Abolition

Quakers

The origins of the anti-slavery movement can be traced back probably to George Fox who lived during the seventeenth century, from 1624 to 1691. Fox was an English Dissenter with an uncompromising Christian Faith. He was the founder of the Religious Society of Friends, known as the Quakers. Fox was widely travelled, on both sides of the Atlantic.

Whilst in Barbados in 1671, Fox met Africans for the first time, and spoke about the condition of slaves. He put slavery in a spiritual context, proposing that slaves be treated by plantation owners as 'family members' in respect of church attendance. Fox preached that all those who believed in the word of God were His free people. He wrote in his journal:

Although Fox himself may not have appealed for the abolition of slavery, by the early eighteenth century Quakers at the London Yearly Meeting were calling for just that. In a volume of hand-written notes taken by representatives from the Plymouth Meeting, in 1727 the Yearly Meeting censured Quakers who traded slaves: "The importing of [slaves] from their native country... by Friends is not a commendable nor allowed practice". In 1761 the Yearly Meeting recommended that the Society of Friends disown fellow Quakers who persisted in "a practice so repugnant to our Christian profession".

From the mid-eighteenth century, American Quakers were urging English colleagues to do more, and by the 1780s, a decade during which the number of slaves taken from Africa each year peaked at 80,000, Quaker Meetings around the country were speaking up for abolition and organising and distributing anti-slavery material.

In 1784, the Meeting for Sufferings in London sent four hundred copies of a pamphlet entitled 'The Care of Our Fellow Creatures, the Oppressed Africans' to Quakers at Plymouth Meeting to be distributed to "Justices of the Peace, Heads of Corporations, Clergymen, and such other persons… in situations which may afford them an opportunity of discouraging the traffic, or… of contributing to diffusing that general detestation thereof from which we may hope in time for its abolition". The letter accompanying the pamphlets noted also"…spreading throughout the nation, a just abhorrence of the iniquitous traffic carried on to the coast of Africa for slaves, and of the cruel treatment they meet…".

Learn more about slavery and abolition and the Plymouth connection:

John Hawkins

Slave Trade Triangle

Abolition

Conclusion

Glossary

Suggested reading

Slavery and abolition web links