Black Resistance to Quaker Enslavement

A Moral Reckoning

In the stillness of the Third Haven Meetinghouse on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, a Black woman rose to speak. Her voice cut through the silence as she called upon Friends to free those they enslaved. Though her name was not recorded, her boldness remained in that meeting’s oral tradition. The white Quakers present did not heed her words that day, but history shows that Black voices—spoken, shouted, whispered in the dark—were among the most powerful forces pushing Quakers to renounce enslavement.

For over 12 decades from about 1657 to about 1777, Quakers were deeply entangled in the practice of human enslavement. At last, in the 1760s and 1770s, Quakers as a body underwent a moral revival, a process of compelling Quaker enslavers to manumit those they enslaved or else be disowned, meaning removal from membership for behavior incompatible with the testimonies of the Society of Friends. This change did not happen in a vacuum. This change was not the result simply of inward reflection or corporate discernment. Quaker communities were compelled to act, in no small part, through the persistent resistance of those they enslaved. Enslaved Black people did not wait for white consciences to awaken. They confronted, escaped, sabotaged, and some paid with their lives for acts of defiance that made it harder and costlier for Quakers to continue enslaving others. For too long, the story of Quaker abolition has been told as one of conscience. This article recovers another truth: it was Black resistance that forced the Religious Society of Friends to confront its deepest contradictions. Here are some examples:

Confrontation: Speaking Truth in the Fields and in Meetinghouses 

In the summer of 1759, on a plantation in Accomack, Virginia, a 14-year-old boy named James turned to his enslaver’s son, Warner Mifflin, and challenged him. Both boys were the same age, but their fates had been determined by the institution of slavery. James asked why he must work in the tobacco fields while Warner was free to study and learn. “And by and by, my children must work here too—so your children can go study?” 

Warner Mifflin, embarrassed and angry at the time, never forgot James’s words. That moment of confrontation, spoken not during Quaker worship, but in the fields of forced labor, planted a seed that grew over time. Mifflin later became a prominent Quaker abolitionist, first in 1775 by freeing James and 26 others he held in bondage. And Warner paid James restitution for years of forced labor he had stolen from him.

Escape: A Direct Rejection of Enslavement

Words were not enough. Escape was among the most frequent and direct forms of resistance for which we have records. Running away was an act of defiance that struck at the heart of an enslaver’s power. It was also a profound declaration of self-ownership. 

In 1746, a man named Dolphin fled from the Maryland plantation of Quaker enslaver and slave trader Samuel Galloway (1720-1785) of West River Meeting. He was last seen 60 miles south in Virginia. Did he reach the Great Dismal Swamp, where Maroon communities of self-liberated people gathered? Did he continue further, perhaps to Spanish Florida, where Black fugitives were granted freedom in exchange for military service? We do not know. What we do know is that his flight would have disrupted Galloway’s household and shaken the illusion that slavery was a stable institution. 

Another freedom-seeker, Jack, escaped from the Quaker Pleasants family of Henrico Meeting in Virginia in 1752. He timed his flight carefully, choosing a cold, moonless, winter night that would give him the greatest chance of avoiding capture. Two weeks after the first published notice, a second “run away” notice was published, suggesting that Jack may have succeeded. His actions raised the cost of slavery—not only in financial terms, but in moral reckoning as well. Nearly two decades later, his enslaver John Pleasants III (1698-1771), aided by his son Robert, arranged for the manumission of more than 500 enslaved people in his will. Did Jack’s escape contribute to that change? It is likely. Robert later became a prominent advocate of abolition. 

Also during wintertime, but on the full moon in early January of 1754, a teenage boy named Ash escaped from John Wardell (1732-1777) of Shrewsbury Meeting in New Jersey. Each step was a risk, but still he ran.

In the fall of 1762, Peter fled on horseback from Isaac Webster (1730–1799) of Deer Creek Meeting in Maryland. Ten months later, on a nearby plantation—perhaps with Peter’s help—a man named Nace led a group escape from the plantation of James Lee Jr. Lee had recently been disowned by his meeting for betting on horse races, though most of his close relatives remained members of Deer Creek Meeting. The escape attempt ended in tragedy: James Lee (1701–1778) and a group of armed men hunted the escapees, killing Nace and wounding two others. Yet even in death, Nace’s resistance had an effect. Three young Quakers—Jacob Comley, Thomas Hooker, and William Parrish Jr.—who had joined the manhunt were disowned after just one month of deliberation by Gunpowder Meeting, signaling a moral revulsion growing within the Society of Friends over complicity in the enforcement of slavery. Unlike the Mifflins and Pleasants, the Lee and Webster families chose to continue enslaving people, separating themselves from the Religious Society of Friends. As more Quaker families chose slavery over faithfulness, meetings began to draw sharper lines: Resistance had made neutrality impossible.

Arson: Raising the Cost of Enslavement 

Not all resistance involved flight or verbal confrontation. Some stayed where they were and struck directly at the system. On the night of September 1, 1750, just days after the harvest, two enslaved women, Grace and Jane, set fire to a tobacco barn in West River, Maryland, owned by their Quaker enslaver, Joseph Galloway (1699–1752). The fire spread quickly, destroying an entire season’s crop.

