Protesting lack of action against slavery. But in early 17 th century New England, they were outlawed, imprisoned, exiled, and sometimes executed. 28:309 there is text of a "minute made in 'that Quarterly Meeting held at Providence Meeting-house the first day of the Sixth month, 1715' ." On paper at least, global politics would intervene. As early as 1688, Quakers in Germantown, Pennsylvania, condemned slavery and the slave trade. Historians are in agreement that American Quakers were the first church to grapple seriously with the morality of Negro slavery, the first to require members to free their slaves, the first in the North and the At the same time, Quakers became actively involved in the economic, educational and political well being of the formerly enslaved. The language and spelling used in this early protest reflect the German descent of its' signers. The Quakers would go on to be at the forefront of the campaign against slavery, which would ultimately be abolished in the US in 1865. North Carolina's Quakers often trusted their slaves to local meetings in order to de facto free their slaves, although state laws prohibited slaveowners from legally freeing their slaves; this practice ran from 1808 to 1829, after which trusteeship declined and many Quakers left the state to free their slaves in "free states. After the 1750s, Quakers actively engaged in attempting to sway public opinion in Britain and America against the slave trade and slavery in general. In The Friend, Vol. John Woolman and Anthony Benezet protested against slavery, and demanded that the Quaker society cut ties with the slave trade. Many Quakers, especially in the southern colonies, owned slaves at this time. Soon after, Pennsylvania Quakers founded The Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage. One of the most notable Quakers in the Underground Railroad was Levi Coffin, who was born in Guilford County, North Carolina, but as a young man moved to Indiana and later to Cincinnati,… Fairlamb, Jno. "'3 One wonders whether it was so simple. Colorful Quaker and slave trader Zephaniah Kingsley defended slavery benevolently practiced. Quaker anti-slavery activism could come at some social cost. It was hosted by The McNeil Center for Early American Studies, Swarthmore College, and Haverford College, and supported by Bryn Mawr College, Kingston University London, and the University of East Anglia. In the United Kingdom, Quakers would be foremost in the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade in 1787 which, with some setbacks, would be responsible for forcing the end of the British slave trade in 1807 and the end of slavery throughout the British Empire by 1838. Quakers were early leaders in abolitionism (the campaign to ban slavery). The 1688 Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery was the first protest against enslavement of Africans made by a religious body in the Thirteen Colonies. The London Yearly Meeting soon followed, issuing a ‘strong minute’ against slave trading in 1761. 1783 Quaker Anti-Slavery Petition Carol Landon Gaiser of Bellevue, Washington found this document after noticing the name of Gabriel WILLSON in the index to the Papers of the Continental Congress. Virtuous Harry, or Set a Thief to Catch a Thief! The Methodists certainly had an anti slavery “moment”, lasting from the late 1700s to perhaps the 1840s, when the denomination split on issues related to slaveowning. The American Revolution would divide Quakers across the Atlantic. Disowned and denounced, Lay still attended worship services and argued about the evils of slavery. Uncle Tom's Cabin. Amma Asante) has told the story of the historical figure Dido Belle (the daughter of an enslaved woman) who was a member of Lord Mansfield’s household at the time of the Zong case. In 1785, Benjamin Franklin became head of this group. The 1688 Germantown Protest against Slavery. Blunsten"[full citation needed], Nevertheless, there were local successes for Quaker anti-slavery in the United States during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Quakers believe that all humans are equal, so no human can own another human. Darby Borough, Pennsylvania's founder, John Blunston, took part in an early action against slavery in 1715. Signed by order and on behalf of the Meeting, Caleb Pusey, Jno. Later in his life, Coffin moved to the Ohio-Indiana area, where he became known as "the President of the Underground Railroad." A new generation of Quakers, including John Woolman, Anthony Benezet and David Cooper, protested against slavery, and demanded that Quaker society cut ties with the slave trade. Friends Historical Library at Swarthmore College and the Quaker Collection at Haverford College are jointly the custodians of Quaker meeting records of the Mid-Atlantic region, including Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, New York and Vermont and these records illuminate the