From Peace to Freedom: Quaker Rhetoric and the Birth of American Antislavery, 1657-1761 - Hardcover

Carey, Brycchan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300180772 ISBN 13: 9780300180770

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2012

Synopsis

In the first book to investigate in detail the origins of antislavery thought and rhetoric within the Society of Friends, Brycchan Carey shows how the Quakers turned against slavery in the first half of the eighteenth century and became the first organization to take a stand against the slave trade.

Through meticulous examination of the earliest writings of the Friends, including journals and letters, Carey reveals the society’s gradual transition from expressing doubt about slavery to adamant opposition. He shows that while progression toward this stance was ongoing, it was slow and uneven and that it was vigorous internal debate and discussion that ultimately led to a call for abolition. His book will be a major contribution to the history of the rhetoric of antislavery and the development of antislavery thought as explicated in early Quaker writing.

About this title

About the Author

Brycchan Carey is currently reader in English literature, Kingston University, London. He is the author of British Abolitionism and the Rhetoric of Sensibility: Writing, Sentiment, and Slavery, 1760–1807.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

From Peace to Freedom

Quaker Rhetoric and the Birth of American Antislavery, 1657–1761By BRYCCHAN CAREY

Yale UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2012 Yale University
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-300-18077-0

Contents

Acknowledgments.......................................................................................................ixIntroduction..........................................................................................................1ONE "The power that giveth liberty and freedom" BARBADOS, 1657–76...............................................40TWO "We are against the traffik of men-body" PENNSYLVANIA, 1688–1700............................................70THREE "The grief of divers friends" PENNSYLVANIA–LONDON–NEW JERSEY, 1711–19...........................105FOUR "O unrighteous gain!" FROM RHETORIC TO RITUAL, 1727–43.....................................................143FIVE "A practice so repugnant to our Christian profession" PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON, 1753–61.....................177Notes.................................................................................................................221Bibliography of Works Cited...........................................................................................237Index.................................................................................................................249

Chapter One

"The power that giveth liberty and freedom" BARBADOS, 1657–76

QUAKER WRITING ON SLAVERY BEGAN in 1657 with a letter from England addressed to "Friends beyond sea." The letter's author was George Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends, and the ideas he tentatively expressed were challenged, revised, and finally reasserted by Fox himself in the light of his own personal experience on the plantation island of Barbados. As the words of the founder, Fox's writings on slavery would later assume an importance to Quakers that perhaps outweighed what their actual length or content merited. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that they would influence the thinking of the many Quakers who would question the morality and legitimacy of slavery over the coming centuries. More immediately, Fox stirred up a controversy in Barbados that remained in the Quaker collective memory for years at a time when many of the island's Friends were relocating to the colonies of the Delaware Valley. To understand the development of antislavery in the Quaker communities within the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting we must thus understand the events that shaped Fox's response to slavery. Accordingly, the first section of this chapter examines Fox's 1657 letter in detail, while the following two sections chart Fox's later writings on slavery during and after his visit to Barbados, paying attention both to their content and to their form and style. The final sections of this chapter examine the attitudes toward slavery of Fox's contemporaries William Edmundson and Alice Curwen, both Quakers and both active on Barbados in the mid-1670s.

George Fox Writes to Friends Beyond Sea

George Fox's career can be viewed against the backdrop of the English Civil War and its aftermath. By the time he arrived in Barbados in 1671, he had spent years traveling, first as he grappled with his faith, next to disseminate his views, and later to develop the organization of the newly formed Society of Friends. In that time he had suffered persecution and had been imprisoned on several occasions. He was once released at the request of Parliament, and once at the request of Oliver Cromwell, who, admittedly, had ordered him to be arrested in the first place. Whether or not his personal experience of imprisonment influenced his attitude toward slavery is impossible to say. It was nevertheless during this period that he first turned his attention to slavery in the short letter of 1657 titled "To Friends beyond sea, that have Blacks and Indian Slaves." This letter, one of the first meaningful ameliorative texts in the English language, is also an important document of the new international phase into which the Society of Friends entered in the 1650s. The first Quakers to settle in the Americas reached the continent in 1656, part of a rapid migration of Quakers to take place over the coming few years. Given the length of time it took news to cross the Atlantic, the letter's date demonstrates both that Quakers were buying slaves from the outset of their settlement in America and that Fox must have come to a rapid view of the practice once it had come to his attention. Fox wrote:

