Short description:

This volume explores the significant connections between the Quaker community and the abolitionist cause in America. The case studies that make up the collection mainly focus on the greater Philadelphia area, a hotbed of the abolitionist movement and the location of the first American abolition society founded in 1775. Despite the importance of Quakers to the abolitionist movement, their significance has been largely overlooked in the existing historiography. These studies will be of interest to scholars of slavery and abolition, religious history, Atlantic studies and American social and political history.

Long description:

This volume explores the significant connections between the Quaker community and the abolitionist cause in America. The case studies that make up the collection mainly focus on the greater Philadelphia area, a hotbed of the abolitionist movement and the location of the first American abolition society founded in 1775. Despite the importance of Quakers to the abolitionist movement, their significance has been largely overlooked in the existing historiography. These studies will be of interest to scholars of slavery and abolition, religious history, Atlantic studies and American social and political history.

"Here we have an excellent attempt to understand the relationship between Quakers and slavery and to offer insight into the role of traders, abolitionists, African Americans and problematic others who worked towards ending slavery and the slave trade. It has proved a successful venture as it makes a significant contribution to the historiography of studies in the abolition of slavery and Quaker history in the USA and its influence beyond."

- Graham Duncan, Studia Historiae Ecclesiasticae

"The best of these essays reach out beyond the specifics of an individual life and allow us to see how these men and women, through their struggles and their activism, can help illuminate not just Quaker history, but the larger story of slavery and abolition."

- Andrew Diemer, New Jersey Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal

Table of Contents:

Introduction  Maurice Jackson and Susan Kozel  1. Warner Mifflin (1745-98): The Remarkable Life of an Unflinching Abolitionist  Gary B. Nash  2. Sarah Woolman and the Anti-Slavery Family  Geoffrey Plank  3. Friends, Family and Freedom in Colonial Philadelphia: A Black Slave-Owner Settles Her Accounts  Julie Winch  4. "What Shall Be Done with the Negroes?": Anthony Benezet's Legacy: Then and Now  Maurice Jackson  5. Samuel Meredith (1741â??1817): American Patriot and Welsh Philanthropist  Richard C. Allen  6. "Come Out of Babylon, My People": John Woolman's (1720-72) Anti-Slavery Theology and the Transatlantic Economy  Jon R. Kershner  7. Rejecting the Gain of Oppression: Quaker Abstention and the Abolitionist Cause  Julie L. Holcomb  8. The Trouble with Quakers: Creating Racial Tensions in East and West Jersey, 1770-85  James J. Gigantino II  9. In Pursuit of Natural Rights and Liberty: The Brothers Waln in Greater Philadelphia and the Atlantic World  Susan Kozel  10. The Abolitionist Circles of Benjamin Franklin: A Reluctant Abolitionist in Context, 1750-90  Louisiane Ferlier