:38.280 in 1719, the expulsion of any Quaker engaging in the importation of slaves. And even this 42 00:04:39.520 --> 00:04:46.320 mild step was not followed by other regional yearly meetings for several decades. The Virginia 43 00:04:46.320 --> 00:04:53.320 yearly meeting only began to advise against the slave trade in 1722, but not until 1768, 44 00:04:55.120 --> 00:05:25.120 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. 45 00:05:25.120 --> 00:05:55.120 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, 46 00:05:55.120 --> 00:06:07.120 Sandeford bravely published his The Mystery of Iniquity, in which he bitterly attacked Quaker slaveholding. 47 00:06:07.120 --> 00:06:14.120 The Quakers, he charged, had had it in their power to make their name glorious by spurning slavery. 48 00:06:14.120 --> 00:06:20.120 Instead, they had shown a defect of spirituality by engaging in this evil practice. 49 00:06:20.120 --> 00:06:26.120 Sandiford's booklet once again radicalized the Quakers of Chester, Pennsylvania. 50 00:06:26.120 --> 00:06:31.120 The Chester Quarterly Meeting now called for the next step in restricting slavery. 51 00:06:31.120 --> 00:06:35.120 Since slave importation was now prohibited to Quakers, 52 00:06:35.120 --> 00:06:40.120 purchase of newly imported slaves would likewise be banned. 53 00:06:40.120 --> 00:06:45.120 Two small Quarterly Meetings in New Jersey backed the Chester view. 54 00:06:45.120 --> 00:06:49.120 The Bucks Quarterly Meeting failed to take a stand. 55 00:06:49.120 --> 00:07:01.120 Philadelphia criticized any further changes in Quaker policy and the Burlington meeting compromised on advising against purchase but without any disciplinary prohibition. 56 00:07:01.120 --> 00:07:08.120 This waffling suggestion was adopted by the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting in 1730. 57 00:07:08.120 --> 00:07:18.120 Also cautioned against was the sale of previously purchased imported slaves, as this would be profiting from slave imports. 58 00:07:18.120 --> 00:07:32.120 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. 59 00:07:32.120 --> 00:07:40.120 Of course, if the Quakers had cared to pursue the logic further, they would have found further contradictions between slavery and peace. 60 00:07:40.120 --> 00:07:55.120 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. 61 00:07:55.120 --> 00:08:07.120 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. 62 00:08:07.120 --> 00:08:15.640 Lay Lay blasted Quaker slaveholders in his magnificently hard-hitting, All-Slave Keepers 63 00:08:15.640 --> 00:08:22.960 That Keep the Innocent in Bondage, Appostates Pretending to Lay Claim to the Pure and Holy 64 00:08:22.960 --> 00:08:32.880 Christian Religion, 1737. Lay denounced Quaker slaveholders as a parcel of hypocrites and 65 00:08:32.880 --> 00:08:40.640 The Quaker ministers who held slaves especially raised his ire, for their hypocrisy set an 66 00:08:40.640 --> 00:08:43.760 example for all Quakers. 67 00:08:43.760 --> 00:08:50.100 Lay pointed out that slavery, just as in the case of murder, was a criminal assault 68 00:08:50.100 --> 00:08:53.160 on Christ's gospel of love. 69 00:08:53.160 --> 00:08:59.240 Lay not only went unheeded, but was forcibly ejected from Quaker meetings. 70 00:08:59.240 --> 00:09:04.680 Into this atmosphere of repression and of general evasion of moral responsibility came 71 00:09:04.680 --> 00:09:11.280 the young man who would almost single-handedly free the Quaker slaves. 72 00:09:11.280 --> 00:09:19.600 John Woolman was a tailor, farmer and shopkeeper in New Jersey, a colony containing many slaves. 73 00:09:19.600 --> 00:09:27.400 In 1742, as a young apprentice making out a bill of sale for a negros, Woolman realized 74 00:09:27.400 --> 00:09:32.540 with a shock, the true nature of the pervasive slave system. 75 00:09:32.540 --> 00:09:38.840 He thereupon decided to devote his life to crusading for the abolition of slavery. 76 00:09:38.840 --> 00:09:45.480 Upon becoming a Quaker minister in 1743, Wolman went up and down the colonies, exhorting 77 00:09:45.480 --> 00:09:51.680 Quakers to take a principled stand against the institution of slavery. 