The Journal of John Woolman

Front matter

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Chapter I

Hia Birth and PatentagE. — Some Accoirat of the Operations of Divine Grace on his Mind in his Youth. - Hia first Appearance in the Minislrj. —And his CoiEideraLioos, while Voung, on the Keeping

CHAPTER II. 1743 -,74s

His lirat Jonmey, on a Religions Visit, in East Jersey. - Tboughts on Merchandising and Learning a Trade. — Second Journey into Pennsylvania, Maryland, Vi^nia, and North Carolina. — Third Journey through part of West and East Jersey. — Fourrh Joiimey through New York and Long Island to New England. -And his fifth Jou.. ney to the Eastttn Shore of Maryland, and the Lo«et Counties 00 Delawars 6

Chapter III

His Marriage. — The Death of his Father. — His Jotimeys info ths u^per part of New Jersey, and afterwards into Pennsylvania. — Considerations on keeping Slaves, and Visits to the Families of Friends at sereial times and places. — An Epistle from the Genetal Meeting. — Hi9 Journey to Long Island. — Consideiarions on Trading and on the Use of SpiiituDus Liquors and Costly Apparel.

vi Contents.

Chapter IV

■757. -753- Visit to the Families of Friends at Biirlington, _ Journey sytvaniA, Maryland, \

ioTi

New Garden and Crane Creek. — Thougiils on the Neglect of a Religious Care in the Education of tlie Negroes ....

Chapter V. ■757, '753

Considerations on the Payment of a Tax laid for Canning on the War against the Indians.— Meetings of the Commiltee of the Yearly Meeting at Philadelphia. — Some Notes on Thomas A Kempis and John Huss. — Tlie present Circumstances of Friends m Pennsylvania and New Jersey very Different from those of our Fredecessots. — The Drafting of the Militia in New Jersey to serve inthe Army, with some Observations on the Stateof the Members of our Society at that time. ~ Visit to Friends in Pennsylvania,

Quarterly, and Yearly Meetings in Philadelphia, respecting those who keep Slaves . . . . ]

Chapter VI. '753, ,759

Visit lo the Quarterly Meetings in Chester County. — Joins Daniel there. — Some Ohaervafions on the Conduct which thi ise should maintain who speak in Meetings for Discipline. — Mor.

; Visits lo such as kept Slaves, and to Friends near Salem. — Acer

.unl of tho

Yearly Meeting in the Year ,759, and of the increasin, in Divers Provinces, to lahor against Buying and Keepi

-The Yearly Meeting Epistle. -Thoughts on the

Small-Poi spreading, and on Inoculation . .■ ." .

Chapter VII. .760

^isit, in Company with Samuel Easlbum. lo Long Islar id, Rhode

Island, Boslon, etc.— Remarks on the Slave-Trade at

Chapter VIII, 1,61, .76

/isils Peril iSTlvania, ShtewsbviTy, and Squan, — Pi ondPart of his Cmsideralioos on keeping Negioc;

learing in some Respects singular in his

Ihe Fan.]

-Vials to Hie Indians at Wehalooslng on tbe Kit

Chapter IX

Religions Converealion with a Company niel lo see the Tricks of a Juggler. — Actounl of John Smith's Advice aud of the Ptoceedingi of a Commiliee at the Yearly Meeting in 1764. - Contemplalioiis oil the Nature of True Wisdom. — Visit 10 the Families of Friends at Mount Holly, Maoslield, and BurlinEton, and lo ths Meetings on the Sea-Coaat from Cape May towards Squan. — Soma Accountof Joseph Nichols and hisFoUowers. — On the different State of the first Selllers in Pennsylvania who depended on their

kepi Negroes, — Visit 10 the Northern Parts of New Jersey and the Western Fart: of Maryland and Pennsylvania, also to Ilia Families of Friends at Mount Holly and several Patfs of Maryland. — Further Considerations on keeping Slaves ; and his Concern for having been a Patty to the Sale of One. — Thoughts on Friends eiercising Oflices in Civil Government . . . 1

Chapter X

Bodily Indisposition. — Exercise of his Mind for the Good of the People in the West Indies. — Communicates lo Friends his Conlemto Visit some of those Islands. — Preparations to embark - Cousideiations on the Trade 10 the West Indies. — Release from his Concern and relnm Home. — Religious Engagements. — Sickness, and Exercise of his Mind therein :

Chapter XI

Embarks at Chester, with Samuel Emien, in a Ship bound for London. — Exercise of Mind respecting the Hardships of the Sailors, — Considerations on the Dangers of training Youth to a Seafaring Li&. — ThoughtsdaringaStoimat Sea. —Arrival in London , :

viii Contents.

