Merion Friends Meeting, a Quaker Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends

Abolition of Slavery and the Quakers

Quakers and the Antislavery Movement

Quakers believe that there is that of God in each person and also, that to be whole spiritually, they need to live their beliefs. Friends recognized the equality of women quite early but were slower to recognize the evils of slavery. Although Quakers, including William Penn, owned slaves in the colonial era, the Religious Society of Friends was the first group to condemn slavery. In 1688, Germantown Quakers declared in writing their opposition to slavery. In the early 18th century, regional activists such as Benjamin Lay and John Woolman struck out against the institution.

In 1753, the Friends Book of Discipline stated "let us make his [the slave] cause our own" and in 1754, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting declared to its members that

"To live in ease and plenty, by the toil of those whom violence and cruelty have put in our power, is neither consistent with Christianity nor common justice."

Quakers founded the Pennsylvania Abolition Society in 1784 and began to send petitions to Congress advocating the

abolition of slavery throughout the country. At the same time, they worked to end slave-owning among Quakers. By 1792, Merion Friends Meeting could declare its members free from the taint of slave ownership.

During the American Revolution, Pennsylvania had legislated the gradual end of slavery. In 1840, sixty-four slaves were counted in the census of that year. Ten years later in 1850, none were counted.

In the 19th century, support for abolition among Quakers was widespread, but there was disagreement over methods. In 1831, William Lloyd Garrison's abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator , called for the immediate end to slavery. In 1833, frustrated with the gradualist focus of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, radical abolitionists founded the American Anti-Slavery Society.

One-third of the original delegates to the American Anti-Slavery Society were Quakers, but not all Quakers supported the organization. In Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, an anti-slavery society founded in 1837 with twenty members, used petitions to call for immediate abolition and built themselves a meeting hall. This kind of militancy, along with race riots in Philadelphia and other cities, led yearly and monthly Quaker meetings to pull back from active engagement with non-Quaker organizations.

Some Quaker meetings and some individuals eschewed violence in adherence to the Peace Testimony, which exhorts Friends to remove the causes of war and to commit to non-violence in resolving all matters of conflict. Many did not approve of Friends' involvement outside Meeting, committing themselves to nonviolent resistance or "nonresistance" as it was called at the time. After being burned by the internal Friends schism of 1827, they demanded that reformers respect diversity of opinion and called Garrison a fanatic. The Quaker newspaper The Friend criticized abolitionist editor Elijah Lovejoy for using a gun before his murder in 1837.

Some Quakers rejected all association with abolitionists because they thought abolitionists hated slaveholders. Friends are called to love and respect all persons and to overcome evil with good. For example, Isaac Hopper was disowned by his Meeting in 1842 and Lucretia Mott was threatened with disownment in 1842, 1847, 1848 and 1850. It became hard for radical abolitionists to find a place to meet as many Quaker Meetings said no to the use of Meetinghouses for abolitionist speeches.

Quaker organizers

Philadelphia Quaker Lucretia Mott was a reknowned orator and leader of both abolition and women's suffrage movements in America.

She understood intersectionality in the 19th century!

After the burning of Pennsylvania Hall in 1838, itself built because of the challenges in securing venues for anti-slavery meetings, Lucretia Mott was turned down for the third convention of the Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women by all downtown meetings. Race prejudice led some Quakers to go only part of the way. Antislavery activists had hard work to combat "lagging interest and lukewarm followers", especially in the 1840s.

By 1836, separate Anti-Slavery societies for women were common and Quaker women were among their leaders. Lucretia Mott, along with other Quakers, founded the inter-racial Female Anti-Slavery Society in 1833. Over time, increased discussion of slavery by male politicians led

women's groups to retreat from separate petitions. Instead, they adopted one or more of the following approaches to the problem of slavery:

1) abstention from the use of slave-made goods,

2) the production of alternative goods, and/or

3) buying and selling goods to raise money for political action.