origins of the anti-slavery movement as well as the continued Quaker involvement, often behind the scenes, in the leadership and direction of the abolitionist movement from the 1770s to the abolition of slavery in the United States in 1865, and beyond. The fight began in Pennsylvania. [2] While these earliest voices were the minority among Quakers at the time, opposition to slavery on moral grounds swelled among Friends over the course of the eighteenth century. Thus the Quakers, both in England and in the American colonies, spoke out against slavery. The first organized protest against slavery in the Americas was composed over 300 hundred years ago in 1688 by four Germantown Quakers. Quakers were also prominently involved with the Underground Railroad. I started with the “beginning”: the first antislavery protest in North America, written by German and Dutch Quakers in Pennsylvania. George et Elisa Chez les Quakers, Friends Historical Library at Swarthmore College, Haverford College Quaker & Special Collections. Before 1760 many British and American Quakers owned slaves and some engaged in the slave trade. The crucial change in American Quaker attitudes to slavery came in the 1750's, but Quakers and Slavery finesses the problem of how the transforma-tion occurred. [1] Many families assisted slaves in their travels through the Underground Railroad. And finally in this territory the Quakers were not alone in their battle against slavery. The Quakers were the first whites to denounce slavery in the American colonies and Europe. In that year, four German settlers (the Lutheran Francis Daniel Pastorius and three Quakers) issued a protest from Germantown, close to Philadelphia in the newly founded American colony of Pennsylvania. It was as early as the 1600s that Quakers began their fight against slavery, and thus the Quakers were among the first white people to denounce slavery in the American colonies and Europe, and the Society of Friends became the first organization to take a collective stand against both slavery and the slave trade, later spearheading the international and ecumenical campaigns against slavery. While many individual Quakers spoke out against slavery after United States independence, local Quaker meetings were often divided on how to respond to slavery; outspoken Quaker abolitionists were sometimes sharply criticized by other Quakers. In the first few years after the Quaker movement began in 1652, slavery would have been outside the experience of most Quakers, as it was not much practised in Britain. But I have watched and have to many to remember exactly which one. "A weighty concern coming before the meeting concerning some Friends being yet in the practice of importing, buying and selling negroe slaves; after some time spent in a so The entry said 6 p. M247, r 57, I 43, p. 337. Advice emphasized humane treatment and cautioned against judging others; anti-slavery advocates were marginalized. Quakers and Slavery, 1657-1865: An International Interdisciplinary Conference was held in Philadephia on 4 - 6 November 2010. He also was strongly in favor of allowing free blacks, who, he claimed, strengthened a country. They were able to carry popular Quaker sentiment with them and, beginning in the 1750s, Pennsylvanian Quakers tightened their rules, by 1758 making it effectively an act of misconduct to engage in slave trading. By the 1760s, Quakers in Britain and in America were refusing to accept slave traders into their own faith communities. It reads as follows Anti-Slavery. were persecuted by slave owners and were forced to move to the west of the country in an attempt to avoid persecution. PETITION OF NORTH CAROLINA QUAKERS TO LIBERATE SLAVES, 1786 In 1786 a large group of North Carolina Quakers presented a petition to the General Assembly of the State of North Carolina, desiring that they might liberate their slaves without the danger of their being again enslaved. The Bundy family operated a station that transported groups of slaves from Belmont to Salem, Ohio. The shocking character of the case may well have influenced the decision of the Quakers, taken shortly after Mansfield’s ruling, to begin a public campaign against slavery. And so Lay became, in 1738, the last of a very few Quakers disowned for protests against slavery. The 1688 Germantown Protest, as it is often called, was the first document in North America to denounce slavery. Quaker protests against slavery started as early as 1682, in Germantown, Pennsylvania, and continued on through their work with the Underground Railroad and numerous other anti-slavery movements. Quakers were among the first white people to denounce slavery in the American colonies and Europe, and the Society of Friends became the first organization to take a collective stand against both slavery and the slave trade, later spearheading the … Quakers have generally had a good press for their anti-slavery activities, in