CHAPTER XII. Attends the Yeafly Meeting in London. —Then procee ds toward

Yorksliire. — Visits Quarterly and other Meetings in tli of Henford, Warwick, Oiford, Noitinghid., York, and land. — Returns to Yorksbire. — Inslruelive Obaervalio sand Lettens. - Hears of the Decease of William Hunt. - Som

Account of bim. - The Autbort last Illness and Death at York

Appendix

A Word of Reuem

Introduction

TO those who judge by the outward appearance, nothing is more difficult of explanation than the strength of moral influence often exerted hy obscure and uneventful lives. Some

f rp dtfidth tllk I h

d 1 th d m 1 fi f

hkiULb Tlk 1 fGd

cometh not by observation , and the only solu tion of the mystery is in the reflection that through the humble instrumentality Divine power was manifested, and that the Everlasting Arm was beneath the human one.

The abolition of human slavery now in process of consummation throughout the world furnishes one of the most striking illustrations of this truth. A far-reaching moral, social, and political revolution, undoing the evil work of centuries, unquestionably owes much of ils original impulse to the life and labors of a poor, unlearned workingman of New Jersey, whose very existence was scarcely known beyond the narrow circle of his religious society.

It is only within a comparatively recent period that the journal and ethical essays of this remarkable man have attracted the attention to which they are manifestly entitled. In one of my last interviews with William EUery Channing, he expressed his very great surprise that they were so little known. He had himself just read the book for the first time, and I shall never forget how his countenance lighted up as he pronounced it beyond comparison the sweetest and purest autobiography in the language. He wished to see it placed within the reach of all classes of readers ; it was not a light to be hidden under the bushel of a sect. Charles Lamb, probably from his friends, the Clarksons, or from Bernard Barton, became acquainted with it, and on more than one occasion, in his letters and Essays of Elia, refers to it with warm commendation. Edward Irving pronounced it a godsend. Some idea of the lively interest which the fine literary circle gathered around the hearth of Lamb felt in the beautiful simplicity of Woolman's pages may be had from the Diary of Henry Crabb Robinson, one of their number, himself a man of wide and varied culture, the intimate friend of Goethe, Wordsworth, and Coleridge. In his notes for First Month, 1824, he says, after a reference to a sermon of his friend Irving, wliicli he feared would deter rather than promote belief: "How different this from John Woolman's Journal I have been reading at the same time \ A perfect gem ! His is a schone Seek, a beautiful soul. An illiterate tailor, he writes in a style of the most exquisite purity and grace. His moral qualities are transferred to his writings. Had he not been so very humble, he would have written a still better book ; for, fearing to indulge in vanity, he conceals the events in which he was a great actor. His religion was love. His whole existence and all his passions were love. If one could venture to impute to his creed, and not to his personal character, the delightful frame of mind he exhibited, one could not hesitate to be a convert His Christianity is most inviting, — it is fascinating!" One of the leading British reviews a few years ago, referring to this Journal, pronounced its author the man who, in all the centuries since the advent of Christ, lived nearest to the Divine pattern. The author of The Patience of Hope,* whose authority in devotional literature is unquestioned, says of him : " John Woolman's

" It will be interesting to the thousands in this country who have learned to admire and love this remarkable writer to learn that she has in preparation an appreciative review of the life and character of Woolman, which, it is to be hoped, will soon be published.

