CONSCIENCE, INTEREST, AND POWER: THE DEVELOPMENT OF QUAKER OPPOSITION TO SLAVERY IN THE DELAWARE VALLEY, 1688-1780

Abolitionism--the premier movement for social reform in early American history--first developed among Quakers of the Delaware Valley. The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Society of Friends in 1758 made slave trading a disciplinary offense and in 1776 agreed to disown all slave owners. But while Quakers in Pennsylvania and New Jersey were united against slavery by 1780 and went on to spearhead the white antislavery movement for the next fifty years, their decision had not been easily reached. Before 1740, a relatively small minority of Friends thought slavery was wrong, basing their position on fundamental Quaker beliefs in the equality of all people before God, nonviolence, and the sinfulness of ostentation and sloth. However, many other Friends, like their neighbors of other religions, continued to exploit unfree black labor throughout the colonial period.;These four monthly meetings were located in areas that differed in economic activities, farm size, and date of settlement. Systematic analysis of tax assessment lists and all surviving probate records for 1676-1780 indicate that in the three rural areas, most slaves were owned by large farmers; changes over time in the size of this group and in the availability of white laborers affected the importance of slavery in the economy of each locality. In Philadelphia, slaveholding declined fairly steadily after 1720 as white immigrants and free laborers became more numerous. . . . (Author's abstract exceeds stipulated maximum length. Discontinued here with permission of school) UMI.;Opposition to slavery developed in local Quaker meetings at different times. Four monthly meetings that followed divergent paths on abolition were chosen for close study. Their positions, representative of those of other similar meetings, help explain the timing and direction of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting's policies on slavery. Shrewsbury Monthly Meeting (East Jersey) opposed slavery by 1730, but had too little power to convince most of the Yearly Meeting elite. Chester (Pa.) Monthly Meeting fought slave importation early in the 18th century but had little interest in the issue by mid-century. Philadelphia resisted antislavery until the 1750s when reformers of that meeting joined abolitionists from elsewhere to obtain the ban on slave training. Chesterfield in West Jersey rejected abolition on up to the Revolution and had enough support to slow down the pace of reform in the Society of Friends.