Publication: Quakers and Abolition

It is our pleasure to announce that Quakers and Abolition will be published by University of Illinois Press on 31 March 2014.

Quakers and Abolition

This collection examines the complexity and diversity of Quaker antislavery attitudes from 1658 to 1890. Contributors from a range of disciplines, nations, and faith backgrounds show Quakers’ beliefs to be far from monolithic. They often disagreed with one another and the larger antislavery movement about the morality of slaveholding and the best approach to abolition.

Not surprisingly, this complicated and evolving antislavery sensibility left behind an equally complicated legacy. While Quaker antislavery was a powerful contemporary influence in both the United States and Europe, present-day scholars pay little substantive attention to the subject.

This volume faithfully seeks to correct that oversight, offering accessible yet provocative new insights on a key chapter of religious, political, and cultural history.

Contributors include Dee E. Andrews, Kristen Block, Brycchan Carey, Christopher Densmore, Andrew Diemer, J. William Frost, Thomas D. Hamm, Nancy A. Hewitt, Maurice Jackson, Anna Vaughan Kett, Emma Jones Lapsansky-Werner, Gary B. Nash, Geoffrey Plank, Ellen M. Ross, Marie-Jeanne Rossignol, James Emmett Ryan, and James Walvin.

“A nicely balanced volume in every way, important not only for what it covers but also for how it will inspire future students of Quakers and race. These essays encourage other scholars to reexamine Quakers and their interracial activism, while suggesting a variety of useful new perspectives and tools.” –Allan W. Austin, author of Quaker Brotherhood: Interracial Activism and the American Friends Service Committee, 1917-1950 

“A unique volume that well illustrates the richness of its subject. Quakers and Abolition offers fresh takes on several key debates and unsettles or complicates many simplistic assumptions about the subject.” –Jonathan D. Sassi, author of A Republic of Righteousness: The Public Christianity of the Post-Revolutionary New England Clergy

Table of Contents

Introduction by Brycchan Carey and Geoffrey Plank

Part I Freedom within Quaker Discipline: Arguments among Friends

Chapter 1. “‘Liberation Is Coming Soon’Soon”: The Radical Reformation of Joshua Evans (1731-1798)” by Ellen M. Ross

Chapter 2. “Why Quakers and Slavery? Why not More Quakers?” by J. William Frost

Chapter 3. “George F. White and Hicksite Opposition to the Abolitionist Movement” by Thomas D. Hamm

Chapter 4. “‘Without the Consumers of Slave Produce There Would Be No Slaves”:’ Quaker Women, Antislavery Activism and Free-Labor Cotton Dress in the 1850s.”by Anna Vaughan Kett

Chapter 5. “The Spiritual Journeys of an Abolitionist: Amy Kirby Post, 18023-1889” by Nancy A. Hewitt

Part II “The Scarcity of African Americans in the Meetinghouse: Racial Issues among the Quakers”

Chapter 6. “Quaker Evangelization in Early Barbados: Forging a Path towards the Unknowable” by Kristen Block

Chapter 7. “Anthony Benezet: Working the Antislavery Cause inside and outside of “‘The Society’” by Maurice Jackson

Chapter 8. “Aim for a Free State and Settle among Quakers: African-American and Quaker Parallel Communities in Pennsylvania and New Jersey” by Christopher Densmore

Chapter 9. “The Quaker and the Colonist: Moses Sheppard, Samuel Ford McGill, and Transatlantic Antislavery across the Color Line” by Andrew Diemer

Chapter 10. “Friend on the American Frontier: Charles Pancoast’s A Quaker Forty-Niner and the Problem of Slavery” by James Emmett Ryan

Part III “Did the Rest of the World Notice? The Quakers’ Reputation”

Chapter 11. “The Slave Trade, Quakers, and the Early Days of British Abolition” by James Walvin

Chapter 12. “The Quaker Antislavery Commitment and How It Revolutionized French Antislavery through the Crèvecoeur-Brissot Friendship, 1782-1789” by Marie-Jeanne Rossignol

Chapter 13. “Thomas Clarkson’s Quaker Trilogy: Abolitionist Narrative as Transformative History” by Dee E. Andrews and Emma Jones Lapsansky-Werner

Chapter 14. “The Hidden Story of Quakers and Slavery” by Gary B. Nash

Author:

Edited by Brycchan Carey and Geoffrey Plank

Pub Date:

May 2014

Pages:

264 pages

Dimensions:

6.125 x 9.25 in.

Illustrations:

3 black & white photographs