4 hiti'odjiction.

gift was love, — a charity of which it does not enter into the natural heart of man to conceive, and of which the more ordinary experiences, even of renewed nature, give but a faint shadow. Every now and then, in the world's history, we meet with such men, the kings and priests of Humanity, on whose heads this precious ointment has been so poured forth that it has run down to the skirts of their clothing, and extended over the whole of the visible creation ; men who have entered, like Francis of Assisi, into the secret of that deep amity with God and with his creatures which makes man to be in league with the stones of the field, and the beasts of the field to be at peace with him. In this pure, universal charity there is nothing fitful or intermittent, nothing that comes and goes in showers and gleams and sunbursts. Its springs are deep and constant, its rising is like that of a mighty river, its very overflow calm and steady, leaving life and fertility behind it."

After all, anything like personal eulogy seems out of place in speaking of one who in the humblest self-abasement sought no place in the world's estimation, content to be only a passive instrument in the hands of his Master; and who, as has been remarked, through modesty concealed the events in which he was an actor. A desire to supply in some sort this deficiency in his Journal is my especial excuse for this introductory paper.

It is instructive to study the history of the moral progress of individuals or communities; to mark the gradual development of truth, to watch the slow germination of its seed sown in simple obedience fo the command of the Great Husbandman, while yet its green promise, as well as its golden fruition, was hidden from the eyes of the sower ; to go back to the well-springs and fountain-heads, tracing the small streamlet from its hidden source, and noting the tributaries which swell its waters, as it moves onward, until it becomes a broad river, fertihzing and gladdening our present humanity. To this end it is my purpose, as briefly as possible, to narrate the circumstances attending the relinquishment of slaveholding by the Society of Friends, and to hint at the effect of that act of justice and humanity upon the abolition of slavery throughout the world. At an early period after the organization of the Society, members of it emigrated to the Maryland, Carolina, Virginia, and New England colonies. The act of banishment enforced against dissenters under Charles II. consigned others of the sect to the West Indies, where their frugality, temperance, and thrift transmuted their intended punishment into a blessing. Andrew Marvell, the inflexible republican statesman, in some of Ihe sweetest and tenderest lines in the English tongue, has happily described their condition : —

" ' What shall we do but sing His praise Who led us ihrougli Che watery maze. Unto an isle so long unknown.

And yet far kinder than our own ? He lands us on a grassy stage.

Safe from the storms and prelates' rage; He gives us this eternal spring, Which here enamels everything, And sends the fowls to us in care, On daily visits through the air.

He hangs in shades the orange bright, Like golden lamps, in a green night. And doth in the pomegranate close Jewels more rich than Ormus shows.

And in these rocks for us did frame A temple where to sound His name. Oh! let our voice His praise exalt. Till it arrive at Heaven's vault. IVhich then, perhaps rebounding, may Echo beyond the Mexic bay.'

So sang they in the English boat, A holy and a cheerful note ; And all the way, to guide their chime. With falling oars they kept the time."

Unhappily, they very early became owners of slaves, ill imitation of the colonists around them. No positive condemnation of the evil system had then been heard in the British islands. Neither English prelates nor expounders at dissenting conventicles had aught to say against it Few colonists doubted its entire compatibihty with Christian profession and conduct. Saint and sinner, ascetic and worldling, united in its practice. Even the extreme Dutch saints of Bohemia Manor on the Delaware, the pietists of John de Labadie, sitting at meat with hats on, and pausing ever and anon with suspended mouthfuls to hear a brother's or sister's exhortation, ads dw ching prayers between tbe courses, were

1 p n by negro slaves. Everywhere men

nding with each other upon matters of

1 h 1 so far as their slaves were concerned,

d nj h ethics of Christianity itself.

S h the state of things when, in 1671,

G F X visited Barbadoes. He was one of

h n n o whom it is given to discern through 1 n f custom and prejudice something of

1 1 am nts of absolute truth, and who, like the H b I vgiver, bear with them, from a higher a ci p e mosphere, the shining evidence of coran u h the Divine Wisdom. He saw slavery

m 1 1 St form among his friends, but his inu e s e of right condemned it. He solemnly ad h d those who held slaves to bear in mind

ha hey ere brethren, and to train them up in 1 f f God. " I desired, also," he says, " that h y o Id cause their overseers to deal gently a 1 m Id ) with their negroes, and not use cruelty ow d 1 m as the manner of some hath been a i ad that, after certain years of servitude, they should make them free."