78 00:09:51.680 --> 00:09:58.500 In his influential and beautifully written journal, 1757, emanating a spirit of Christian 79 00:09:58.500 --> 00:10:05.800 love, Wolman wrote of the slaves, These are a people by whose labor the other inhabitants 80 00:10:05.800 --> 00:10:11.960 are in a great measure supported. These are a people who have made no agreement to serve 81 00:10:11.960 --> 00:10:19.920 us and who have not forfeited their liberty. These are the souls for whom Christ died, 82 00:10:19.920 --> 00:10:26.400 And for our conduct towards them, we must answer before that Almighty Being, who is 83 00:10:26.400 --> 00:10:29.200 no respecter of persons. 84 00:10:29.200 --> 00:10:35.920 The great impact of John Woolman is eternal testimony to the effect that ideas and moral 85 00:10:35.920 --> 00:10:40.560 conscience can have upon the actions of men. 86 00:10:40.560 --> 00:10:46.040 For while many Quakers had a vested economic interest in slaves, this interest and its 87 00:10:46.040 --> 00:10:53.640 This ally, natural inertia, could not prevail against the spiritual, moral principles proclaimed 88 00:10:53.640 --> 00:10:55.880 by the lone Quaker. 89 00:10:55.880 --> 00:11:03.920 By 1750, a young teacher in Philadelphia, the Quaker Huguenot, Anthony Benazze, had 90 00:11:03.920 --> 00:11:07.280 joined wholeheartedly in the crusade. 91 00:11:07.280 --> 00:11:15.800 In 1754, Woolman published his influential Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes. 92 00:11:15.800 --> 00:11:20.600 Renouncing slavery as a violation of man's natural rights. 93 00:11:20.600 --> 00:11:26.440 Wolman punctured the usual rationalization of slavery as being for the benefit of the 94 00:11:26.440 --> 00:11:27.440 slaves. 95 00:11:27.440 --> 00:11:34.760 Instead, slavery is precisely to enable the masters and their families to live in luxury 96 00:11:34.760 --> 00:11:38.840 off the exploited labor of their human property. 97 00:11:38.840 --> 00:11:45.840 Furthermore, slave-keeping corrupted and demoralized the slave-owners themselves. 98 00:11:46.420 --> 00:11:52.060 It is not surprising that John Woolman, the man of principle, also stuck to the Quaker 99 00:11:52.060 --> 00:11:58.660 belief in peace during the French and Indian War, even attacking any war that might be 100 00:11:58.660 --> 00:12:05.620 waged against an unjust invasion. When a soldier was quartered upon Woolman against his will, 101 00:12:05.620 --> 00:12:12.060 He refused the payment that the government allowed him as compensation. 102 00:12:12.060 --> 00:12:17.860 Under Woolman's mighty influence, more and more Quakers took up the cause. 103 00:12:17.860 --> 00:12:24.740 Such prominent Quakers as Israel Pemberton, Samuel Fathergill and John Churchman came 104 00:12:24.740 --> 00:12:30.940 out for abolition and various monthly meetings in New Jersey and Pennsylvania condemned the 105 00:12:30.940 --> 00:12:33.480 purchase and keeping of slaves. 106 00:12:33.480 --> 00:12:39.120 The great climax of the abolitionist movement in the Quaker society came at the Philadelphia 107 00:12:39.120 --> 00:12:46.380 Yearly Meeting of 1758. While conservatives and slave owners insisted on the old formulas 108 00:12:46.380 --> 00:12:54.960 of only barring slave imports and enjoining kind treatment of the existing slaves, Woolman 109 00:12:54.960 --> 00:13:02.300 and his fellow radicals launched a principled moral attack on slavery itself. At the Yearly 110 00:13:02.300 --> 00:13:07.060 In the early meeting, it seemed as if the conservatives and the temporizers, with their 111 00:13:07.060 --> 00:13:13.260 pleas of wait until a way would be opened, were going to win. At this point, the great 112 00:13:13.260 --> 00:13:19.100 woolman rose to remind the assembled Quakers once again of principle. Many slaves on this 113 00:13:19.100 --> 00:13:25.660 continent are oppressed, and their cries have entered into the ears of the Most High. It 114 00:13:25.660 --> 00:13:31.700 is not a time for delay. Should we now, through a respect to the private interest of some 115 00:13:31.700 --> 00:13:38.780 Some persons neglect to do our duty in firmness and constancy, still waiting for some extraordinary 116 00:13:38.780 --> 00:13:44.900 means to bring about their deliverance, God may by terrible things in righteousness answer 117 00:13:44.900 --> 00:13:46.760 us. 118 00:13:46.760 --> 00:13:48.840 Woolman swept the day. 119 00:13:48.840 --> 00:13:57.840 The historic yearly meeting of 1758 called upon Quakers to free their slaves and, besides, 120 00:13:57.840 --> 00:14:00.080 to grant them a terminal allowance. 