Christian Slavery and White Supremacy
Quakers have long been hailed as heroes of the abolitionist movement. Friends like Anthony Benezet and John Woolman worked tirelessly to convince other Whites to abolish slavery and embrace liberty for all. Fourteen years ago, when I began research for my book Christian Slavery, I wanted to understand this abolitionist history better. I started with the “beginning”: the first antislavery protest in North America, written by German and Dutch Quakers in Pennsylvania. But as I quickly learned, this was only part of the story when it comes to Quakers and slavery.
The 1688 Germantown Protest, as it is often called, was the first document in North America to denounce slavery. It is an extraordinary document. It declares, among other things, that the authors are “against the traffick of men-body.” It goes on to explain that slavery cannot be a Christian practice and that it is against the Golden Rule. It is worth lingering on the following passage:
There is a saying, that we shall doe to all men like as we will be done ourselves; making no difference of what generation, descent or colour they are. And those who steal or robb men, and those who buy or purchase them, are they not all alike? Here is liberty of conscience, w[hi]ch is right and reasonable; here ought to be likewise liberty of ye body.
For the seventeenth century, this is a very unusual statement. It is a document that Quakers—and all Americans—can be proud of. I was excited to write about it. I also felt a personal connection to the Germantown Protest: I grew up in Philadelphia and attended Germantown Friends School, which is just a few blocks from where the 1688 Protest was written. As it turns out, I had passed the site of its creation hundreds of times as I traveled to school down Germantown Avenue.
Examining the origins of Quaker abolition, I thought, would serve multiple purposes. I wanted to show how something as important as abolition had a history, and how we could learn about social justice by studying the past. As I looked closer at the 1688 Protest, however, I became less interested in the petition itself than in the last line—a line that was added not by the authors of the Germantown protest, but by the Quakers who represented Abington (Dublin) Meeting and Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. The first line reads:
We having inspected ye matter, above mentioned, and considered of it, we find it so weighty that we think it not expedient for us to meddle with it here.
Below that follows:
A Paper being here presented by some German Friends Concerning the Lawfullness and Unlawfulness of Buying and keeping Negroes, It was adjudged not to be so proper for this Meeting to give a Positive Judgment in the Case, It have so General a Relation to many other P[a]rts, and therefore at present they forbear It.
While the language is opaque, the conclusion is clear: The Philadelphia Quakers rejected the antislavery 1688 Protest.
I had intended to study Quaker antislavery, but I felt that this was more important. What it revealed is that while a very small minority of Quakers rejected slavery in the seventeenth century, most did not. I had more questions: What did it mean that slavery had “so General a Relation to many other P[a]rts?” What “other parts” were they talking about?
I decided to ask different questions. Instead of reading Quaker abolition back in time, I thought it was important to understand how these slaveholding Quakers fit into their own time.
Slavery in the Quaker World
I began to dig deeper into the seventeenth-century Quaker world. At the time—I was surprised to learn—slavery was accepted and common among the English Quakers who were in political control of Pennsylvania. And that was not all: Quakers were also involved in the slave trade. As it turns out, many of the Quakers in Philadelphia immigrated not from England, but from the Caribbean island of Barbados.
Pennsylvania may have been the first “official” Quaker colony, but it was not the first Quaker community in the Americas. There was a large Quaker presence on Barbados, where thousands of Friends lived. In the 1670s, it was called the “Nursery of Truth” because it was so filled with Quakers.
When Pennsylvania was founded in 1682, William Penn and others used their Quaker connections in Barbados to purchase enslaved Africans. As Pennsylvania’s social and economic structure developed, ties with the West Indies and other trade outlets flourished. The trade with Barbados was a source of pride and a symbol of prosperity for many English Quakers who considered slavery to be necessary for economic development.
I realized that I needed to tell this story. Like other stories that are shameful or embarrassing, this one had been largely suppressed in the Quaker histories that I read. Much of the scholarship about Quakers and slavery in the seventeenth century acknowledged that Quakers owned slaves, but they focused on finding the “seed” of abolition in these early Quaker records.
I decided to ask different questions. Instead of reading Quaker abolition back in time, I thought it was important to understand how these slaveholding Quakers fit into their own time. None of them would have predicted the demise of the slave trade or slavery. So if I really wanted to understand them and the relationship between Quakers and slavery, then I needed to take a different approach.
Why did Quakers accept slavery in this period? How did they justify slavery within their theological worldview? How did their views compare to other European Christians who encountered slavery? I also wanted to think about what Christianity might have meant to enslaved and free Black men and women who joined the ranks of the Quakers as well as other denominations. When and why did they convert? These became the questions that fueled my research.