In 1675, the companion of George Fox, William Edmundson, revisited Barbadoes, and once more bore testimony against the unjust treatment of slaves. He was accused of endeavoring to excite an insurrection among the blacks, and was brought before the Governor on the charge. It was probably during this journey that he addressed a remonstrance to friends in Maryland and Virginia on the subject of holding slaves. It is one of the first emphatic and decided testimonies on record against negro slavery as incompatible with Christianity, if we except the Papal bulls of Urban and Leo the Tenth,

Thirteen years after, in 1688, a meeting of German Quakers, who had emigrated from Kriesheim, and settled at Germantown, Pennsylvania, addressed a mennorial against " the buying and keeping of negroes " to the Yearly Meeting for the Pennsylvania and New Jersey colonies. That meeting took the subject into consideration, but declined giving judgment in the case. In 1696, the Yearly Meeting advised against "bringing in any more negroes." In 1714, in its Epistle to London Friends, it expresses a wish that Friends would be " less concerned in buying or selling slaves." The Chester Quarterly Meeting, which had taken a higher and clearer view of the matter, continued to press the Yearly Meeting to adopt some decided measure against any traffic in human beings.

The Society gave these memorials a cold reception. The love of gain and power was too strong, on the part of the wealthy and influential planters and merchants who had become slaveholders, to allow the scruples of the Chester meeting to take the shape of discipline. The utmost that could be obtained of the Yearly Meeting was an expression of opinion adverse to the importation of negroes, and a desire that " Friends generally do, as ranch as may be, avoid buying such negroes as shall hereafter be brought in, rather than offend any

Friends who are against it ; yet this is only caution, and not censure."

In the mean time the New England Yearly Meeting was agitated by the same question. Slaves were imported into Boston and Newport, and Friends became purchasers, and in some instances were deeply implicated in the foreign traffic. In 1716, the monthly meetings of Dartmouth and Nantucket suggested that it was " not agreeable to truth to purchase slaves and keep them during their term of life." Nothing was done in the Yearly Meeting, however, until 1727, when the practice of importing negroes was censured. That the practice was continued notwithstanding, for many years aiterwards, is certain. In 1758, arulewas adopted prohibiting Friends wilhin the limits of New England Yearly Meeting from engaging in or countenancing the foreign slave-trade.

In the year 1742 an event, simple and inconsiderable in itself, was made the instrumentality of exerting a mighty influence upon slavery in the Society of Friends, A small storekeeper at Mount Holiy,* in New Jersey, a member of the Society,

* Mount Holly is a village lying in the western part of the long, narrow township of Northampton, on Rancocas Creek, a tributary of the Delaware. In John Wooiman's day it was almost entirely a settlement of Friends. A very few of the old houses with tiieir quaint stoops or porches are left. That occupied by John Woolman was a small, plain, two-story structure, with two windows in each story in front, a fourbarred fence enclosing the grounds, with the trees he planted and loved to cultivate. The house was not painted, but lo Introduction.

sold a negro woman, and requested the young man in his employ to make a bill of sale of her. On taking up his pen, the young clerk felt a sudden and strong scruple in his mind. The thought of writing an instrument of slavery for one of his fellow-creatures oppressed him. God's voice against

whitewashed. The name of the place is derived from the highest hill in the county, rising two hundred feet above the sea, and commanding a view of a rich and level country, of cleared farms and woodlands. Here, no doubt, John Woolman often walked under the shadow of its holly-trees, communing with nature and musing on the great themes of life and duty.