121 00:14:00.080 --> 00:14:06.960 Thus the Quakers took upon themselves the financial loss not only of freeing the slaves, 122 00:14:06.960 --> 00:14:12.800 but even of compensating them, to some extent, for their prior servitude. 123 00:14:12.800 --> 00:14:19.440 The meeting resolved that, excluding temporal considerations or views of self-interest, 124 00:14:19.440 --> 00:14:29.120 we may do unto others as we would they should do unto us, which would induce such friends 125 00:14:29.120 --> 00:14:35.480 as have any slaves to set them at liberty, making a Christian provision according to 126 00:14:35.480 --> 00:14:43.400 their ages. Discipline was to be imposed upon Quakers who persisted in buying, selling or 127 00:14:43.400 --> 00:14:50.840 keeping slaves, but in ways short of actual expulsion. Particularly important was the 128 00:14:50.840 --> 00:14:57.840 meeting's appointment of an energetic committee, headed by Woolman, to persuade and help Quaker 129 00:14:57.840 --> 00:15:04.840 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. 130 00:15:27.840 --> 00:15:34.840 by 1780. In consequence, there was, by the end of the colonial period, an appreciable 131 00:15:35.080 --> 00:15:41.840 decline of slavery in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. More important, the example of the 132 00:15:41.840 --> 00:15:48.840 voluntary abolition of slavery by the Quakers held up a beacon light of freedom to all Americans. 133 00:15:48.840 --> 00:15:53.000 of Freedom to All Americans. 134 00:15:53.000 --> 00:15:59.000 The action of 1758 at the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, by far the most important Quaker 135 00:15:59.000 --> 00:16:06.240 meeting in the colonies, provided an immediate inspiration to Quakers in the other colonies. 136 00:16:06.240 --> 00:16:12.440 Richard Smith, one of the few Quakers in Connecticut, had already announced the freeing of his own 137 00:16:12.440 --> 00:16:13.440 slave. 138 00:16:13.440 --> 00:16:28.440 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. 139 00:16:28.440 --> 00:16:38.240 Boston, Lynn, and Salem Quakers moved to prohibit slavery, but other areas proved far more resistant, 140 00:16:38.240 --> 00:16:46.040 especially Newport and New York City, which resisted pressure from upstate New York meetings. 141 00:16:46.040 --> 00:16:52.280 Maryland and Virginia Quakers split sharply on the issue. Gradually all the Quaker meetings 142 00:16:52.280 --> 00:16:57.880 were moved around to the full abolitionist position, but this could only be done by their 143 00:16:57.880 --> 00:17:05.880 and the fair adoption of the great libertarian and rationalist doctrine of natural rights, increasingly sweeping the colonies. 144 00:17:06.880 --> 00:17:19.880 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. 145 00:17:19.880 --> 00:17:25.880 Justice in the very nature of man required freedom for all. 146 00:17:25.880 --> 00:17:34.880 John Woolman had already proclaimed that liberty was a natural right of all men equally. 147 00:17:34.880 --> 00:17:42.880 And now the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of 1765, reaffirming its decree of seven years before, 148 00:17:42.880 --> 00:17:50.040 In 1764 reasoned the necessity of abolition so that all Quakers might acquit themselves 149 00:17:50.040 --> 00:17:58.140 with justice and equity toward a people who by an unwarrantable custom had been unjustly 150 00:17:58.140 --> 00:18:03.320 deprived of the common privileges of mankind. 