spite of the pervasive racism within and outside the meeting. While the Quakers were also among the first denominations to protest slavery, their internal battle over slavery took over a century to resolve. Two of them focus on antislavery thought, while the third examines Quaker slave holding practices in Barbados. THE QUAKERS Long before the United States formally became a nation, the Quakers, a devout group of Christians, declared the evil of slavery and called for its end. Throughout the nineteenth century, Quakers increasingly became associated with antislavery activism and antislavery literature: not least through the work of abolitionist Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier. The Religious Society of Friends played a major role in the abolition movement against slavery in both the United Kingdom and in the United States of America. CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (, Learn how and when to remove this template message, Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, "Observations on the Slavery of the Africans and Their Descendants and on the Use of the Produce of their Labour", Quakers and the Abolition of the Slave Trade, Quakers and Slavery: Resources and Information, Quakers and Slavery; Conference and Publication, Africans in America/Part 3/ Founding of Pennsylvania Abolition Society, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Quakers_in_the_abolition_movement&oldid=1010487206, Articles needing additional references from November 2020, All articles needing additional references, Articles with incomplete citations from January 2020, Articles with unsourced statements from January 2020, All articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases, Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from January 2020, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 5 March 2021, at 18:53. Quakers were known for their simple living and work ethic. "[citation needed]. Slavery is not simply a historical phenomenon; It persists to this day in modern forms, such as trafficking. The Quakers and the birth of the anti-slavery movement Historians commonly depict the birth of the anti-slavery movement as beginning with the key figure of Thomas Clarkson and his winning of the Cambridge essay prize, which led him to begin his lifelong campaign against the slave trade and slavery. I have written several articles about Quakers and slavery in the seventeenth century. Recently the film Belle (2013, dir. Henry Stubbs and his sons helped runaway slaves get across Indiana. The 1688 Germantown Quaker Petition against slavery was the first protest against African American slavery made by a religious body in the English colonies. Quakers dissented against slavery mainly out of the conviction that all people, regardless of skin color, were equal in God’s eyes. These views were tolerated in Spanish Florida, where he was a planter, but after Florida became a U.S. territory in 1821, Kingsley found it necessary to leave Florida for a plantation he purchased in Haiti (today in the Dominican Republic). But in those days of Christianity supported slavery, why is this group known as being against slavery? And most Quakers came to believe that slave trading was a true evil due to its innate violence. It is in Quaker records that we have some of the earliest manifestations of anti-slavery sentiment, dating from the 1600s. He advocated, and personally practiced, the mixing of the black and the white races through marriage, which he claimed was hygienic, productive of healthy and attractive children, and a step towards integration of blacks and whites. This action, although seemingly overlooked at the time, ushered in almost a century of active debate among Pennsylvanian Quakers about the morality of slavery which saw energetic anti-slavery writing and direct action from several Quakers, including William Southeby, John Hepburn, Ralph Sandiford, and Benjamin Lay. After 1740, reformers argued that slavery harmed slaveowners’ moral character, and anti-slavery tracts were published with meeting permission. The 1688 Germantown Quaker Petition against slavery was the first protest against African American slavery made by a religious body in the English colonies. William Penn himself owned slaves during his four years in Pennsylvania (1682-4 and 1696-8), though they were later freed and he treated them well. The Quaker campaign to end slavery can be traced back to the late 1600s, and many played a pivotal role in the Underground Railroad. Wright,Nico. The Prof vividly describes a convicted Friend walking into quite assembly and tossing animal stomachs full of blood on the floor. Anyone who has studied the antebellum period knows that slavery violated Quaker principles and that some Quakers participated in the Underground Railroad. "With antislavery feeling now in the air, the Society of Friends needed only an inspired leader to bring