Speaker 1:	But thank you for coming on this blustery night. I've been at Haverford for the last couple of days, and I've been reading there, so I haven't come all the way from England just today, just for this session. I was down in Georgia at a conference before that. But it is really, really fantastic to be here again at Swarthmore at such important center of Quaker studies to talk about a book, which I guess one might have thought would've come from someone studying here, or at Haverford, or at Penn, or someone who is kind of more on the inside as it were. 
	It's rather puzzling how I get to be here because I am, in many ways, an outsider. I'm not a Quaker, I'm not a Pennsylvanian. How did I get here? It's an interesting story, but I must say that when I said "I'm an outsider", I think "was an outsider" is probably better because what happened was I started coming here to Pennsylvania about six or seven years ago to study this and I've met so many people along the way, here in Swarthmore and at Penn while I was based at the [inaudible 00:01:12] center. And I've got so many friends now here, and I've had so much support and help. So thank you to all of you and for the future as well, for making me feel so welcome.
	So what I'm gonna be doing today, probably rashly, is trying to squeeze into 45 minutes or so headline material from a book, which spans more than a century. So apologize if at times my talk seems a bit, kind of, broad brush but in many ways it's that long historical span, which interests me because for most historians of the British abolitionist movement the story begins in the 1780s. While many historians of American anti-slavery look back only in the most cursory way at events before the 1830s, and I didn't see the PBS program that was referred to but apparently that was exactly what was happening there. Now these later periods are of course important and fascinating areas to study, but today I choose to see them as the end of a process, not the start. 
	Instead, I'd like to explore the prehistory of abolitionism, and one of the most surprising realizations is just how far back in time abolitionist thought can be traced. Unfortunately, however, many of these early anti-slavery writings and discussions have been dismissed by historians who speak of lights shining in the darkness, isolated thinkers, or writers who have no impact. And it's astonishing just how often that phrase "no impact" is used to describe early anti-slavery writing. I'd like to suggest this evening that assessments such as these arise from a narrow, or perhaps even a mistaken, understanding of the meaning of the word "impact". Now, the outlawing of slavery throughout the 19th century was of course a large and measurable impact but the discourses that facilitated that impact, the things people said, things people they shared and repeated amongst themselves. What do we mean by discourses? The discourses that facilitated that larger impact, although often dismissed, in fact have their origins decades even centuries earlier. 
	So let's start in England in the year 1657, in the last years in the rule of Oliver Cromwell, but in the early years of the Society of Friends. As you all know, Quakers faced a certain amount of persecution almost from the start and in the 1650s many were fined or imprisoned. This led some friends to seek a new life on this side of the Atlantic, almost from the beginning. Well, Quaker populations were established in the newly founded British colonies in North America and the Caribbean. Not, of course, in Pennsylvania at first but in Barbados and elsewhere. And within a year of the first Quakers reaching America, George Fox wrote a letter addressed to "Friends beyond the sea that have blacks and indian slaves". Now it's just a short letter and I'm going to condense it to make it even shorter, but it started a loud conversation. 
	At first, in fact, for the first century or so it was really only Quakers who were in on this conversation, but later Quaker anti-slavery rhetoric was heard more widely and after the 1760s, began to change the world. And in this we reach I think something of a paradox because Quakers who pride themselves on their silence, their moments of silence, on their plainness, in all things including language might perhaps have been the last people we might've expected to have developed a public rhetoric of anti-slavery rhetoric, when we talk about vocalizing and taking our arguments to other people. It's that paradox, which is one of the things I'm also going to think about this evening, and I'll start with that letter of 1657 from George Fox.
	It starts, "Dear friends, I was moved to write these things to you and all those plantations. God that made the world and all things therein and giveth life and breath to all. He is the God of the spirits of all flesh, and is no respecter of persons, but you so ever feareth him and worketh righteousness is accepted of him. And he hath made it all nations of one blood to dwell upon the face of the earth. And he does enlighten every man that cometh into the world that they might believe in the sun, and the gospel is preached at every creature under heaven, which is the power that giveth liberty, and freedom, and his glad tidings to every captivated creature under the whole heavens."
	Now, this is many ways typical of Fox's writing, in which everything is repeated twice. It seems to be a hallmark of his personal style. Fox argues that God has "made all nations of one blood", he's created only one human family, and all members of his family are equal before the Gods who created the world. Nevertheless, while the letter clearly asserts the equality of human souls, it's far from being a call to emancipate slaves, be they blacks, indians, or of any other origin. The key sentence argues that "the gospel is preached at every creature under heaven, which is the power that giveth liberty, and freedom, and his glad tidings to every captivated creature". Now captivated here means captive. In other words the gospel is available to all and brings joy to captives, slaves included. Now, while this is reasonably unambiguous if you accept, as not everyone might have done, that slaves were captives. And even relatively uncontentious I would've thought. The same cannot be said of the assertion that the gospel "giveth liberty, and freedom". Can that be right? Well there two possible interpretations. 
