The turning point came in 1758. The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting [of Quakers] recorded a “unanimous concern” against “the practice of importing, buying, selling, or keeping slaves for term of life.” This was the first success for the cause of abolition anywhere in the Western world. “The history of the early abolitionist movement,” writes historian Arthur Zilversmit, “is essentially the record of Quaker antislavery activities.”
Quakers also took an active interest in the welfare of former slaves. Many masters helped to support their slaves after manumitting them. Others compensated them for their labor during slavery. When Abner Woolman (the brother of John Woodman) in 1767 freed two slaves his wife had inherited, he decided to pay them a sum equal to the amount that the estate had been increased by their labor, and asked the Haddonfield (New Jersey) meeting to help him compute a just sum.
This is from David Hackett Fischer, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America, p. 602. I’m reading excerpts from Fischer’s book for a forthcoming Liberty Fund colloquium on “Liberty and Diversity in the United States.”
I had known that the Quakers were key in the abolitionist movement in the United States. I hadn’t realized how key.
What’s interesting also is that they, not surprisingly given their anti-slavery views, seemed to be the most libertarian group in the 18th century in what was to become the United States. This showed in their views on religious freedom. Many groups in the United States wanted the “freedom” to practice their own religion but not the freedom for others. But here’s another quote from Fischer:
The most important of these differences [that Quakers had with other groups in British North America] had to do with religious freedom–“liberty of conscience,” William Penn called it. This was not the conventional Protestant idea of liberty to do only that which is right. The Quakers believed. that liberty of conscience extended even to ideas that they believed to be wrong. Their idea of “soul freedom” protected every Christian conscience. (p. 597)
It’s interesting to see how hard it was, though, even for such freedom-oriented people as the Quakers, to be completely tolerant of others’ peaceful differences. Check this quote from Fischer:
Many Quaker immigrants to Pennsylvania had experienced this religious persecution; they shared a determination to prevent its growth in their own province. The first fundamental law passed in Pennsylvania guaranteed liberty of conscience for all who believed in “one Almighty God,” and established complete freedom of worship. It also provided penalties for those who “derided the religion of others.” (p. 599)
READER COMMENTS
Juan Manuel Pérez Porrúa
Mar 27 2017 at 2:46am
Regarding the abolitionists, consider this: their zeal created a situation where the only solution to the slavery question was war.
R Richard Schweitzer
Mar 27 2017 at 9:10am
@ Porrua:
Perhaps that of the “intellectuals” who wished, and were determined, to direct the conduct of others (sound familiar?); but, not the Quakers, Amish and Mennonites, who sought, through individual responsibilities and actions, to bring forth “ought” into being as “is.”
Robert
Mar 28 2017 at 4:15pm
“The turning point came in 1758. The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting [of Quakers] recorded a “unanimous concern” against “the practice of importing, buying, selling, or keeping slaves for term of life.” This was the first success for the cause of abolition anywhere in the Western world.”
The first?
Wikipedia tells me that
“In 1102, the Church Council of London convened by Anselm issued a decree: “Let no one dare hereafter to engage in the infamous business, prevalent in England, of selling men like animals.””
and that
“William the Conqueror introduced a law preventing the sale of slaves overseas.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Britain#Norman_England
Ronald K
Apr 6 2017 at 3:24pm
Actually, it was the holy-roller Baptists and Anabaptists, not the Quakers, who introduced religious freedom, at Providence and Portsmouth in present-day Rhode Island, and Gravesend in New Netherland. They turned the old Christian calculus upside down: previously, a man’s salvation was seen as so critical that he must not be allowed to choose for himself. No, the Baptists said, it is so critical that he must be allowed to choose for himself.
OT, but I’m reading your article on “porous” and “ruthless” conscription. I have the dates 5/18/1917 for the SS Act and 6/5/1917 for the first call to arms, but would you know the date the first conscripts were actually inducted in 1917? We have a centennial to observe!
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