The Seeds of Activism
“The
Calico! O the Calico!” Wrote Anne Cooper in 1762. “I think tobacco and tea and calico may all
be set down with the keeping of negroes, all one as
bad as another.”
Anne Whitall Cooper Diary, 18,iii. 1762, Haverford.
“May we look upon our treasures, the furniture of our
houses, and our garments, and try whether the seeds of war have nourishment in
these our possessions. Holding treasures
in the self-pleasing spirit is a strong plant, the fruit whereof ripens
fast. A day of outward distress is
coming and Divine Love calls for us to prepare against it.”
John Woolman, Journal,
Excerpts:
The Quakers
of
By Louis Thomas
Jones, 1914
Part I, chapter III “Western
Migration”
Excerpting:
It may be asked: Why did the Quakers migrate from the South in
such numbers? The answer to this question has a direct bearing upon the history
of the Quakers in
For many years there had been forces
at work within the Society of Friends which had made the holding of slaves not
only incompatible with membership in the order, but had also rendered the
institution of slavery extremely repugnant to the Quaker mind.(36) As the slave power seized with a firmer grasp the economic
control of the South, the Quakers there, most of whom were agriculturists with
small holdings, were thrown into unbearable competition with cheap slave labor,
and at the same time were held in contempt, because of their objection to the
holding of “property in man”, by those in authority. Numerous Quaker ministers,
among them the well-known John Woolman, had traveled
throughout the South, pointing out to their brethren the danger of their
position. The whole situation came to a climax in 1803 and in the following
manner.
Zachariah Dicks, a prominent minister
in the Society of Friends and supposed to have the gift of prophecy, appeared
at the Bush River Meeting in South Carolina and began to warn the Friends of a
terrible “internecine war”, which was to come upon America because of slavery
“within the lives of children then living.” He there raised his voice in
prophetic utterance and said: “Oh,
Thus were the two sides of the Ohio
Valley peopled with those who in derision were early called Quakers, and who
were now to struggle with the social, economic, and political problems peculiar
to the two regions.(38) Moreover,
when the sons and daughters of these same pioneers once again loaded their
heavy wagons and moved off to the westward they came directly to Iowa. Here
upon the soil of the first free State west of the Mississippi River the lines
from the North and the South converged; the varied habits of life, traits of
character, manners, customs, and beliefs were to be moulded
and fashioned together; and out of the combination was to come that which
to-day is characterized as “Western Quakerism”.”
End Notes:
28- Weeks’s
Southern Quakers and Slavery, p. 85.
32- Weeks’s
Southern Quakers and Slavery, pp. 96-125.
30- Quoted in Ramsey’s Annals
of Tennessee, p. 95.
31- Thwaites’s
Daniel Boone,
32-Weeks’s Southern Quakers
and Slavery, p. 252.
33- Weeks’s
Southern Quakers and Slavery, p. 253.
34-The
text of the Ordinance of 1787, together with a list of references, may be found
in Shambaugh’s Documentary Material Relating to
the History of Iowa, Vol. I, pp. 47-55.
35-
For an excellent account of The Quakers in the Old Northwest see Harlow
Lindley’s paper under that title in the Proceedings of the
36- Sharpless’s A History of Quaker Government in
Pennsylvania, Vol. II, Ch. X.
37- Weeks’s Southern Quakers and Slavery, p. 307. See
note, p. 307, taken from O’Neall’s Annals of
Newberry.
38-
For the striking difference between the settlement of the
Excerpt:
“The migration of the Quakers
into this new land of promise began even before 1787. Stragglers from