	The first is that the word of God brings spiritual liberty to the individual freeing them from the burden of sin. This type of spiritual liberty might indeed be "glad tidings" to captives bearing the weight of their crimes. But a second interpretation, and a far more radical one, is that a true understanding of the gospel confers freedom on the captivated. If this is the case, then captives of all sorts might walk free once they've embraced the light. Well there's little evidence that this second meaning is the one that Fox had in mind, but this was put to the test when he visited Barbados and the British North American colonies between 1671 and 1673. On Barbados, Fox preached to both blacks and whites and some of the slave owners felt that he was trying to encourage an uprising. They were taking literally the idea that the gospel confers liberty and freedom.
	And we know that people felt that way since Fox felt a need to refute that precise allegation in a letter to the governor, and his council, and assembly. Now in this letter to the island's ruling Anglican Pantocracy, as it was called, Fox writes that teaching the salves to rebel "a thing we do utterly abore and detest in and from our hearts. The Lord knows it who is the searcher of all hearts, and knows all things, and so can witness and testify for us that this is the most egregious and abominable untruth." And you can hear that double style that Fox has there with "egregious and abominable", "witness and testify" and so on. He follows this up by explaining to his reader what it is that has really been going on these meetings. 
	He writes ... It's very forthright language. He writes, "For that which we have spoken and declared to them, is to exhort and admonish them to be sober ..." And mortally admonish the slaves that is. "... to be sober, and to fear God, and to love their masters and mistresses, and to be faithful and diligent in their masters' service and business. And that then their masters and overseers will love them and deal kindly and gently with them. And that they do not steal, nor be drunk, nor commit adultery, nor fornication, nor curse, nor swear, nor lie. That there are but two ways, the one that leads to heaven where the righteous go and the other, that leads to hell where the wicked and debauched whoremongers and adulterers, murderers, liars, and thieves go."
	Well, as I said quite a forthright statement. This apparently is what was being preached with the enslaved people of Barbados, by Quakers or at least by George Fox. Okay, well this might seem like a very local dispute but it's an important moment for later Quaker anti-slavery because Fox is having to defend his practice of preaching to the enslaved people of Barbados. In other words, local politics is forcing him to formulate a global policy and to do it on the hoof, as it were. In fact, we have an account of one of his sermons on the island that suggest his rhetoric was a bit more radical than he later liked to admit in his letter to the governor. 
	According to one witness, John Hull, Fox spoke to Barbados Quakers about "trading up their Negroes in the fear of God. Those bought with their money and such as were born in their families, so that all may come to the knowledge of the Lord. So that with Joshua they may say, as for me and my house we will serve the Lord. And that their overseers might deal mildly and gently with them, and not use cruelty as the manner of some is, and have been. And to make them free after 30 years servitude." So according to Hull, Fox had told Quaker slave owners on Barbados to treat their slaves humanely and to let them go free after 30 years. That might not amount to teaching enslaved people to rebel, but it certainly is a radical departure from the ways in which slaves were actually treated on the island. 
	So did Fox actually say this? Well, probably he did since this, or something closely resembling it was reprinted in London a few years later in 1676. It was a book called 'Gospel family-order' being a short discourse concerning the ordering of families, both of whites, blacks, and Indians. This explicitly addresses the question of plantation management in a text that represents both Fox final position on the topic and his most polished rhetorical approach to it as well. Now of course, I don't have time to read from its length but let's just compare the section that seems to be based on John Hull's accounts of the Barbados sermon. Here Fox quotes from the Bible, from Deuteronomy 15:12, "And if thy brother, an Hebrew man, or an Hebrew woman, be sold unto thee, and serve thee six years; then in the seventh year thou shalt let him go free from thee." This is a practice, Fox Argues, that "will doubtless be very acceptable to the Lord." 
	But in translating this practice to the plantations, Fox somewhat alters the tariff. In 'Gospel family-order' he writes, "To close up all, let me tell you, it will doubtless be very acceptable to the Lord, if so be that masters of families here would deal so with their servants, the Negroes and blacks, whom they have bought with their money, to let them go free after a considerable term of years, if they have served them faithfully. And when they go and are made free, let them not go away empty handed, this I say will be very acceptable to the Lord." Now this point about slaves going away empty handed, is from Deuteronomy as well, was an important corrective to the occasional practice of emancipating slaves only at a poin in their lives when they were no longer able to labor or fend for themselves. A practice, which was often effectively a death sentence. 