This was no accident. Court records described their actions as premeditated, carried out with “malice aforethought.” Grace and Jane knew exactly what they were doing. Tobacco was the economic backbone of slavery in the Chesapeake, and by burning it, they attacked the institution at its root.

Their resistance cost them their lives. They were sentenced to death and hanged on April 17, 1751. But their defiance sent a message: enslavement depended on violence, and those who profited from it were never secure. Wealth, barns, and fields could be turned to ash.

Such acts accumulated over time, shaking Quaker attachment to slavery and forcing a moral reckoning. The Quaker testimony against war could not coexist with the violence slavery required. Friends who enslaved others lived in contradiction to the faith they claimed to follow.

A Spectrum of Deliberate Resistance

Black resistance to Quaker enslavement took many forms—some quiet, others explosive—but nearly all were intentional. Enslaved people first resisted by holding fast to their identities: whispering African names, singing spirituals encoded with meaning, healing (or harming) with medicinal herbs, and telling stories that preserved freedom. They taught each other to read in secret, preached deliverance, and sustained families and communities—even when torn apart by sale or violence. These were not small acts. They were daily expressions of self-determination—lesser risk, but grounded in quiet courage. 

Others took bolder risks. They slowed work, broke tools, feigned illness, or left without permission to visit children or spouses on other plantations. Some confronted enslavers, bargained for better conditions, gave false information, forged passes, disrupted cruelty, or sued for their freedom. These acts of autonomy came with greater danger—carried out under watchful eyes, with pounding hearts. Still, they declared: we will not make this easy for you. 

And then there were those whose resistance struck at the core of the system. Some fled under cover of night. Some destroyed property. Others aided escape, kept weapons, fought back, used poison, or planned uprisings. 

These acts were strategic and purposeful. From Jack fleeing on a moonless winter night to Grace and Jane setting fire just after harvest, each decision was timed to speak clearly, cost dearly, and leave a lasting mark—on their Quaker enslavers and on the conscience of the Religious Society of Friends. 

The Cost of Resistance—and Its Impact on Quakers 

Resistance came at a terrible price. Some, like Nace, Grace, and Jane, were killed. Others, like James and Peter, lived long enough to see freedom. Some disappear from the records—did Dolphin find sanctuary? Did Jack make it to safety? We do not know, but what we do know is that these acts of defiance forced Quakers to confront their complicity. 

For many decades, Quakers debated, resisted change, and sometimes disciplined those among them who spoke too loudly against slavery. But as enslaved Black people continued to resist—through words, escapes, arson, and defiance—the cost of maintaining enslavement became too great. While records seldom document a direct line between an act of resistance and a Quaker decision, the accumulation of such acts became impossible to ignore. Slowly, over several decades of intense internal struggle, the Society of Friends underwent a true moral revival, a spiritual reckoning that redefined the boundaries of faithfulness. 

In 1758, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting appointed a committee of five to visit enslavers. Eventually, one by one yearly meetings in the North American British colonies made holding people in bondage a disownable offense: New England in 1772, New York in 1774, Philadelphia in 1776, Maryland in 1778, North Carolina in 1783 and finally Virginia Yearly Meeting in 1784. Change came because people enslaved by Quakers made it impossible to ignore the moral crisis at the heart of the Quaker faith.

A Legacy of Resistance

Too often, history remembers white Quaker abolitionists, like Robert Pleasants, Warner Mifflin, Anthony Benezet, John Woolman and Benjamin Lay, but forgets the Black people who compelled them to act. The names of those who resisted—James, Grace, Jane, Jack, Dolphin, Ash, Nace and many others—must be spoken aloud. So must we also remember the voice of the Black woman who broke the silence in Third Haven Meeting. They are not footnotes to history; they are the beating heart of the struggle for freedom. And some of those who resisted enslavement are buried in or beside Quaker burial grounds, their graves unmarked, their names often unrecorded, yet their presence enduring as a quiet testament to the moral reckoning they helped to bring about.

Today, Friends continue to wrestle with the legacy of Quaker involvement in slavery. We are stewards of memory—inheritors of responsibility to act. In that reckoning, we must center the truth: the push toward justice begun with the words and actions of those who Quakers enslaved. Sometimes out of the silence, sometimes in fire, sometimes with a desperate flight across frozen ground. Black resistance made Quaker abolition possible. And the echoes of that resistance still call us to action.

We would also do well to remember the words spoken a century later by Frederick Douglass, an abolitionist who had once been enslaved in Maryland. On August 3, 1857, in Ontario County, New York, Douglass said:

This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. 

Find out just what any people will quietly submit to, and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them… and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both.

In the silence of Friends meetings today, we are called again to listen—not just inwardly, but to the voices that history tried to suppress. The Spirit spoke through the feet of escapees, the confrontational words of James, the fire lit by Grace and Jane and the courage of the woman at the Third Haven Meetinghouse. These were not just acts of resistance—they were prophetic ministry. And they ask us still: what testimony will you bear?