Debating Abolition in an Age of Revolution

      In 1688, Germantown, Pennsylvania, Quakers released an antislavery petition that became the first in a series of discussions among Mid-Atlantic Quakers on the morality of owning slaves. For the next hundred years, the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, with which most New Jersey Friends associated, debated the paradox of enslaving Africans while believing that all individuals were spiritually equal. The tension created by the paradox grew over time and transformed Philadelphia and Western New Jersey into hotbeds of abolitionist thought, protest, and activism that impacted how both non-Quaker whites and African Americans debated abolition as slavery became increasingly important in the late colonial period.¹

      The role of Quakerism in the growth of the eighteenth-century abolition movement is critical to the eventual enactment of gradual abolition laws across the North. Quakers, although in most cases far from racial egalitarians, became the first organized group to consistently advocate against slavery. They successfully orchestrated slavery’s end among their own members and eventually moved their advocacy to a wider audience. Quaker politicians and those elected from constituencies dominated by Friends argued for statewide abolition while Quaker-authored pamphlets, petitions, and newspaper articles circulated to members and nonmembers alike. The debate over slaveholding within the Society of Friends therefore influenced the statewide debate over slavery and fused together abolitionist rhetoric, Patriot discussions of Britain’s tyrannical enslavement of the colonies, and slaves’ own calls for freedom. Abolitionists and slaves took advantage of the Patriots’ similar rhetorical use of “freedom” and “slavery” to make strong parallels between the imperial struggle over freedom from Great Britain and the hypocrisy of continued African enslavement. The Revolution therefore made the idea of freedom a right that transcended race and encompassed transatlantic affairs. This forced white New Jerseyans to debate slavery openly and decide if their fight for freedom from Great Britain should be seen as part of a wider freedom struggle.

      As the eighteenth-century Quaker abolition movement developed, Jersey Quakers stimulated a debate on the morality of slavery that reached a far greater audience than that of their local meetings. These debates permeated revolutionary society and became part of much larger discussions about the role of freedom in the new United States. Quaker considerations of morality intertwined with the revolutionary drama unfolding around New Jerseyans and convinced some non-Quakers to join the debate about the future of slavery in New Jersey. Abolitionist ideology, its relationship to American freedom, and the ethical and moral implications of holding slaves during a war for freedom soon emanated regularly from multiple denominations’ pulpits, print sources, and slaves’ mouths.

      However, despite New Jersey being a hotbed of early abolitionism, abolition remained a highly contentious and disputed proposition since slavery had been so deeply intertwined into colonial society. Despite debates over revolutionary freedom and its application to slaves, retorts of racial amalgamation, race war, racial inferiority, and potential economic losses limited that freedom’s impact. In the heated ideological battle over slavery, Quakers, abolitionists, and slaves powerfully connected the Revolution and abolitionism to convince many New Jerseyans of abolition’s importance, but this formidable weapon did not triumph over slaveholder and anti-abolitionist fear mongering and their systematic defense of the right to own slaves. The dangers of a radical restructuring of the state’s racial order failed to win many converts to the abolitionist cause, especially in East Jersey where slavery had entrenched itself far more deeply. The failure of abolitionism to take hold allowed white New Jerseyans to strengthen the institution of slavery in the midst of the war and during its aftermath.

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      Although not the first Quaker abolitionist, Burlington County native John Woolman became one of the society’s most ardent eighteenth-century proabolition voices. Woolman, an itinerant Quaker preacher, traveled from the Carolinas to New England to Europe advocating the freedom of both African slaves and Indians. Woolman went farther than Quaker leaders William Edmundson and George Fox who expressed concern over the spiritual welfare of those Friends who owned slaves. Edmundson and Fox challenged Quaker slaveholders in the Caribbean in the 1650s and 1660s to bring religion to their slaves and moderate their treatment. However, as Edmundson and Fox did not attack the institution directly, they failed to change the ownership patterns of any society members, although their actions influenced Woolman years later to take their ideas to the next level.²

      After the 1688 Germantown Petition, Quakers in the Philadelphia area began to question the morality of slavery. By 1713, the Chester, Pennsylvania, Monthly Meeting had called for the emancipation of slaves and in 1715 the Yearly Meeting requested that Friends treat their chattel with Christian compassion.³ With these debates as a backdrop, Woolman, while living in Mount Holly, New Jersey, in 1742, “had a life-transforming attack of conscience” when he authored a bill of sale for a black woman for his employer. Woolman wrote extensively in his journal that “writing an instrument of slavery for one of my fellow creatures felt uneasy,” which made him conclude “slavekeeping to be a practice inconsistent with the Christian religion.”⁴ This inconsistency impelled him to embark on what became his life’s work: to convince Quakers to abandon slavery. Woolman, unlike other Friends who had endorsed slavery as long as owners treated slaves well, built his understanding of slavery from New Testament passages that echoed the same Enlightenment ideals that would be utilized in the future by Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine. Woolman argued that even though Old Testament law accepted slavery, Friends must completely reinterpret their view of charity and morality to align with the Golden Rule.⁵

      In 1754, Woolman, along with Anthony Benezet, authored an official warning to Friends about slavery that reversed the Yearly Meeting’s hesitant stance on attacking slavery and “ushered in a new phase in the Quaker fight against slavery.” It had an “explosive impact” on Quakers in Greater Philadelphia, and along with Woolman’s own writings, declared slavery sinful and encouraged the society to fundamentally reform. Woolman argued that the slave trade represented the root of slavery’s evil since it separated families and eliminated the ability of Africans to have a relationship with God. He claimed that the Golden Rule alone dictated that slavery existed in direct contradiction to Christianity.⁶ The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting took up Woolman’s focus on the Golden Rule when it questioned its application to slavery that same year. The meeting asked “do we act consistent with this noble principle” or have Quakers acted “so inconsistent with ourselves to purchase such who are prisoners of war and thereby encourage this unchristian practice?” Answering in the negative, the meeting lamented the “dreadful scenes of murder and cruelty those barbarous ravages must occasion in these unhappy people’s country” yet many Friends continued to support slavery since it had become so vital to the rural economy.⁷

      Woolman’s interaction with other major antislavery activists, including Anthony Benezet and Benjamin Franklin, produced a hotbed