	But Fox alters the word of the Mosaic Law, enjoining friends to let their slaves go free not after six years, as Deuteronomy suggests, nor even after the 30 years that the report of his original statement suggests but only "after a considerable term of years, if they have served them faithfully." So I think here at last we reach the limits of what we can understand from the phrase "the gospel is preached at every creature under heaven, which is the power that giveth liberty, and freedom", which was found in that letter of 1657. Clearly Fox's final position is only that spiritual freedom, or freedom from sin, be conferred. Temporal freedom is still very much in the gift of the slave owner, comes only after a long stretch of hard labor, and can be achieved only by good behavior if they have served them faithfully he says. 
	All this might have been a crumb of comfort for some lucky slaves. One imagines that few indeed ever came to enjoy this retirement that Fox gestures towards. So Fox, certainly urged amelioration of the condition of slaves, of sorts, and manumission at times. But he does not at any point come even near to arguing for general emancipation, or for an ends to either slavery or the slave trade and still less and at no point for the general uprising that the Barbadian Plantocracy had feared. So perhaps Fox had not gone as far as he could've done by 1676, and many historians of anti-slavery have said that his was interesting stuff about slavery but had no impact. But he had certainly gone a lot further than almost anyone else had done at that point. 
	And for Quakers in the last years of the 17th century and throughout the 18th century, there was always an awareness that the founder had had severe misgivings about slavery, even if he hadn't come to a final outright condemnation of it. Indeed the Quakers in Barbados found it increasingly difficult to adhere to the principals at the same time as treating such slaves as Fox had recommended. Now although this was not the only factor, it was one of several that meant that by the early 18th century most Barbadian Quakers had left the island and moved to Pennsylvania. And it was here that Quakers were to spend 70 years arguing and writing about the legitimacy of slavery before concluding it was something they could not tolerate. 
	Now, the first Pennsylvanian discussion about slavery that we know about, in that it was written down, took place as I'm sure you all know in 1688 after a group of German settlers complained that slavery was against the Golden Rule. They said very plainly, "These are the reasons why we are against the traffic of men-body, as followeth. Is there any that would be done or handled at this manner? viz., to be sold or made a slave for all the time of his life?" And they continue, "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 steal or rob men, and those who buy or purchase them, are they not alike?" I think it's interesting that they call this a saying, the Golden Rule, and also that they say that the saying specifies making a "difference of what generation, descent, or color they are." Which is something they have in fact themselves added in, unless it really was a saying at that time, in that way. We don't know, I've not seen it in that form anywhere else. 
	After that almost every Quaker argument against slavery begin by saying that slavery breaks the Golden Rule. And like the German protesters, most friends to later proclaimed against slavery also equated slave trading with man-stealing. And these were powerful arguments, but they didn't get very far in 1688. The Germantown protest was passed up through local meetings, finally reaching the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting where it was debated and politely laid to one side. Now, later historians have repeatedly said that it was buried, or lost without trace, at this point forgotten and therefore had no impact. In fact, its arguments resurface regularly in intervals over the next century, and at least two early historians of the anti-slavery movement, a very early historian, John Hepburn in 1715 [inaudible 00:17:39] and Thomas Clarkson in 1808 were well aware of its existence. 
	And the suggestion that it was without impact is somewhat belied by the fact that though shortly after the protest, various Quakers took it upon themselves to write books and pamphlets opposing slavery. And the first book to come out, just five years later, in 1693 was written by and anonymous supporter of the breakaway Quaker George Keith. Who according to the minutes of the yearly meeting in 1688, had been in the room when the Germantown protest was debated and in fact was one of a group of people who are asked to write a letter to London discussing the anti-slavery protests so he clearly knew all about it, as did his followers. 
	Now, of course, many historians have said that this tract had no impact but nevertheless it must've been part of the debate about slavery that impelled several Quakers to protest to the yearly meeting just three years later, in 1696. And this protest was not entirely unsuccessful, the result was a pronouncement recorded in the minutes of the meeting that "friends be careful not to encourage the bringing in of anymore Negroes, and that such that have Negroes be careful of them, bring them to meetings or have meetings with them and their families." And this is probably the first institutional attempt to limit slave trading in America. Although, of course, as many people pointed out it didn't have any teeth for disciplining slave owners and traders. But this sort of alleged lack of teeth, or impact more generally, does not alter the fact that the ideas expressed in the several anti-slavery protests of the 1680s and '90s resurface regularly over the next few decades in a variety of publications. These ideas are never far beneath the surface, they're always bubbling up, and it's clear that what we've got written down is only the tip of an iceberg of a much bigger debate that's going on.