Dear Friends, I was moved to write these things to you in all those Plantations. God, that made the World, and all things therein, and giveth Life and Breath to all, and they all have their Life and Moving, and their Being in him, he is the God of the Spirits of all Flesh, and is no Respecter of Persons; but Whosoever feareth him, and worketh Righteousness, is accepted of him. And he hath made all Nations of one Blood to dwell upon the Face of the Earth, and his Eyes are over all the Works of his Hands, and seeth every thing that is done under the whole Heavens; and the Earth is the Lord's and the Fullness thereof. And he causeth the Rain to fall upon the Just and upon the Unjust, and also he causeth the Sun to shine upon the Just and the Unjust; and he commands to love all Men, for Christ loved all, so that he died for Sinners. And this is God's Love to the World, in giving his Son into the World; that whosoever believeth in him, should not perish: And he doth Enlighten every Man, that cometh into the World, that they might believe in the Son. And the Gospel is preached to every creature under Heaven; which is the Power, that giveth Liberty and Freedom, and is Glad Tidings to every Captivated Creature under the whole Heavens. And the Word of God is in the Heart and Mouth, to obey and do it, and not for them to ascend or descend for it; and this is the Word of Faith, which was and is preached. For Christ is given for a Covenant to the People, and a Light to the Gentiles, and to enlighten them; who is the Glory of Israel, and God's Salvation to the Ends of the Earth. And so, ye are to have the Mind of Christ, and to be Merciful, as your Heavenly Father is merciful.

Beyond the title and the first line, there is little indication that Fox has slavery in mind. Many of his arguments are relevant to other situations, and could have been applied to Friends' relationships with a range of other groups and individuals. Nevertheless, the title and opening lines are rhetorically effective. They offer the reader an ostensibly narrow and contingent set of circumstances, but then provide evidence to show that the topic is universal in scope. This universalizing is an important part of the message. Drawing on Acts 17:26, Fox argues that God, who "hath made all Nations of one Blood," has created only one human family, all members of which are equal both before God and within his creation—that is, both in Heaven and on Earth. This inclusiveness is strengthened by repetition. The word "all" occurs nine times in the first four sentences, and the words "every" and "whole" appear frequently in the rest of the letter. Repetition is a rhetorical technique that we would expect to find in a work created by a man used to preaching to crowds; it also enhances the sense that the precepts of the letter apply equally to all human beings, without exception. This powerful argument is thus both cogently expressed in Fox's scriptural argument and structured into the form and language of the letter itself.

While the letter clearly asserts the equality of human souls, it is far from being a call to emancipate slaves. The key sentence argues that "the Gospel is preached to every creature under Heaven; which is the Power, that giveth Liberty and Freedom, and is Glad Tidings to every Captivated Creature under the whole Heavens." In other words, the Gospel is available to all, and brings joy to captives, slaves included. While this is reasonably unambiguous, and even relatively uncontentious, the same cannot be said of the assertion that the Gospel "giveth liberty and freedom." There are two possible interpretations of this. 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 transgressions. 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 have embraced the light. Although there is little evidence that this second meaning is the one that Fox himself had in mind, it would not stop others in the future from adopting and acting on this more radical view. In either case, in this letter Fox very early on emphasized to Quakers in the colonies the idea that all humans were equally capable of and deserving of receiving the light. More practically, he reminded colonial Quakers that, just as "the Gospel is preached to every creature under Heaven" so too "ye are to have the Mind of Christ, and to be Merciful." In the 1650s, neither of these things were obvious in the minds of most of the Europeans who encountered enslaved Africans and Native Americans.

