In 1675, the companion of George Fox, William Edmundson, revisited Barbadoes, and once more bore testimony against the unjust treatment of slaves. He was accused of endeavoring to excite an insurrection among the blacks, and was brought before the Governor on the charge. It was probably during this journey that he addressed a remonstrance to friends in Maryland and Virginia on the subject of holding slaves. It is one of the first emphatic and decided testimonies on record against negro slavery as incompatible with Christianity, if we except the Papal bulls of Urban and Leo the Tenth.
Thirteen years after, in 1688, a meeting of German Quakers, who had emigrated from Kriesbeim, and settled at Germantown, Pennsylvania, addressed a memorial against "the buying and keeping of negroes" to the Yearly Meeting for the Pennsylvania and New Jersey colonies. That meeting took the subject into consideration, but declined giving judgment in the case. In 1696, the Yearly Meeting advised against "bringing in any more negroes." In 1714, in its Epistle to London Friends, it expresses a wish that Friends would be "less concerned in buying or selling slaves." The Chester Quarterly Meeting, which had taken a higher and clearer view of the matter, continued to press the Yearly Meeting to adopt some decided measure against any traffic in human beings.
The Society gave these memorials a cold reception. The love of gain and power was too strong, on the part of the wealthy and influential planters and merchants who had become slaveholders, to allow the scruples of the Chester meeting to take the shape of discipline. The utmost that could be obtained of the Yearly Meeting was an expression of opinion adverse to the importation of negroes, and a desire that "Friends generally do, as much as may be, avoid buying such negroes as shall hereafter be brought in, rather than offend any Friends who are against it; yet this is only caution, and not censure."
In the mean time the New England Yearly Meeting was agitated by the same question. Slaves were imported into Boston and Newport, and Friends became purchasers, and in some instances were deeply implicated in the foreign traffic. In 1716, the monthly meetings of Dartmouth and Nantucket suggested that it was "not agreeable to truth to purchase slaves and keep them during their term of life." Nothing was done in the Yearly Meeting, however, until 1727, when the practice of importing negroes was censured. That the practice was continued notwithstanding, for many years afterwards, is certain. In 1758, a rule was adopted prohibiting Friends within the limits of New England Yearly Meeting from engaging in or countenancing the foreign slave-trade.
In the year 1742 an event, simple and inconsiderable in itself, was made the instrumentality of exerting a mighty influence upon slavery in the Society of Friends. A small storekeeper at Mount Holly, in New Jersey, a member of the Society, sold a negro woman, and requested the young man in his employ to make a bill of sale of her.
(Mount Holly is a village lying in the western part of the long,
narrow township of Northampton, on Rancocas Creek, a tributary of
the Delaware. In John Woolman's day it was almost entirely a
settlement of Friends. A very few of the old houses with their
quaint stoops or porches are left. That occupied by John Woolman
was a small, plain, two-story structure, with two windows in each
story in front, a four-barred fence inclosing the grounds, with the
trees he planted and loved to cultivate. The house was not painted,
but whitewashed. The name of the place is derived from the highest
hill in the county, rising two hundred feet above the sea, and
commanding a view of a rich and level country, of cleared farms and
woodlands. Here, no doubt, John Woolman often walked under the
shadow of its holly-trees, communing with nature and musing on the
great themes of life and duty.
When the excellent Joseph Sturge was in this country, some thirty
years ago, on his errand of humanity, he visited Mount Holly, and
the house of Woolman, then standing. He describes it as a very
"humble abode." But one person was then living in the town who had
ever seen its venerated owner. This aged man stated that he was at
Woolman's little farm in the season of harvest when it was customary
among farmers to kill a calf or sheep for the laborers. John
Woolman, unwilling that the animal should be slowly bled to death,
as the custom had been, and to spare it unnecessary suffering, had a
smooth block of wood prepared to receive the neck of the creature,
when a single blow terminated its existence. Nothing was more
remarkable in the character of Woolman than his concern for the
well-being and comfort of the brute creation. "What is religion?"
asks the old Hindoo writer of the Vishnu Sarman. "Tenderness toward
all creatures." Or, as Woolman expresses it, "Where the love of God
is verily perfected, a tenderness towards all creatures made subject
to our will is experienced, and a care felt that we do not lessen
that sweetness of life in the animal creation which the Creator
intends for them under our government.")