	There are a number of publications that come out. One of the most important is a book. And I'm jumping a few years now. One of the most important is a book by a New Jersey Quaker called John Hepburn, which in many ways is the first really literary effort against slavery. Published in 1715, his book the 'American Defense of the Christian Golden Rule' can perhaps be seen as emerging from an abortive attempt by the Pennsylvania assembly to outlaw slave trading in 1712 by putting prohibitive duties on it. Now that episode is worth a whole evening's paper in itself. But suffice it to say it didn't succeed, in fact I don't think it ever meant to succeed. Proslavery Quakers seem to have been trying to fob off anti-slavery Quakers by giving the appearance of having attempted to take action, while knowing that the privy council in London would overturn the legislation. 
	But the episode demonstrates that the slavery debate was very much alive in early Pennsylvania. And it also gave rise to series of letters between London and Philadelphia. In one of these, in 1713, the London Yearly Meeting wrote to Philadelphia that "We think meets to impart onto you as the sense of the yearly meeting that the importing them from their native country in relations by friends is not a commendable nor allowed to practice, and we hope friends have been careful to avoid the same." So on paper at least, as early as 1713, London Yearly Meeting had said that Quakers everywhere were not allowed to buy imported slaves, of course they did so it didn't take it that point.
	So John Hepburn's book American Defense appeared and 1715, and although he doesn't refer to the recent goings on in the Pennsylvania assembly, he does begin by referencing the Kiethian pamphlet and other earlier anti-slavery writings. Mentions Germantown as well. He says that these early writings are "as rare as a phoenix egg." But the book goes on in addition to presenting much kind of political and religious arguments, to become the first satirical anti-slavery work and the first to really use poetry to protest against slavery. Of course, it also makes much use as the title suggests of the argument that slavery infringes the Golden Rule, but that's not what's original about it. 
	What he does for the first time in quaker literature is to satirically invoke and place together to archetypes, which would resonate through anti-slavery literature for centuries to come. The first of these archetypes is the "sadistic and blood-soaked planter interested only in his own material again." Hepburn characterizes negro masters as "men who can afford to keep themselves with white hands, except at sometimes they chance to be besparkled with the blood of those poor slaves when they fall to beating them with their twisted hides, and horsewhips, and other instruments of cruelty to barbarous here to relate." Now this is violent imagery, although it's not without its kind of implication of a featness with its emphasis on the slaveholders "white hands" of course, which contrast with the black hands of the enslaved people. 
	But this gives way to a more kind of obviously gendered construction and another archetype, the "vapid and self obsessed" wives of the slave owners. Who, Hebpurn says ... And this is another one of those odd passages. He says, "They like to paint their faces, and puff, and powder their hair, and to bring up their sons and daughters in idleness and wantonness, and in all manner of pride and prodigality, in decking and adorning their carcasses with puffed and powdered hair, with ruffles and topknots, ribbons and lace, and gay clothing, and what not." Now this is it kind of Swiftian distaste for female adornment and indeed for female bodies in this vitriolic and, I think, frankly misogynistic passage. The repetition the invective against "puffed and powdered hair", the objectification of womens' bodies as "carcasses", and then those rather limp concluding words where he kind of loses plot and goes "what not." I think it suggests that he's not completely in control while writing this. 
	Nevertheless, his characterization of planters' wives as Jezebel-like is consistent both with wider Quaker discussions about modesty, and dress, and appearance and with a developing stereotype of the planter's wife, or daughter, which would become familiar to readers of later abolitionist literature. For example some of you may know the image of the planter's wife in Anna Laetitia Barbauld's poem of 1791. Epistle to William Wilberforce's Esq., where she writes pointing towards this woman, "Lo! Where reclined, pale beauty courts the breeze. Diffused on sofas of voluptuous ease." Likewise, those of you who read Jane Austen might be familiar with her description of Lady Bertram in Mansfield Park. She's the wife of a planter who has plantations in Antiga, and she is in every scene continually defused on "sofas a voluptuous ease." And there are many, many other examples.
