Germantown Quaker Protest Against Slavery, 1688
The Germantown Quaker Protest Against Slavery of 1688 is best known as the first organized protest against slavery to have been penned in North America. Written by four Germantown Quakers, this extraordinary document raises objections to slavery on both moral and practical grounds at a time that Pennsylvania Quakers were nearly unanimous in their acceptance of the institution of slavery. It took another 88 years of activism among a growing number of Quakers before the Society of Friends would completely denounce slavery among its membership, and by this time the Germantown Quaker Protest had been completely forgotten. The document came to light again in 1844 and served as an important tool to the Quaker abolition movement of the 19th century. It was misplaced in the 20th century and was only re-discovered in 2005 in the vault of the Arch Street Meeting House. This document is but one famous example of the extensive records of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, which are divided between Haverford’s Quaker Collection and Swarthmore’s Friends Historical Library. A larger image and transcript of the protest can be found in Triptych: the Tri-College Digital Library.
Tags: Anti-Slavery, Germantown, Quaker, Slavery
October 13th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
What were the main points of the Quaker argument?
October 20th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
Thank you for your question concerning the main points within the Germantown Quaker Protest.
Jean Soderlund in Quakers & Slavery : a divided spirit, says:
“The earliest known antislavery appeal of Pennsylvania Quakers was signed in 1688 by Gerrit Hendricks, Derick op den Graeff, Francis Daniel Pastorius, and Abraham op den Graeff of the Germantown meeting. These men opposed the slave trade on the grounds that it encouraged theft and adultery, raised the possibility of rebellion, gave Pennsylvania and the Society of Friends bad reputations, and was contrary to the Golden Rule, that is to do unto others as you wish others to do unto you (Luke 6:31).”
(tripod.brynmawr.edu/record=b1094930~S12 p. 18)
Thomas Drake in Quakers and Slavery in America gives a more detailed analysis:
“In 1688 the little Quaker gathering at the house of Tones Kunders drew up a formal remonstrance against slavery and the slave trade and submitted it to the monthly meeting of Friends in nearby Dublin: “These are the reasons,” the Germantown Friends said, “why we are against the traffic of men-body, as followeth: Is there any [among us] that would be done or handled at this manner? Viz. to be sold or made a slave for all the time of his life?” They remembered, they said the fear which had gripped them on their voyage across the sea when they thought they might be captured by Turkish pirates and sold into slavery. Was it not worse, they asked, for Christians to act like the Turks, and steal Negroes from their native Africa to keep them in lifelong bondage? Was this an application of the golden rule?
The Germantown Quakers could see no more reason for enslaving black men than white. They had come to Pennsylvania themselves to find liberty of conscience: “liberty of the body” should also prevail. Christians, instead of compounding the crime of manstealing by separating slave husbands from their wives and forcing them into adultery, ought to deliver the Negores “out of the hands of the robbers.” At the least they should refuse to purchase slaves.
In more practical vein, the Germantown settlers warned their fellow Pennsylvanians that the news that “Quakers do here handle men” as people in Europe “handle there [sic] cattle,” would make an extremely ill report among prospective immigrants in Holland and Germany. Furthermore they feared a slave revolt – thinking perhaps of what had happened in Barbados – and asked the other Quakers what they as professors of peace would do if the slaves should [revolt].”
(tripod.brynmawr.edu/record=b1448213~S10 p. 11-12)
Ann Upton
Quaker Bibliographer
November 3rd, 2011 at 5:26 pm
Can you tell me if the Germantown Quaker protest of 1688 has been published in full in English? and if so, where may I find it? I have become interested in the remarkable Francis Daniel Pastorious.
November 4th, 2011 at 11:38 am
Yes, a transcription of the Germantown Quaker Protest may be found in our digital library, at:
triptych.brynmawr.edu/cdm4/page_text.php?CISOROOT=/HC_QuakSlav&CISOPTR=5838&CISOBOX=0&OBJ=8&ITEM=1
This is the first side of the page. Click on “Next” to go to the second side of the sheet.