George Fox in Barbados

If slavery troubled George Fox between 1657 and 1671, he left no evidence of it. Larry Gragg speculates that the turning point came late in 1671 when Fox lay seriously ill at Thomas Rous's plantation in Barbados, which was worked by a population of more than a hundred slaves. Fox visited Barbados and the British North American colonies between 1671 and 1673 as one of a group of Quakers which included Solomon Eccles, William Edmundson, John Hull, John Stubbs, and several others, many of whom are well known to scholars of early Quakerism. As Gragg suggests, Fox's personal experience transformed his understanding of slavery, but it would also bring him into conflict with the planters of Barbados. This conflict gave rise to a group of letters and pamphlets in which we can see Fox striving to reach a position on slavery which was compatible with both Quaker principles and the political realities of Barbados society. This section examines the text of these writings, which together shaped the early Quaker response to slavery.

Fox's journal is incomplete for this period, but a partial narrative of the visit has been reconstructed by John Nickalls, working from letters and other documents written by Fox and his party during the expedition. Despite arriving in poor health, Fox soon recovered enough to hold "many and great meetings among the whites and blacks" of Barbados. According to John Stubbs, in a letter written in December 1671, "the truth is freely preached, both to white people and black people. Solomon [Eccles] and I have had several meetings among the negroes in several plantations, and it's like must have more yet." Stubbs's description suggests that these meetings were racially segregated, but it says little about what was said there, or what the slaves made of Quaker rhetoric and theology. The barest hint of that is offered by John Hull, in a letter written the previous month, in which he argues that "the Lord hath and will make him a choice instrument in his hand for much good unto them, even unto the blacks as unto the whites, for the blacks (as 'tis said) expect some good by his coming here." Clearly, Fox's visit was being discussed among the enslaved population of the island, and being viewed in some sort of positive light. Although we will never know precisely what "good" the island's slaves expected of the visit, we do know that many of the Anglican plantocracy felt that Quakers were encouraging a general uprising. We know this since Fox felt a need to refute that allegation in a letter "For the Governour and his Council & Assembly ... in this island," which concludes with an important engagement with the problem of slavery on Barbados.

The letter, which was probably a collaborative effort, starts in combative mood, noting the "many Scandalous Lyes and Slanders" that have been leveled against Quakers, among which are the allegations that Quakers "do deny God, and Christ Jesus, and the Scriptures of Truth." These were serious accusations. For the first three pages of this letter, therefore, Fox presents the aspects of Quaker belief that were broadly in line with orthodox Anglicanism. Echoing the language of the Book of Common Prayer, Fox asserts that Quakers believe Jesus Christ "was Conceived by the Holy Ghost, and Born of the Virgin Mary ... was Crucified for us in the Flesh, without the Gates of Jerusalem; and that he was Buried, and Rose again the Third Day, by his own Power, for our Justification; and we do believe, that he Ascended up into Heaven, and now sitteth at the Right-Hand of God." Barbados cannot be described as a notable center of Anglicanism in the late seventeenth century. As Gragg has shown, church attendance was low while most clergy who came to the island primarily "expected to improve their fortunes." The strength of the attacks made on Quakers in Barbados, and the vigor with which Fox defended his faith, must therefore have had more to do with the social and economic ambitions of the island's plantocracy than with their excessive piety. Accordingly, Fox's letter takes two distinct rhetorical approaches. The first, asserting the closeness of Anglican and Quaker theology, can be seen as an attempt to ingratiate Friends with the island's Anglican élite by appealing to their sense of what was known, familiar, and presumably nonthreatening. The second approach, found in the final two pages of the letter, is more solidly grounded in the economic base of the conflict between Quakers and Anglicans. Here, Fox retains the defensive tone that characterizes much of this letter, but abruptly changes direction. He notes that "another Slander and Lye they have cast upon us, is; namely, That we should teach the Negars to Rebel." Fox had surely reached the bottom line. The colony of Barbados was a commercial enterprise, and the majority of the plantocracy had concluded that profits depended on a subservient, brutalized, and emphatically nonevangelized labor force. By contrast, Fox's Quakers had from the start been asked to recognize that "the Gospel is preached to every creature under Heaven; which is the Power, that giveth Liberty and Freedom, and is Glad Tidings to every Captivated Creature under the whole Heavens." While the emphasis on liberty must always have been seen by Barbados Quakers as metaphorical, the emphasis on preaching the Gospel to "every creature" had not been seen in that way. Throughout the 1660s, Friends had offered religious instruction to the enslaved and, in 1671, Fox himself preached to slaves, as a lengthy "Addition" to this letter attests. Although, as Gragg has shown, few of the enslaved did in fact convert, clearly the planters felt threatened by Quaker attempts at conversion and put about the rumor that Friends taught the slaves "to rebel."