	So Hepburn isn't completely in control, at least in that passage. Nor is he a great satirist by any means, but he is beginning to form satirical conventions that would later be widespread in anti-slavery literature. And his other innovation, which he also achieves I think only with mixed success is to use poetry as an anti-slavery tool. Now although some poets had paid attention to slavery by 1715, no one had really used it as a protest. Hepburn does, and although his verse can hardly be included among the great poetic achievements of the 18th century, by virtue of being the first anti-slavery poem, his attempts are important. Now, of the two short lyrics he produces the first, which appears at the end of a preface is the most successful. It's very short and it goes, "And now to find the longitude, many a man hath gone about. But the perpetual motion, our negro masters have found out." Well, it's a very timely thing because there was a big search on at the time to find a method of fixing longitude. It was one of the great, great scientific questions of the day and it would've saved lives of many mariners from shipwreck. 
	And the other great thing, which would've been a wonderful discovery, perpetual motion. Many people were looking for, and of course he ironically points out that the slaves on the plantation are themselves in perpetual motion and so that's rather than being a scientific breakthrough, has already been found but in a very brutal way. Now Hepburn's book I think was original and important, but its generally described as having had no impact. But nevertheless in the years after Hepburn, the debate about slavery really took off in Pennsylvania, and spread to Quaker communities in other parts of America too. Particularly in New England, which is another story. Pennsylvanian Quakers soon began to produce more books and pamphlets, although very often they were written by people who were not exactly at the center of Quaker life. Two famous examples, who I'm sure you've heard of, are Ralph Sandiford and Benjamin Lay. Both of them almost best known outside of Philadelphia now, through David Brion Davis assessment that their writing does not betray the slightest awareness of living in the Age of Enlightenment.
	Their books, Davis argues, "drip with the blood and smell of the smoke and ash of hell." In Sandiford's case at least, I think this is unfair. His 1729 book 'A Brief Examination of the Practice of the Times', plainly emerges from a growing body of quaker anti-slavery writing to which it both consciously refers and unconsciously eludes. More significantly, it's not merely a work, of kind of as Davis would portray it, of "Christian enthusiasm directed towards a few faithful." But it's also a strategic intervention in a political debate, which aims to further. Its rhetoric certainly does thunder forth from the pulpit, but there's even moments of conciliation and political shrewdness. And its desire to position the book as a serious intervention in a public political debate is signaled in the opening pages with a lengthy dedication to "My esteemed friend Matthew Hughes, Esq." One of the representatives for the County of Bucks. Now I looked up Matthew Hughes. If Sandiford's intention was to impress the reader with evidence of his access to the power brokers of the Pennsylvania assembly, then he probably failed. Hughes, according Carolyn M. Peters the only person who's written anything on, "served 13 undistinguished terms the assembly, where he was remarkably inactive." That's not much of an epitaph. Neither is there any evidence that Hughes either supported or opposed moves to limit slave training. 
	Nevertheless, he may have been the best that the small shopkeeper Sandiford could manage in the way of patronage, and while the attempt seems somewhat ineffectual, we should note that Sandiford addresses his pamphlet to Hughes and his capacity as a secular legislator and not in his role as a prominent member of the Society of Friends. The book maybe grounded in religious thought, but Sandiford was enough of a man of the Enlightenment to recognize that immediate social evils could only be remedied by duly elected officers of state. Accordingly, the six-page dedication, will not free from religious sentiment, is actually more firmly positioned in political and economic realities than most of the ensuing text. 
	America, Sandiford argues, is "prosperous enough that there is no need to go to Africa for bread. And that placing the burden, which appertains to our bodily support on Africa is neither living by the gospel or maintaining liberty and property." Now to such Enlightenment principles as liberty and property, he adds a solid understanding of the processes of the African slave trade, noting that Britain's original investment in trade with Africa had by now been recouped in the most unmerciful way, and that the nation's continuing involvement was the cause of both civil and domestic turmoil in Africa. And he is clearly writing about Britain, remember it's part of the British Empire at this point not a British colony. 
	Sandiford's analysis of the cause and effects of the slave trade, while not perhaps openly Republican, is certainly Whiggish and he lays the blame at the door of the Stuart monarchy. The trades he argues ... This is a long passage but it's well worth listening to. The slave trade he argues is "the fruit of a corrupt tree, which was first planted in King Charles's time, when the African company was commissionated for that trade, which no doubt was chargeable and shipping and forces to build forts. Yet covetousness, the motive to it, and root of all evil, soon paid itself without mercy. That to dispatch their vessels, they would present a negro king with a sword, or such matter, that he may war with hie neighbors, and which ever party conquers, the fort is their market, which proves a temptation to these poor creatures, privately to murder the strongest part of their neighboring families, that they may sell the rest, though for the least Bawbles. And sometimes the betrayers and murderers they take also, and secure them with the rest of the vessel, lest surprised with their captivity they should drown themselves. Oh unrighteous gain."
