Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery - April 18, 1688

On this day in 1688, four Quakers in Germantown, Pennsylvania, authored a petition against slavery.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class. It's a production of I
Heart Radio. Hi, I'm Eves and Welcome to This Day
in History Class, a show that uncovers a little bit
more about history every day. Today is April eighteen nineteen.

(00:22):
The day was April eighteen sixty eight. Several Quakers in
what was then Germantown, Pennsylvania authored a petition against slavery.
Early on, Quakers were proponents of slavery and complicit in
the slave trade, but by the late sixteen hundreds, some
Quaker columnists were calling the institution of slavery into question.

(00:45):
Quakers weren't prohibited from owning slaves until seventeen seventy six.
In less than two decades after that, they petitioned the U. S.
Congress for the abolition of slavery. But the sixteen eighty
eight petition marked the first time a religious body in
the English colonies protested the brutal system. Francis Daniel Pastorius,

(01:05):
who was a German born lawyer and founder of Germantown,
as well as three other Quakers in Germantown, drafted the
petition on behalf of the Germantown meeting of the Religious
Society of Friends In the petition, the authors argued that
the oppression of black people was just as bad as
that of Quakers and Mennonites in Europe, that slavery was

(01:26):
a turn off for potential European immigrants, and that slave
rebellions posed a huge threat to the non violent Quakers.
In the late sixteen hundreds, in the colonies, many Quakers
owned slaves, and the Quaker slave trade was growing. Many
English Quakers saw slavery as necessary to drive economic prosperity.

(01:47):
Some Quakers had already found fault with the practice of
slavery well before the Germantown petition, like the founder of Quakerism,
George Fox, He said that Quakers should treat enslaved people
the way they would want to be treated, and believed
that the presence of non Christian enslaved people could threaten
the integrity of the Quaker family. Some Quakers against slavery

(02:10):
thought that the practice was in opposition to Quaker values
of non violence, equality, hard work, and humility, and in
sixteen eighty three, English Quaker Benjamin Furley was inspired by
his fear of flavor bolts to write a letter to
William Penn, a Quaker and founder of the colony of Pennsylvania.
Furley requested an end to the importation of enslaved people

(02:33):
in Pennsylvania and the eventual freeing of enslaved people that
came from other colonies. A lot of the English Quakers
who objected to slavery did so because they believed slaves
were unenlightened and dangerous, and many Quakers were fearful for
their safety. The German Town petition, on the other hand,
made the argument against slavery one about human rights and

(02:55):
practical concerns. German and Dutch Quakers weren't as you to
slavery and black people, while the English had long been
reliant on slavery. That meant that slavery was more of
an issue for Germantown Quakers than English Quakers, because people
in Germany and Holland weren't particularly into moving to a
colony where slavery was the norm. Though the German Towners

(03:18):
were Quakers, they were still outsiders in the Quaker community
and had a cultural disconnect with the English Quakers. So
several German Town Quakers decided to raise the issue of
slavery through a petition they drafted the Germantown Friends protest
against slavery on April eighteen sixty eight. They said in

(03:39):
the petition, now though they are black, we cannot conceive
there is more liberty to have them slaves as it
is to have other white ones. There is a saying
that we shall do to all men like as we
will be done ourselves, making no difference of what generation, descent,
or color they are. And those who still are rob men,

(04:00):
and those who buy or purchased them, are they not
all alike? Here's liberty of conscience, which is right and reasonable.
Here ought to be likewise liberty of ye body, except
of evil doers, which is another case. But to bring
men hither, or to rob and sell them against their will,
we stand against. The petition was first presented at a

(04:23):
monthly meeting at Abington, where it was considered too weighty
an issue to deal with. From there it was kicked
to the Philadelphia Quarterly Meeting and the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting,
and rejected in both places. Since the petition was not published,
it did not have any immediate effect on slavery and
society in Pennsylvania. Slavery continued and Quakers continued to profit

(04:46):
off of enslaved labor even as the authors kept protesting
the institution and other Quakers wrote petitions. But the document
resurfaced in eighteen forty four when a Quaker publication called
The Friend and Now is Rediscovery. At that point, the
abolitionist movement was active and the document gained renewed interest,

(05:07):
but the petition was once again misplaced and rediscovered in
March two thousand five at the Arch Street Meeting House
in Philadelphia. Now the document whole significance as a testament
to the anomalous perspective on slavery German Town Quakers brought
to the colony of Pennsylvania and abolition overall. I'm Eve

(05:30):
Jeff Coo and hopefully you know a little more about
history today than you did yesterday. And if you like
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tomorrow