When (he excellent Joseph Sfurge was in this country, some thirty years ago, on his errand of humanity, he visited Mount Holly, and the house of Woolman, then standing. He describes it as a very " humble abode." But one person was then living in the town who had ever seen its venerated owner. This aged man Elated that he was at Woolman's little farm in the season of harvest, when it was customary among farmers to kill a calf or sheep for the laborers. John Woolman, unwilling that the animal should be slowly bled to death, as the custom had been, and to spare it unnecessary suffering, had a smooth block of wood prepared to receive the neck of the creature, when a single blow terminated its existence. Nothing was more remarkable in the character of Woolman than his concern for the well-being and comfort of the brute creation. "What is religion?" asks the old Hindoo writer of the Vishnu Sarman. "Tenderness toward all creatures." Or, as Woolman expresses it, " Where the love of God is verily perfected, a tenderness towards all creatures made subject to our will is experienced, and a care felt that we do not lessen that sweetness of life in the animal creation which the Creator intends for them under our govern-

Introduction. i r

the desecration of his image spoke in his soul. He yielded to the wili of his employer, but, while writing the instrument, he was constrainetl to declare, both to the buyer and the seller, that he believed slave-keeping inconsistent with the Christian religion. This young man was John Woolman. The circumstance above named was the startingpoint of a life-long testimony against slavery. In the year 1746 he visited Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina. He was afflicted by the prevalence of slavery. It appeared to him, in his own words, " as a dark gloominess overhanging the land." On his return, he wrote an essay on the subject, which was published in 1754- Three years after, he made a second visit to the Southern meetings of Friends. Travelhng as a minister of the gospel, he was compelled to sit down at the tables of slaveholding planters, who were accustomed to entertain their friends free of cost, and who could not comprehend tire scruples of their guest against receiving as a gift food and lodging which he regarded as the gain of oppression. He was a poor man, but he loved truth more than money. He therefore either placed the pay for his entertainment in the hands of some member of the family, for the benefit of the slaves, or gave it directly to them, as he had opportunity.*

• The tradition is that he travelled mostly on foot during his journeys among slaveholders. Brissot, in his New Travels in America, published in 17SS, says; "John Woolman, one of the rnost distinguished of men in the cause of humanity, travelled much as a minister of his sect, but always on foot.

Wherever he went, he found his fellow-professors entangled in the mischief of slavery. Elders and ministers, as well as the younger and less high in profession, had their house servants and field hands. He found grave drab-coated apologists for the slave-trade, who quoted the same Scriptures, in support of oppression and avarice, which have since been cited by Presbyterian doctors of divinity, Methodist bishops, and Baptist preachers for the same purpose. He found the meetings generally in a low and evil state. The gold of original Quakerism had become dim, and the fine gold changed. The spirit of the world prevailed among them, and had wrought an inward desolation. Instead of

and without money, in imitation of the Apostles, and in order to be in a situation to be more useful to poor people and the blacks. He hated slavery so much that he could not taste food provided by the labor of slaves." That this writer was on one point misinformed is manifest from the following passage from the Journal : " When I expected soon to leave a friend's house where I had entertainment, if I believed that I should not keep clear from fhegsin of oppression without Jeaving money, I spoke to one of the heads of the family privately, and desired them to accept of pieces of silver, and give them to such of their negroes as they believed would make tlie best use of them; and at other times I gave them to the negroes myself, as the way looked clearest to me. Be&re I came out, I had provided a large number of small pieces for this purpose, and thus offering them to some who appeared to be wealthy people was a trial both to me and them. But the fear of the Lord so coveted me at tiroes that my way was made easier than I espected ; and few, if any, manifested any resentment at the offer, and most of them, after some conversation, accepted of them."

meekness, gentleness, and heavenly wisdom, he found " a spirit of fierceness and love of dominion." In love, but at the same time with great faithfulness, he endea%'ored to convince the masters of their error, and to awaken a degree of sympathy for the enslaved.

At this period, or perhaps somewhat earlier, a remarkable personage took up his residence in Pennsylvania. He was by birthright a member of the Society of Friends, but having been disowned in England for some extravagances of conduct and language, he spent some years in the West Indies, where he became deeply interested in the condition of the slaves. His violent denunciations of the practice of slaveholding excited the anger of the planters, and he was compelled to leave the island. He came to Philadelphia, but, contrary to his expectations, he found the same evil existing there. He shook off tlie dust of the city, and took up his abode in ,the country, a few miles distant. His dwelling was a natural cave, with some shght addition of bis own making. His drink was the spring w-iter flowing by his door; his food, vegetables alone He persistently refused to wear any garment or eat any food purchased at the expense of animal lite, or which was in any degree the product of slaie labor. Issuing from his cave, on his mission of preaching " deliverance to the captive," he was m the habit of visiting the various meetings for worship and bearing his testimony against slaveholders, greatly to their disgust and indignation.

