John woolman

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Woolman served as a minister of Burlington Monthly Meeting in West Jersey. xi. By the 1740s he absorbed from some New Jersey and Pennsylvania Quakers a belief that slavery was unjust.

As some of their members have heretofore traded in negroes, as in other merchandise, this query being admitted will be one step further than they have hitherto gone, and I did not see it my duty to press for an alteration, but felt easy to leave it all to Him who alone is able to turn the hearts of the mighty, and make way for the spreading of truth on the earth, by means agreeable to his infinite wisdom.

These are the souls for whom Christ died, and for our conduct towards them we must answer before Him who is no respecter of persons. I then mentioned their alteration, and referring to the last-mentioned query, added, that as purchasing any merchandise taken by the sword was always allowed to be inconsistent with our principles, so negroes being captives of war, or taken by stealth, it was inconsistent with our testimony to buy them; and their being our fellow-creatures, and sold as slaves, added greatly to the iniquity.

After some further conversation I said, that men having power too often misapplied it; that though we made slaves of the negroes, and the Turks made slaves of the Christians, I believed that liberty was the natural right of all men equally. (Jer. I replied, the flood was a judgment upon the world for their abominations, and it was granted that Cain’s stock was the most wicked, and therefore unreasonable to suppose that they were spared.

It appeared to me that through the prevailing of the spirit of this world the minds of many were brought to an inward desolation, and instead of the spirit of meekness, gentleness, and heavenly wisdom, which are the necessary companions of the true sheep of Christ, a spirit of fierceness and the love of dominion too generally prevailed. Born in New Jersey in 1720, Woolman was a tailor and shopkeeper.

The sense I had of the state of the churches [in Maryland] brought a weight of distress upon me. xxiii. Benjamin Lundy of Baltimore opened a store that sold only "free produce" and in 1827 the "Free Produce Society" was founded by Thomas M'Clintock and others in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

On a trip to England in 1772 John Woolman died of smallpox.

Four years after Woolman's death slave ownership among Friends was finally prohibited.

As I was riding along in the morning, my mind was deeply affected in a sense I had of the need of Divine aid to support me in the various difficulties which attended me, and in uncommon distress of mind I cried in secret to the Most High, “O Lord be merciful, I beseech thee, to thy poor afflicted creature!” After some time, I felt inward relief, and, soon after, a Friend in company began to talk in support of the slave-trade, and said the negroes were understood to be the offspring of Cain, their blackness being the mark which God set upon him after he murdered Abel his brother; that it was the design of Providence they should be slaves, as a condition proper to the race of so wicked a man as Cain was.

It was not until 1826, that Free Produce caught on as a movement. The difference appeared thus: the entertainment the disciples met with was from them whose hearts God had opened to receive them, from a love to them and the truth they published; but we, considered as members of the same religious society, look upon it as a piece of civility to receive each other in such visits; and such receptions, at times, is partly in regard to reputation, and not from an inward unity of heart and spirit.

Ninth of fifth month.—A Friend at whose house we breakfasted setting us a little on our way, I had conversation with him, in the fear of the Lord, concerning his slaves, in which my heart was tender; I used much plainness of speech with him, and he appeared to take it kindly.