"Free" Commerce for Change

These activities, which were both economic and moral, suited this era of separate spheres for men and women (although men, such as James Mott, owned free produce stores, and women, such as his wife, Lucretia, continued to deliver abolitionist speeches). Although they frequently signed petitions, the political sphere was limited for women, in that they could neither vote nor hold office. The boycott of slave produce was not new in the 19th century; John Woolman had refused to purchase goods made by slaves as early as the 1760s. After all, "Without the Consumers of Slave Produce There Would Be No Slaves".

What was new were organized commercial operations to produce an alternative to slave goods. Free labor manufactured Muslin shirting and sheeting, printed cloth, bed ticking, Canton flannel, drilling, Manchester gingham, table diapers, printed calico, cotton yarn, and more. Fifty free

produce stores were opened in the United States between 1826 and 1848. The Female Association for Promoting the Manufacture and Use of Free Cotton, established in Philadelphia from 1829 -1833 bought free labor cotton to make checked fabric for aprons and bed ticking. In 1838, the Requited Labor Convention established the American Free Produce Association, Lucretia Mott declaring: "we provide things honest in the sight of all men' by giving

preference to goods which come through Requited labor".

A Free Produce Store in Ohio readily broadcasts that its wares are not manufactured with slave labor. Free Labor meant that enslaved labor was not used to produce the goods in the store.

In 1838 the Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women wrote the following resolution: "Resolved, That it is the duty of all who call themselves abolitionists to make the most vigorous efforts to procure for the use of their families the products of free labor so that their hands may be clean, in this particular, when inquisition is made for blood."

The disadvantages of free labor cotton were acknowledged: inferior quality, high prices and a decline in the price of slave-produced cotton and manufactured goods, but Mott's group claimed that quality had improved, prices had decreased and sales had doubled. In addition to cotton clothing, free-labor Quaker children only ate artificially sweetened candy, called prize packages, which did not taste very good.

Some critics complained that the free produce movement focused on the purity of abolitionist soul rather than on the slave. After Garrison withdrew his support, it lasted until 1847.

A receipt for the purchase of free labor produce from George Taylor's store in Philadelphia.

Another way that women, in particular Quaker women, supported the abolition of slavery was through selling purchased or homemade items to the public. The first such Anti-Slavery Fair was held in Boston in 1835. Twenty-six fairs were then held in Philadelphia before the beginning of the Civil War. At these fairs, dry goods, soaps, sweets and clothing were sold and raised $32,000 for anti-slavery activities.

Suitable arenas for the fairs was often a challenge so that in

1842 Lucretia Mott was criticized by her meeting for hosting the fair in her own home and allowing her own image to be sold. Concern about mob violence led the Mayor of Philadelphia to shut down the 1859 fair.

a grass roots movement

Although we are not aware of many MM members who were active in these anti-slavery activities, several may have been. Abolitionist Hiram Corson of Plymouth Meeting lauded the

anti-slavery spirit of the Bowman family, writing in 1894 that "that one brave family ranks with martyrs". Sisters Abby and Mary S., along with another Merion member, Rachel Jones,

represented Lower Merion at the Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women in in 1838. Joshua Bowman was also claimed by Corson to have been an abolitionist.

British Quaker Margaret Bright wearing a free-cotton dress in 1860.

In general, the Quakers of Lower Merion opposed slavery, but were not all in agreement about the methods to address its evils. Their meetings took stances against the institution but did not often support the methods of radical abolitionism and worried about the pollution that threatened Quakers who became intricately involved in outside organizations. Throughout this period, from the 1830s to the 1850s, Quaker women played a key role in consciousness-raising as well as

fund-raising.

Anti-slavery tokens sold at anti-slavery fairs, to raise money for the abolitionist cause. Note that to avoid charges of counterfeiting, the letter N in "United States" was reversed. The image of the seal is taken from below.

This page was written and researched by Janet Frazer, our archivist and historian. The sources she used are documented here.

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