151 00:18:03.320 --> 00:18:11.580 And a New York Yearly Meeting of 1768, even while temporizing on abolition, conceded that 152 00:18:11.580 --> 00:18:24.820 This appeal to justice raised Quaker arguments from concern about initial enslavement through 153 00:18:24.820 --> 00:18:30.380 war to the continuing enslavement of the Negroes. 154 00:18:30.380 --> 00:18:37.140 For now, the Quakers saw fully that aggression against the natural liberty of Negroes occurred 155 00:18:37.140 --> 00:18:44.860 not only at the time of their initial enslavement or importation, but all the time that they 156 00:18:44.860 --> 00:18:47.540 were kept in bondage. 157 00:18:47.540 --> 00:18:55.900 Gradualist arguments about preparing the Negroes for freedom had now also to be swept aside. 158 00:18:55.900 --> 00:19:02.340 This insight widened Quaker horizons from religious concern for their fellow slave-owning 159 00:19:02.340 --> 00:19:09.380 and Members to Concern for Slavery in the Society at Large. As the historian Sidney 160 00:19:09.380 --> 00:19:17.120 James puts it, if Negroes had been deprived of natural liberty not only when they had been 161 00:19:17.120 --> 00:19:25.400 forcibly transported from Africa, but every minute that they were held in bondage under 162 00:19:25.400 --> 00:19:51.400 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. 163 00:19:51.400 --> 00:19:58.400 This idea soon pervaded official Quaker language and provided friends with an unfailing encouragement 164 00:19:58.400 --> 00:20:02.400 to fight slave-holding in the world at large. 165 00:20:02.400 --> 00:20:09.400 Ending a wicked usurpation of control over a man's life was as clearly a public duty 166 00:20:09.400 --> 00:20:11.400 as saving him from drowning. 167 00:20:11.400 --> 00:20:18.400 An obligation so positive as to relegate the spiritual or economic preparation of the slave 168 00:20:18.400 --> 00:20:46.400 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. 169 00:21:16.400 --> 00:21:23.780 in alignment with developing rationalist and libertarian thought in England and America. 170 00:21:23.780 --> 00:21:31.260 The old pessimistic emphasis on man's natural depravity had bred a passive and quiescent 171 00:21:31.260 --> 00:21:38.780 attitude in many Quakers. The plea of the conservative anti-abolitionist Quakers was 172 00:21:38.780 --> 00:21:45.780 was not to disturb the society and to wait for God to act against any worldly evils. 173 00:21:46.980 --> 00:21:53.260 But the new rationalist libertarianism of the Enlightenment demonstrated that individual 174 00:21:53.260 --> 00:22:00.260 freedom was a good in itself and a necessary condition for leading a virtuous life. 175 00:22:01.540 --> 00:22:07.420 It showed that where man had been invading this freedom, man himself could now act to 176 00:22:07.420 --> 00:22:14.420 to remove the invasion. Furthermore, they now saw that reason and justice need not balk 177 00:22:15.660 --> 00:22:22.660 at the weight of irrational and oppressive social custom. As James declares, reformers 178 00:22:23.140 --> 00:22:29.420 could proceed to restore natural liberty without waiting for inward transformations which would 179 00:22:29.420 --> 00:22:35.980 make the freed worthy of their freedom, or to combat social injustice without waiting 180 00:22:35.980 --> 00:22:42.760 and for divine interference to correct it. Furthermore, convinced that natural rights 181 00:22:42.760 --> 00:22:49.900 existed apart from the will of the civil community, or even in the face of contrary laws, the 182 00:22:49.900 --> 00:22:57.060 Quaker reformers could use a right to liberty as grounds for defying a legal protection 183 00:22:57.060 --> 00:23:03.140 of slavery. Before long, all the Quaker meetings north and south had followed Philadelphia's 184 00:23:03.140 --> 00:23:09.460 Quakers lead and abolished slavery, finally enforcing the decree with threat of expulsion. 185 00:23:09.460 --> 00:23:18.460 By the late 1770s and early 1780s, slavery among the Quakers in America had been voluntarily 186 00:23:18.460 --> 00:23:20.900 Totally and Totally Abolished.