'Dissenters in our own country': Eighteenth-century Quakerism and the origins of American civil disobedience

This dissertation explores the contribution of Quaker theology to American political thought, arguing that, from their beginnings in the seventeenth century, the Religious Society of Friends developed a systematic process of peaceful civil disobedience, which they subsequently practiced as politicians in Pennsylvania. This process substantially influenced the American dissenting tradition.;Chapter One explains how Quaker civil disobedience was a theologically based response to the religious persecution they had experienced from civil authorities in seventeenth-century England and Massachusetts. They developed a systematic process of first disobeying oppressive laws and then working to reform the legal system. Chapter Two argues that Quakers continued this process of resistance and reform as politicians in Pennsylvania, developing a brand of Whiggism that advocated radical change to relieve oppression but denied the legitimacy of political revolution. They put their theory into practice in 1701 by peacefully negating William Penn's authority as proprietor of the colony and instituting a more liberal constitution. Chapter Three analyzes how Quaker politicians incorporated their theology into the political culture of Pennsylvania in the mid-eighteenth century, encouraging even non-Quakers to adopt Quaker political practices. Chapter Four discusses the various roles of Quakers in the American Revolution, particularly that of John Dickinson, the most notable Quaker figure to take part. While historians have found Dickinson's political stance contradictory---an advocate of colonial rights who refused to sign the Declaration of Independence---his thought is clear when he is understood as a Quaker politician. As president of the Stamp Act Congress and author of the Farmer's Letters, he advocated that colonists undertake the same process of civil disobedience and reform in relation to the Crown that Quakers had practiced for over a century.;The significance of this mode of dissent is evident in subsequent history as Americans have sought to reform the government while preserving the constituted polity. The seminal nineteenth-century reform movements of abolitionism and women's rights were led in large part by Quakers. It was this tradition of civil disobedience that influenced the work of the two best-known advocates of civil resistance: Henry David Thoreau and Martin Luther King, Jr.