about a complete prohibi-tion of slavery. It is a shame too. The earlier Awakening of the Quakers is covered well in another Great Courses offering. Some local meetings voted against slavery and some even financed the publication of abolitionists tracks, acting against the yearly meeting’s dictate. Therefore, to the Quakers, slavery was morally wrong. Quaker colonists began questioning slavery in Barbados in the 1670s, but first openly denounced it in 1688. John Woolman (1720-1772) - an American Quaker involved in the abolition of slavery; John Dalton (1766-1844) - British scientist who invented the atomic theory of matter Thus much of the record of the development of anti-slavery thought and actions is embedded in Quaker-produced records and documents. For example, Levi Coffin started helping runaway slaves as a child in North Carolina. The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) played a major role in the abolition movement against slavery in both the United Kingdom and in the United States of America. But as I quickly learned, this was only part of the story when it comes to Quakers and slavery. Shortly before his death in 1790, Franklin would author the petition the group sent to the first Congress, asking it to abolish slavery and act to end the transatlantic slave trade. Francis Daniel Pastorius authored the petition; he and three other Quakers living in Germantown, Pennsylvania (now part of Philadelphia ), signed it on behalf of the Germantown Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends . Today Quakers are known as a peaceful people who embrace nonviolence and spiritual principles and who were strong advocates for the abolition of slavery in the 19 th century. In the nineteenth-century United States, some Quakers[who?] It is in Quaker records that we have some of the earliest manifestations of anti-slavery sentiment, dating from the 1600s. The Quakers were among the most prominent slave traders during the early days of the Pennsylvania colony. In the United States, Quakers would be less successful. Nevertheless, in the main, Quakers have been noted and, very often, praised for their early and continued antislavery activity. The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) was the first corporate body in Britain and North America to fully condemn slavery as both ethically and religiously wrong in all circumstances. In 1688 the Quakers wrote the first anti-slavery literature in America, the Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery. The earliest anti-slavery organizations in America and Britain consisted primarily of members of the Society of Friends. Quakers began denouncing slavery as early as 1688, when four German Quakers started protesting near Pennsylvania. For example, the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, first founded in 1775, consisted primarily of Quakers; seven of the ten original white members were Quakers and 17 of the 24 who attended the four meetings held by the Society were Quakers. Quakers in Germantown, now a suburb of Philadelphia, made the first recorded protest against slavery in 1688. The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) was the first corporate body in Britain and North America to fully condemn slavery as both ethically and religiously wrong in all circumstances. Elias Hicks penned the Observations on the Slavery of the Africans and Their Descendants and on the Use of the Produce of their Labour in 1811, urging the boycott of the products of slave labor. Quakers have opposed it from very early on and still do. History reveals that early Quakers were just as involved in slavery as others during that time. Fox launched an antislavery campaign in 1657 when he wrote a letter that condemned slavery to slave-owning Quakers. On April 18, 1688 the first written protest against slavery in the new world was drafted in the home of Thönes Kunders of Germantown, who hosted the early Germantown Quaker meetings. The petition was written by practicing Quakers to the local Quaker governing body in Dublin, PA and signed by four men: Derick op den Graeff, Abraham op den Graeff, Francis Daniel Pastorious and Garret Hendericks. During the 1740s and 50s, anti-slavery sentiment took a firmer hold. Fading has also made the document difficult to read. In many cases, it was easier for Quakers to oppose the slave trade and slave ownership in the abstract than to directly oppose the institution of slavery itself, as it manifested itself in their local communities. The Quakers became more vocal in condemning slavery in the 1750s when they banned members from owning slaves and encouraged non-Quakers to free their slaves. This image has been digitally enhanced to aid reading. They bought slaves from British-controlled Barbados and Jamaica. By 1727 British Quakers had expressed their official disapproval of the slave trade.
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