On taking up his pen, the young clerk felt a sudden and strong scruple in his mind. The thought of writing an instrument of slavery for one of his fellow-creatures oppressed him. God's voice against the desecration of His image spoke in the soul. He yielded to the will of his employer, but, while writing the instrument, he was constrained to declare, both to the buyer and the seller, that he believed slave-keeping inconsistent with the Christian religion. This young man was John Woolman. The circumstance above named was the starting-point of a life-long testimony against slavery. In the year 1746 he visited Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina. He was afflicted by the prevalence of slavery. It appeared to him, in his own words, "as a dark gloominess overhanging the land." On his return, he wrote an essay on the subject, which was published in 1754. Three years after, he made a second visit to the Southern meetings of Friends. Travelling as a minister of the gospel, he was compelled to sit down at the tables of slaveholding planters, who were accustomed to entertain their friends free of cost, and who could not comprehend the scruples of their guest against receiving as a gift food and lodging which he regarded as the gain of oppression. He was a poor man, but he loved truth more than money. He therefore either placed the pay for his entertainment in the hands of some member of the family, for the benefit of the slaves, or gave it directly to them, as he had opportunity. Wherever he went, he found his fellow-professors entangled in the mischief of slavery. Elders and ministers, as well as the younger and less high in profession, had their house servants and field hands. He found grave drab-coated apologists for the slave-trade, who quoted the same Scriptures, in support of oppression and avarice, which have since been cited by Presbyterian doctors of divinity, Methodist bishops; and Baptist preachers for the same purpose. He found the meetings generally in a low and evil state. The gold of original Quakerism had become dim, and the fine gold changed. The spirit of the world prevailed among them, and had wrought an inward desolation. Instead of meekness, gentleness, and heavenly wisdom, he found "a spirit of fierceness and love of dominion."
(The tradition is that he travelled mostly on foot during his
journeys among slaveholders. Brissot, in his New Travels in
America, published in 1788, says: "John Woolman, one of the most
distinguished of men in the cause of humanity, travelled much as a
minister of his sect, but always on foot, and without money, in
imitation of the Apostles, and in order to be in a situation to be
more useful to poor people and the blacks. He hated slavery so much
that he could not taste food provided by the labor of slaves." That
this writer was on one point misinformed is manifest from the
following passage from the Journal: "When I expected soon to leave a
friend's house where I had entertainment, if I believed that I
should not keep clear from the gain of oppression without leaving
money, I spoke to one of the heads of the family privately, and
desired them to accept of pieces of silver, and give them to such of
their negroes as they believed would make the best use of them; and
at other times I gave them to the negroes myself, as the way looked
clearest to me. Before I came out, I had provided a large number of
small pieces for this purpose, and thus offering them to some who
appeared to be wealthy people was a trial both to me and them. But
the fear of the Lord so covered me at times that my way was made
easier than I expected; and few, if any, manifested any resentment
at the offer, and most of them, after some conversation, accepted of
them.")
In love, but at the same time with great faithfulness, he endeavored to convince the masters of their error, and to awaken a degree of sympathy for the enslaved.
At this period, or perhaps somewhat earlier, a remarkable personage took up his residence in Pennsylvania. He was by birthright a member of the Society of Friends, but having been disowned in England for some extravagances of conduct and language, he spent several years in the West Indies, where he became deeply interested in the condition of the slaves. His violent denunciations of the practice of slaveholding excited the anger of the planters, and he was compelled to leave the island. He came to Philadelphia, but, contrary to his expectations, he found the same evil existing there. He shook off the dust of the city, and took up his abode in the country, a few miles distant. His dwelling was a natural cave, with some slight addition of his own making. His drink was the spring-water flowing by his door; his food, vegetables alone. He persistently refused to wear any garment or eat any food purchased at the expense of animal life, or which was in any degree the product of slave labor. Issuing from his cave, on his mission of preaching "deliverance to the captive," he was in the habit of visiting the various meetings for worship and bearing his testimony against slaveholders, greatly to their disgust and indignation. On one occasion he entered the Market Street Meeting, and a leading Friend requested some one to take him out. A burly blacksmith volunteered to do it, leading him to the gate and thrusting him out with such force that he fell into the gutter of the street. There he lay until the meeting closed, telling the bystanders that he did not feel free to rise himself. "Let those who cast me here raise me up. It is their business, not mine."