	Now this passage contains a very compressed form, many of the most cogent arguments against the slave trade. That it stems from mistaken principles of foreign trade, that it is the cause of war in Africa, that it disrupts social and domestic relationships, and that it prompts slaves to suicide. Now while it's certainly not inconsistent with Quaker principles, these are secular arguments rooted in Sandiford's understanding of the reality of the African experience. And to emphasize the point, Sandiford concludes his dedication by appealing to his patron Hughes as, and I quote, "a living member in the body which you represent." And emphasizing that the ensuing treatise is, and I quote precisely, "intended for the good of both church and state." And notice he says, "church and state". While much of the ensuing treatise does indeed "drip with the blood and smell of the smoke and ash of hell", as Davis would have it, it's plain that Sandiford's purpose is just as firmly located in the here and now. And it was in the here and now that Sandiford had impact. Although Davis dismisses it, the book raked up a new and important debate about slavery in Philadelphia society, and prompted much discussion in Quaker meetings. And there was even an important advance. 
	The Philadelphia yearly meeting decided recommends to the care of the several monthly meetings to see that such who may be, or who are likely to be, found in that practice maybe admonished and cautioned how they offend the herein. While admonishment and caution are not enough to prevent friends from involvement in slave trading, since no formal act of disunion could follow the caution, the yearly meeting's decision nonetheless represents a significant extension of anti-slavery discourse throughout the Quaker communities of Pennsylvania. From this point, monthly meetings are asked to investigate members who own and who's trading slaves, and to admonish them accordingly. Now, an admonishment might not have held many terrors for the thick skinned, but I suspect for many the fear of undergoing the embarrassment of a public admonishment might have acted as a deterrent. But more crucially, the idea that the practice of buying Negroes is wrong, is henceforth structured into the essential business and the ordinary language of the local monthly meetings. Giving them the task of monitoring and admonishing slave trading and slave holding in their local communities ensured that a discourse of anti-slavery would become an increasingly important part of Quaker identity in the second quarter of the 18th century. A discourse, I mean people are talking about it, the words and the phrases are being shared and repeated, and the ideas being shared and repeated. 
	Now of course, this didn't go far enough and some Quakers knew it. Ten years later, in 1737, Benjamin Lay wrote a book called "All Slave-Keepers That Keep the Innocent in Bondage, Apostates". Now this, to be fair on Davis, really does wreak of "the smoke and ash of hell", and it's very chaotically disorganized. It's probably one of the least read books, I would think, in Quaker writing. In fact, Lay is not best remembered for his writing but for his stunts. As I'm sure many of you know, he's the one who smashed teapots and tobacco pipes in the marketplace to protest against those dangerous substances. He laid down naked in the snow, but his leg in the snow, in front of the meeting house door to remind Quakers that the slaves that they passed by were not sufficiently well clothed to deal with the freezing weather. And once, whether he kidnapped or merely detained his neighbors child, I've seen different accounts, so the parents would experience the same emotions as the parents of children abducted into slavery. 
	And of course, his most famous stunt came when he got a chance to address the yearly meeting. His point was that by keeping slaves, Quakers were in effect committing an act of violence on the words of God or on the Bible, and to emphasize his point as I'm sure you know the story, he took off his cloak and had a military uniform underneath, pulled out his sword and run it through the book splattering ... I think Benjamin Rush said it was blood, but others mostly say it was pokeberry juice all over everyone. It was a dramatic enough meeting, and had a fairly immediate effect in that Lay was disowned by the Quakers, taking unusual step of putting newspaper advertisements to actually say, "Look he really is nothing to do with us anymore." 
	Now a lot of people recently, and in fact over the last 200 years, have seen Lay as a marginal figure who's eccentric testimony could safely be ignored by kind of mainstream Quaker experience, and who therefore of course has had no impact. To a certain extent, that maybe true with Lay and I'm sure many friends found his stunts and his zeal embarrassing. But at the same time, I think he was closer to the mainstream than we often think. But if we look at what some historians have said, many historians see the 1730s and '40s as a period of Quaker inaction on slavery. They've gone so far and wouldn't go any further. Jean Soderlund, for example, who as many of you will know wrote a very important history of Quaker relationship with slavery in the '80s. She notes that that yearly meeting advice of 1730, to be cautious about buying imported slaves, but she argues, she says "for the next 23 years this is as far as the yearly meeting would go not even Benjamin Lay could rouse them from their torpor." Now this, I think is unfair. For start, if nothing else, Benjamins Lay's stunts provoked a great many conversations between friends and neighbors. 