14 Introductmi.

On one occasion he entered the Market Street Meeting, and a leading Friend requested some one to take him out A burly blacksmith volunteered to do it, leading him to the gate and thrusting him out with such force that he fell into the gutter of the street There he lay until the meeting closed, telling the bystanders that he did not feel free to rise himself. " Let those who cast me here raise me up. It is their business, not mine."

His personal appearance was in remarkable keeping with his eccentric life. A figure only four and a half feet high, hunchbacked, with projecting chest, legs small and uneven, arms longer than his legs ; a huge head, showing only beneath the enormous white hat large, solemn eyes and a prominent nose ; the rest of his face covered with a snowy semicircle of beard falling low on his breast, — a figure to recall the old legends of troll, brownie, and kobold. Such was the iiTepressible prophet who troubled the Israel of slaveholding (Quakerism, clinging like a rough chestnut-burr to the skirts of its respectability and settling like a pertinacious gad-fly on the sore places of its conscience.

On one occasion, while the annual meeting was in session at Burlington, N. J., in the midst of the solemn silence of the great assembly, the unwelcome figure of Benjamin Lay, wrapped in hts long white overcoat, was seen passing up the aisle. Stopping midway, he exclaimed, " You slaveholders I Why don't you throw off your Quaker coats as I do mine, and show yourselves as you are f " Casting off as he spoke his outer garment, he disclosed to the astonished assembly a military coat underneath and a sword dangling at his heels. Holding in one hand a large book, he drew his sword with the other. " In the sight of God," he cried, " you are as guilty as if you stabbed your slaves to the heart, as I do this book ! " suiting the action to the word, and piercing a small bladder filled with the juice of poke-weed {Phytolacca decandrci), which he had concealed between the covers, and sprinkling as with fresh blood those who sat near him. John Woolman makes no mention of this circumstance in his Journal, although he was probably present, and it must have made a deep impression on his sensitive spirit. The violence and harshness of Lay's testimony, however, had nothing in common with the tender and sorrowful remonstrances and appeals of the former, except the sympathy which they both felt for the slave himself.*

Still later, a descendant of the persecuted French Protestants, Anthony Benezet, a man of uncommon tenderness of feeling, began to write and speak

• Lay was well acquainted with Dr. Fraiilflin, who somelimes 'visited him. Among other schemes of reforni he entertained the idea of converting all mankind to Christianity. This was to be done by three witnesses, — himself, Michael Lovell, and Abel Noble, assisted by Dr. Franklin. But on their first meeting at the Doctor's house, the three "chosen vessels " got into a violent controversy on points of doctrine, and separated in ill-humor. The philosopher, who had been an amused listener, advised the three sages to give up the project of converting the world until they had learned to tolerate each other.

i6 Introduction.

against slavery. How far, if at all, he was moved thereto by tlie example of Woolman is not known, but it is certain that the latter found in him a steady friend and coadjutor in his efforts to awaken the slumbering moral sense of his religious brethren. The Marquis de Chastellux, author of De la Fklidtk Publique, describes him as a small, eager-faced man, full of zeai and activity, constantly engaged in works of benevolence, which were by no means confined to the blacks. Like Woolman and Lay, he advocated abstinence from intoxicating spirits. The poor French neutrals who were brought to Philadelphia from Nova Scotia, and landed penniless and despairing among strangers in tongue and religion, found in him a warm and untiring friend, through whose aid and. sympathy their condition was rendered more comfortable than that of their fellow-exiles in other colonies.*

The annual assemblage of the Yearly Meeting in 1758 at Philadelphia must ever be regarded as one of the most important religious convocations in the history of the Christian church. The labors of

• The reader of Evangeline will recall in this connection the words of the poet : — " In that delightful land which is washed by the Delaware's

Guarding in sylvan shades the name of Penn the apostle, Stands on the banks of its beautiful stream the dty he