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. Protesting lack of action against slavery. Some local meetings voted against slavery and some even financed the publication of abolitionists tracks, acting against the yearly meeting’s dictate. The fight began in Pennsylvania. 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. 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. In The Friend, Vol. It reads as follows The earliest anti-slavery organizations in America and Britain consisted primarily of members of the Society of Friends. The Quaker campaign to end slavery can be traced back to the late 1600s, and many played a pivotal role in the Underground Railroad. I have written several articles about Quakers and slavery in the seventeenth century. Darby Borough, Pennsylvania's founder, John Blunston, took part in an early action against slavery in 1715. [1] Many families assisted slaves in their travels through the Underground Railroad. Recently the film Belle (2013, dir. Quakers were also prominently involved with the Underground Railroad. Uncle Tom's Cabin. But in those days of Christianity supported slavery, why is this group known as being against slavery? 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. The 1688 Germantown Quaker Petition against slavery was the first protest against African American slavery made by a religious body in the English colonies. Quaker colonists began questioning slavery in Barbados in the 1670s, but first openly denounced it in 1688. John Woolman and Anthony Benezet protested against slavery, and demanded that the Quaker society cut ties with the slave trade. 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. In the United States, Quakers would be less successful. But in early 17 th century New England, they were outlawed, imprisoned, exiled, and sometimes executed. Nevertheless, in the main, Quakers have been noted and, very often, praised for their early and continued antislavery activity. Henry Stubbs and his sons helped runaway slaves get across Indiana. Fox launched an antislavery campaign in 1657 when he wrote a letter that condemned slavery to slave-owning Quakers. 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. 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. 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. Many Quakers, especially in the southern colonies, owned slaves at this time. For example, Levi Coffin started helping runaway slaves as a child in North Carolina. The Quakers were the first whites to denounce slavery in the American colonies and Europe. 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. 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. 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. And finally in this territory the Quakers were not alone in their battle against slavery. It is a shame too. 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. 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. But I have watched and have to many to remember exactly which one. Thus much of the record of the development of anti-slavery thought and actions is embedded in Quaker-produced records and documents. The American Revolution would divide Quakers across the Atlantic. 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. The Prof vividly describes a convicted Friend walking into quite assembly and tossing animal stomachs full of blood on the floor. Fairlamb, Jno. After 1740, reformers argued that slavery harmed slaveowners’ moral character, and anti-slavery tracts were published with meeting permission. By 1727 British Quakers had expressed their official disapproval of the slave trade. This image has been digitally enhanced to aid reading. 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,… were persecuted by slave owners and were forced to move to the west of the country in an attempt to avoid persecution. The Quakers were among the most prominent slave traders during the early days of the Pennsylvania colony. 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. Quakers in Germantown, now a suburb of Philadelphia, made the first recorded protest against slavery in 1688. As early as 1688, Quakers in Germantown, Pennsylvania, condemned slavery and the slave trade. But as I quickly learned, this was only part of the story when it comes to Quakers and slavery. It is in Quaker records that we have some of the earliest manifestations of anti-slavery sentiment, dating from the 1600s. 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' ." Quakers have opposed it from very early on and still do. The 1688 Germantown Protest, as it is often called, was the first document in North America to denounce slavery. Later in his life, Coffin moved to the Ohio-Indiana area, where he became known as "the President of the Underground Railroad." Signed by order and on behalf of the Meeting, Caleb Pusey, Jno. [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. The language and spelling used in this early protest reflect the German descent of its' signers. Colorful Quaker and slave trader Zephaniah Kingsley defended slavery benevolently practiced. Quakers were known for their simple living and work ethic. "[citation needed]. The Bundy family operated a station that transported groups of slaves from Belmont to Salem, Ohio. On paper at least, global politics would intervene. Wright,Nico. 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. George et Elisa Chez les Quakers, Friends Historical Library at Swarthmore College, Haverford College Quaker & Special Collections. And so Lay became, in 1738, the last of a very few Quakers disowned for protests against slavery. During the 1740s and 50s, anti-slavery sentiment took a firmer hold. 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. The earlier Awakening of the Quakers is covered well in another Great Courses offering. 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. 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 began denouncing slavery as early as 1688, when four German Quakers started protesting near Pennsylvania. While the Quakers were also among the first denominations to protest slavery, their internal battle over slavery took over a century to resolve. "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. 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. 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. Two of them focus on antislavery thought, while the third examines Quaker slave holding practices in Barbados. Fading has also made the document difficult to read. 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. Quakers were early leaders in abolitionism (the campaign to ban slavery). Quakers have generally had a good press for their anti-slavery activities, in spite of the pervasive racism within and outside the meeting. Soon after, Pennsylvania Quakers founded The Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage. Before 1760 many British and American Quakers owned slaves and some engaged in the slave trade. They bought slaves from British-controlled Barbados and Jamaica. History reveals that early Quakers were just as involved in slavery as others during that time. Quaker anti-slavery activism could come at some social cost. 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. Disowned and denounced, Lay still attended worship services and argued about the evils of slavery. Thus the Quakers, both in England and in the American colonies, spoke out against slavery. Therefore, to the Quakers, slavery was morally wrong. 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. 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. It was as early as the 1600s that Quakers began their fight against slavery, and thus the 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. Anyone who has studied the antebellum period knows that slavery violated Quaker principles and that some Quakers participated in the Underground Railroad. After the 1750s, Quakers actively engaged in attempting to sway public opinion in Britain and America against the slave trade and slavery in general. It is in Quaker records that we have some of the earliest manifestations of anti-slavery sentiment, dating from the 1600s. By the 1760s, Quakers in Britain and in America were refusing to accept slave traders into their own faith communities. Quakers dissented against slavery mainly out of the conviction that all people, regardless of skin color, were equal in God’s eyes. 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. The 1688 Germantown Protest against Slavery. Quakers and Slavery, 1657-1865: An International Interdisciplinary Conference was held in Philadephia on 4 - 6 November 2010. "'3 One wonders whether it was so simple. 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. Slavery is not simply a historical phenomenon; It persists to this day in modern forms, such as trafficking. In the nineteenth-century United States, some Quakers[who?] 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. 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). 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 Virtuous Harry, or Set a Thief to Catch a Thief! The 1688 Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery was the first protest against enslavement of Africans made by a religious body in the Thirteen Colonies. 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. Anti-Slavery. 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 … The London Yearly Meeting soon followed, issuing a ‘strong minute’ against slave trading in 1761. In 1785, Benjamin Franklin became head of this group. At the same time, Quakers became actively involved in the economic, educational and political well being of the formerly enslaved. 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. He also was strongly in favor of allowing free blacks, who, he claimed, strengthened a country. The entry said 6 p. M247, r 57, I 43, p. 337. 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 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.
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