	Indeed, his peculiar principles and conducts, argued Benjamin Rush, rendered him to many an object of admiration and to all the subject of conversation. So people would talk about Benjamin Lay they'd say "Well he's against slavery" and conversations about the morality of slavery would spring up as a result. And it seems like these conversations were having impact. In the period when Lay was performing his stunts, the Philadelphia yearly meeting was not torpid, it was in fact regularly raising the slavery question and regularly seeking assurances from monthly meetings that friends were obeying the advice to be cautious about buying imported slaves. And such assurances have been sought, at least, from this 1735 yearly meeting, two years before Lay published All Slave-Keepers Apostates, which somewhat suggests that his campaign was closer to the mainstream than is often recognized. And in fact, rather than being a period of torpor, the period '35 to '43 marked a profound shift in the attitude of Philadelphia Quakers towards buying imported slaves, which we can trace by following the minutes of the yearly meeting. 
	And it began with a simple but repeated request that friends follow the advice of 1730. Minutes for 1735 note that "this meeting, also agreeable to former advice, thinks proper to repeat the caution to friends against the encouraging the importation of Negroes by buying them after imported." This caution was reiterated the following year but with an added request, the meeting recommended to the several quarterly meetings, belonging to this meeting, to be careful in the verges of the meetings in this particular. Verges that kind of ... I'm not sure what a better word for that is but the constituents if you'd like. In other words, the yearly meeting is no longer merely throwing out generalized advice but delegating responsibility to the quarterly meetings to ensure that the advice is made clear to everyone within their verges, or jurisdictions I suppose. This request suggests that some of the monthly meetings charged with that duty in 1730 we're not doing as asked, and to enforce this the yearly meeting's establishing a kind of a chain of command if you like. The following year, the screw was tightened even further. In addition to repeating the former advice the yearly meeting now, also asked the several quarterly meetings, belonging to this meeting, not only to be careful in the verges of their respective meetings in particular, but to return an account thereof to the next yearly meeting.
	Not satisfied really with delegating responsibility, they're now holding them to account. For the third year in a row, their authority in this matter had been incrementally extended, this is not torpor. The fourth year, would demonstrate how successful the policy had been. After hearing oral reports from delegates of the quarterly meetings, as well as enjoying the dubious pleasure of being spattered with pokeberry juice by Benjamin Lay, the yearly meeting again advised against buying slaves after importation. Presumably to Lay's great annoyance, and possibly even to annoy him, they allowed themselves a moment of self-congratulation. Diverse friends in this meeting, the minutes note, "express their satisfaction in finding by the reports of the quarterly meetings that there is so little occasion of offense given by friends concerning encouraging the importing of Negroes. And this meeting desires the care of friends in their quarterly monthly meetings may be continued. This was probably a pointed rebut directed at Benjamin Lay, and also I suspect that there was more slave trading going on than they actually claimed in this. 
	Nevertheless, it's hard to avoid concluding that by 1738 friends had very much reduced the practice of buying slaves, at least those who had been recently imported from Africa. Now after this moment of self-congratulation, the yearly meeting might well have chosen to rest torpidly on their morals, but they did not do so. Instead, the message is continually pressed home. The minutes for 1739, 1741, and 1742 all contained nearly identical notes repeating the caution against importing Negroes. And quarterly meetings are continually asked to send reports to the yearly meeting, so you know they're really keeping it up. And it appears that these repeated cautions did have an effect on friends. For example, as many of you will have read, John Woolman reports in his journal for late 1742, or early '43, that he felt uneasy when he wrote a bill of sale for a slave, which his employer was selling to an elderly Quaker. He temporarily abated this uneasiness by speaking out against slavery, but when shortly after another Quaker asked him to write an instrument of slavery, he declined to do so. Now significantly it wasn't just Woolman who was uneasy on this occasion, it wasn't just his uneasiness. Woolman spoke to him in goodwill and the other friend told him that keeping slaves was not altogether agreeable to his mind, but the slave being a gift to his wife he had excepted of her. 
	And this example suggests that by early 1743 the buying and selling of slaves was the cause of some social embarrassment for Quakers in Pennsylvania. It's also further evidence the discussion of the morality of slave holding took place outside meeting houses as well as within them. In the same year, however, the minutes of the yearly meeting makes its last mention of slavery for almost a decade. Which to a kind of cursory observer might look like torpor. But this is not because it's dropping the issue, on the contrary, it takes the decision to incorporate the 1730 advice into the queries. A new list of queries are drawn up, there's 12 of them at this point. Which according to ... I was just talking about this at Haverford yesterday. According to the yearly meeting minutes to be read at the quarterly meetings, but we think may have probably also been delegated down to the monthly meetings as well, I'm not actually sure about that. But certainly in such quarterly meetings in the yearly meeting minutes. 