Fox's response to this precise accusation has a threefold rhetorical structure, moving from outraged refutation, through justification of his broader policy concerning slavery, to encouragement to the island's Quakers to extend their ministry. He begins by refuting the "slander." Teaching the slaves to rebel is "A thing we do utterly abhor 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 testifie for us, that this is a most Egregious and Abominable Untruth." This strong refutation is rhetorically powerful in its use of repeated words and sounds, its deployment of emphatic tautologies such as "abhor and detest," and its powerful underlying rhythms; like much early Quaker antislavery rhetoric, either the text is written for oral delivery, or it is strongly influenced by the forms of spoken oratory. The loud protestations of innocence over, Fox seeks to clarify to "the Governour and his Council & Assembly" what has really been taking place in Quaker meetings at which enslaved people were present:

For, that which we have spoken and declared to them is, to exhort and admonish them, 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 Lye ... that there are but two Ways; the one, that leads to Heaven, where the Righteous go; & the other, that leads to Hell, where the Wicked and Debaucht, Whoremongers and Adulteres, Murderers, Lyars & Thieves go.

On the surface, Fox's hyperbolic rhetoric seems typical of an enthusiastic Christian preacher. Beneath the surface, however, Fox is offering a hardheaded contract: if the slaves behave well, and work hard, they will be treated well. The quid pro quo is that masters and overseers are expected to "deal Kindly and Gently" with those slaves who are "Faithful and Diligent." One wonders how seriously either the planters or the enslaved of Barbados took this piece of advice, if it was indeed proffered at the Quaker meetings where slaves were invited. While this sort of relationship may have existed on some Quaker plantations, most planters were not Quakers, and slaves would have been able to see plainly enough that the majority of planters did not follow such reciprocal agreements with their slaves, nor did they, in many cases, refrain from debauchery, adultery, and murder. Indeed, seventeenth-century Barbados society was growing increasingly brutal and, between 1661 and 1688, the absolute dominion of a planter over his slaves was being codified in island law. Fox's offer of a plantation contract clearly runs counter to the spirit of the Barbados Slave Code and to some extent can be viewed as an alternative to it. Whatever actually went on in Quaker meetings, in this letter written to "the Governour and his Council & Assembly, and all others in power," the idea of a plantation contract based around the mutual good behavior of planter and slave seems proposed as a measure ideally to be adopted by the largely Anglican plantocracy, and it is they who appear to be the ones being reminded of the wages of sin, and of the promise of life everlasting. In effect, this section is less of a defense of Quaker practices and more of a challenge to Anglican practices.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from From Peace to Freedomby BRYCCHAN CAREY Copyright © 2012 by Yale University. Excerpted by permission of Yale UNIVERSITY PRESS. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0300180772
• ISBN 13: 9780300180770
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256