The first person of this description in the Society, was William Burling, of Long Island. He had conceived an abhorrence of slavery from early youth. In process of time he began to bear his testimony against it, by representing the unlawfulness of it to those of his own Society, when assembled at one of their yearly meetings. This expression of his public testimony, he continued annually on the same occasion. He wrote also several Tracts with the same design, one of which, published in the year 1718, he addressed to the elders of his own church, on the inconsistency of compelling people and their posterity to serve them continually and arbitrarily, and without any proper recompense for their services.
The next was Ralph Sandiford, a merchant in Philadelphia. This worthy person had many offers of pecuniary assistance, which would have advanced him in life, but he declined them all because they came from persons who had acquired their independence by the oppression of their slaves. He was very earnest in endeavouring to prevail upon his friends, both, in and out of the society, to liberate those whom they held in bondage. At length he determined upon a work called the Mystery of Iniquity, in a brief examination of the practice of the times. This he published in the year 1780, though the chief judge had threatened him if he should give it to the world, and he circulated it free of expense wherever he believed it would be useful. The above work was excellent as a composition; the language of it was correct; the style manly and energetic; and it abounded with facts, sentiments, and quotations, which, while, they showed the virtue and talents of the author, rendered it a valuable appeal in behalf of the African cause.
The next public advocate was Benjamin Lay[A], who lived at Abington, at the distance of twelve or fourteen miles from Philadelphia. Benjamin Lay was known, when in England, to the royal family of that day, into whose private presence he was admitted. On his return to America, he took an active part in behalf of the oppressed Africans. In the year 1737, he published a Treatise on Slave-Keeping. This he gave away among his neighbours and others, but more particularly among the rising youth, many of whom he visited in their respective schools. He applied also to several of the governors for interviews, with whom he held conferences on the subject. Benjamin Lay was a man of strong understanding and of great integrity, but of warm and irritable feelings, and more particularly so when he was called forth on any occasion in which the oppressed Africans were concerned; for he had lived in the island of Barbados, and he had witnessed there scenes of cruelty towards them which had greatly disturbed his mind, and which unhinged it, as it were, whenever the subject of their sufferings was brought before him. Hence, if others did not think precisely as he did, when he conversed with them on the subject, he was apt to go out of due bounds. In bearing what he believed to be his testimony against this system of oppression, he adopted sometimes a singularity of manner, by which, as conveying demonstration of a certain eccentricity of character, he diminished in some degree his usefulness to the cause which he had undertaken; as far, indeed, as this eccentricity might have the effect of preventing others from joining him in his pursuit, lest they should be thought singular also, so far it must be allowed that he ceased to become beneficial. But there can be no question, on the other hand, that his warm and enthusiastic manners awakened the attention of many to the cause, and gave them first impressions concerning it, which they never afterwards forgot, and which rendered them useful to it in the subsequent part of their lives.
[A]: Benjamin Lay attended the meetings for worship, or associated himself with the religious society of the Quakers. His wife, too, was an approved minister of the Gospel in that society; but I believe he was not long an acknowledged member of it himself.
The person who laboured next in the society, in behalf of the oppressed Africans, was John Woolman.
John Woolman was born at Northampton, in the county of Burlington and province of Western New Jersey, in the year 1720. In his very early youth he attended, in an extraordinary manner, to the religious impressions which he perceived upon his mind, and began to have an earnest solicitude about treading in the right path. "From what I had read and heard," says he, in his Journal[A], "I believed there had been in past ages, people who walked in uprightness before God in a degree exceeding any, that I knew or heard of, now living. And the apprehension of there being less steadiness and firmness among people of this age, than in past ages, often troubled me while I was a child." An anxious desire to do away, as far as himself was concerned, this merited reproach, operated as one among other causes to induce him to be particularly watchful over his thoughts and actions, and to endeavour to attain that purity of heart, without which he conceived there could be no perfection of the Christian character. Accordingly, in the twenty-second year of his age, he had given such proof of the integrity of his life, and of his religious qualifications, that he became an acknowledged minister of the Gospel in his own society.
[A]: This short sketch of the life and labours of John Woolman, is made up from his Journal.
At a time prior to his entering upon the ministry, being in low circumstances, he agreed for wages to "attend shop for a person at Mount Holly, and to keep his books." In this situation we discover, by an occurrence that happened, that he had thought seriously on the subject, and that he had conceived proper views of the Christian unlawfulness of slavery. "My employer," says he, "having a Negro woman, sold her, and desired me to write a bill of sale, the man being waiting who bought her. The thing was sudden, and though the thought of writing an instrument of slavery for one of my fellow-creatures made me feel uneasy, yet I remembered I was hired by the year, that it was my master who directed me to do it, and that it was an elderly man, a member of our society, who bought her. So through weakness I gave way and wrote, but, at executing it, I was so afflicted in my mind, that I said before my master and the friend, that I believed slave-keeping to be a practice inconsistent with the Christian religion. This in some degree abated my uneasiness; yet, as often as I reflected seriously upon it, I thought I should have been clearer, if I had desired to have been excused from it, as a thing against my conscience; for such it was. And some time after this, a young man of our society spoke to me to write a conveyance of a slave to him, he having lately taken a Negro into his house. I told him I was not easy to write it; for though many of our meeting, and in other places, kept slaves, I still believed the practice was not right, and desired to be excused from the writing. I spoke to him in good-will; and he told me that keeping slaves was not altogether agreeable to his mind, but that the slave being a gift to his wife he had accepted of her."
We may easily conceive that a person so scrupulous and tender on this subject, (as indeed John Woolman was on all others,) was in the way of becoming in time more eminently serviceable to his oppressed fellow-creatures. We have seen already the good seed sown in his heart, and it seems to have wanted only providential seasons and occurrences to be brought into productive fruit. Accordingly we find that a journey, which he took as a minister of the Gospel in 1746 through the provinces of Maryland, Virginia, and, North Carolina, which were then more noted than others for the number of slaves in them, contributed to prepare him as an instrument for the advancement of this great cause. The following are his own observations upon this journey:—"Two things were remarkable to me in this journey; first, in regard to my entertainment. When I ate, drank, and lodged free-cost, with people who lived in ease on the hard labour of their slaves, I felt uneasy; and, as my mind was inward to the Lord, I found, from place to place, this uneasiness return upon me at times through the whole visit. Where the masters bore a good share of the burden and lived frugally, so that their servants were well provided for; and their labour moderate, I felt more easy; but where they lived in a costly way, and laid heavy burdens on their slaves, my exercise was often great, and I frequently had conversations with them in private concerning it. Secondly, this trade of importing slaves from their native country being much encouraged among them, and the white people and their children so generally living without much labour, was frequently the subject of my serious thoughts: and I saw in these southern provinces so many vices and corruptions, increased by this trade and this way of life, that it appeared to me as a gloom over the land."
From the year 1747 to the year 1758, he seems to have been occupied chiefly as a minister of religion, but in the latter year he published a work upon slave-keeping; and in the same year, while travelling within the compass of his own monthly meeting, a circumstance happened which kept alive his attention to the same Subjects.