	So even without formal powers of sanction or censure being invoked, considerable social pressure would've been placed on friends to conform to expectations by giving the correct answers. So it's really important in this new list of queries, question 11, is "Do friends observe the former advice of our yearly meeting, not to encourage the importation of Negroes nor to buy them after imported?" So with this query, the commitment not to buy imported slaves is transformed from being just one piece of advice to actually being part of the central essence of Quaker identity in the colony. From this point onwards, at least friends, at least [inaudible 00:44:26] friends, and at least in quarterly meetings and possibly more widely are asked to stand up and affirm regularly that they and members of their community have not bought imported slaves. Whether intentionally or not, the yearly meeting had given anti-slavery discourse, what was perhaps it's most important boost at any point during the 18th century. And I don't mean just for Quakers, I mean anywhere. Because what they're doing is they're allying anti-slavery very closely with the group identity. And they made it very difficult for any Quaker to buy imported slaves without very publicly admitting to having let down the standards of their friends, families, and communities. 
	So with this, Quaker anti-slavery rhetoric became Quaker anti-slavery ritual, and the psychological impact no less than the political impact of locating anti-slavery at the heart of Quaker identity cannot be over emphasized, I don't think. Now a little more than a decade this ritual became much, much stronger. You will all know that the mid 1750s, the Quakers in Philadelphia moved much more strongly against slave trading and indeed slave owning. And this has been very well examined, this particular episode ... Most of you know the story about John Woolman writing 'Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes', the first Quaker anti-slavery book publicly supported by the overseers of the press. And from there, between 1753 and 1758, convincing the yearly meeting to unambiguously outlaw the purchasing slaves crucially with the pain of disunion included in that. And I think it genuinely was Woolman who was the force behind the Philadelphia Quakers decision to denounce slavery in the 1750s. But of course no amounts of force can move an immovable object. Woolman had to be pushing at an open door. 
	So why this time? It's a difficult question to answer but it appears that simple economic explanations are not enough. If Quakers wanted to keep on keeping slaves there was plenty of money to be made in the business, as you can see by looking around anywhere else in British America or beyond. They gave up their slaves for moral, that is to say cultural reasons, not economic ones. And as Jean Soderlund shows, the decline began in the 1730s at the same time that Benjamin Lay was spattering them with pokeberry juice. And there's several explanations for this. One is at slave ownership was indeed no longer profitable, but giving for example the clamor of Georgia at that time to embrace the plantation system this hardly seems plausible. Another possible explanation is demographic, slaves acquired by Quakers in the late 17th and early 18th century would only rarely have survived past the 1730s and produced relatively few children. But the argument that slave ownership declined because the slave population was dying off depends on Quakers not replacing their slaves when they died. In other words, a demographic explanation for the decline in Quaker slave ownership is ultimately a cultural explanation. 
	And in my analysis, many Quakers had been heeding the advice given repeatedly over and over again in many different forms from 1696, by both the yearly meeting and in another publications. The advice not to buy imported slaves. So all things considered, the most likely explanation is in 1750s is that a younger generation of friends brought up in a climate where anti-slavery discourse, where the talking about slavery, talking against slavery was widespread current. This generation were asserting the values of their generation by choosing not to replace the slaves that they inherited from their parents. This implies that the debates of the past half century had had a considerable cultural influence. Although the impact of any particular individual event, such as the Germantown protest, the 1696 advice, the Hepburn's book, the 1735 advice, all of the rest of them. Although none of these could be directly or immediately measured, taken together it represents the substantial cultural investment in anti-slavery, and this investment was rewarded in the 1750s when a new generation came to the form. 
	Pennsylvanian Quakers outlawed the purchasing of slaves in the 1750s because ... I say outlawed, I mean within the Society of Friends, not obviously in colonial law. But they did in the 1750s because slave ownership had declined in the 1740s, because the arguments had been one in the 1730s and before. And then just a few years later in 1761, the London yearly meeting would follow their lead an issue what they called a "strong minute" debowering all friends from trading in slaves on pain of disunion and this is all over the world. Now thereafter, of course there's another whole story to be told about what happens from that point. But thereafter London Quakers would be instrumental in establishing the non-denominational national movement against the slave trade that bore fruit in the 19th century. No single high impact event kick started this abolition movement but instead it had its origins in hundreds of low impact, cultural, and discursive events anyone of which on its own can be dismissed as having had no impact but, which cumulatively over the course of more than a century added up to one of the most important developments in modern world history, the start of the international campaign to abolish slavery. 
	Thank you.