I started by taking a closer look at Barbados. Barbados was the most important English colony in the seventeenth century. It was settled in 1627, and colonists soon began to plant tobacco and then sugar. While English colonists initially relied on a joint labor force of European indentured servants and African slaves, by the 1650s enslaved Africans had become the majority of the labor force.
Quakerism started to flourish around the same time. Two Quaker missionaries, named Ann Austin and Mary Fisher, landed on the island in 1655 and successfully converted—or “convinced” in Quaker parlance—several island residents. Two decades later, there were thousands of Quakers living on Barbados, all but four of whom were slave owners.
By the 1670s, Quaker founder George Fox decided to visit the Quaker communities in the colonies. Barbados was his first stop. There, he became deeply concerned about the practice of slavery but not for the reasons we might hope. While he did urge Quakers to consider manumission, he did not call for an end to slavery as a practice. Instead, he did something else: He urged Friends to worship with the enslaved people in their households and to introduce them to Quakerism. In many ways, this is disappointing. And in fact, much of scholarship about Fox’s visit to Barbados debates whether his remarks were “proto-antislavery” or not. But again, when we focus on antislavery, we miss an important distinction.
The crucial point has to do with the reaction of other colonists on Barbados. In 1675, a few years after Fox’s visit, English colonists discovered that a group of enslaved men was planning a rebellion. In response, the English colonists took drastic measures: They executed the enslaved rebels, tortured others, and rewarded the informants. They also did something rather unusual. They passed an act that forbid Quakers from worshiping alongside enslaved men and women. This act asserted that enslaved people had “been suffered to remain at the Meeting of Quakers as hearers of their Doctrine, and taught in their Principles, whereby the safety of this Island may be hazared [sic].” If, the act continued, any enslaved person was “found with the said People called Quakers, at any time of their Meeting, and as hearers of their Preaching,” the Quakers would have to pay a fine. Within a year, a Friend named Ralph Fretwell was “prosecuted for 80 [enslaved people] being present at a Meeting in his House,” and Richard Sutton was taken to court “for 30 [enslaved people] being present at a Meeting.”
This sequence of events is puzzling. Why would Quakers be blamed for slave rebellion when they had a peace testimony? I have learned, in doing historical research, that when something doesn’t seem to make sense, you need to dig in. It is often these incongruencies that reveal something fundamentally important about a particular place and time.
Rethinking the History of Slavery, Race, and Abolition
Seventeenth-century Quakers, I came to understand, were radical but not because they were abolitionists. Instead, Quakers like George Fox were radical because they suggested that Blacks and Whites should meet together for worship.
Quakers were not the only Christians persecuted for meeting with enslaved people. As I began to investigate this issue further, I looked beyond the Quaker records to the archives of Protestant denominations: members of the Church of England (Anglicans) as well as other smaller denominations, like the Moravian Church. As I did so, I realized there were some intriguing similarities in their experiences.
In each case, English slave owners attacked Protestant missionaries and enslaved Christians for meeting together. On the island of Saint Thomas, for example, Moravian missionaries and Black converts were beaten and attacked by White colonists. Slave owners stole Bibles from enslaved Christians, and they burned Moravian books.
The above photo shows a letter either written—or more likely dictated—by a free Black Moravian woman named Marotta, who wrote to the Queen of Denmark to ask her to support Black Christians. In it, she asks the Queen to support the Black women “of Saint Thomas,” because the slave owners would not allow them to “serve the Lord Jesus.” The petition was first written in Marotta’s native West African language (on the left) and then translated into Dutch Creole (on the right). Marotta’s appeal was accompanied by another letter written in Dutch Creole and also signed by several other Black Moravians on Saint Thomas. This letter went into more detail about the problems facing enslaved Christians: The White planters “beat and injure us when [we learn] about the Savior,” they wrote. “[They] burn our books, call our baptism the baptism of dogs, and call the Brethren beasts.”
As I looked closer at these and other sources, I began to understand why English slave owners found the prospect of slave conversion so threatening:
- When enslaved people became Christian, it challenged the justification for slavery, which was religious difference, i.e., it was considered legal to enslave “heathens” but not to enslave Christians.
- In some cases, missionaries taught enslaved people to read the Bible and to write. This was very unpopular among slave owners.
- When enslaved Christians met for worship, White colonists feared they were plotting slave rebellion.
This helps to explain what happened in Barbados: When Quakers started to include enslaved people in their worship meetings, English slave owners reacted aggressively. When the Quaker William Edmundson visited Barbados in 1675, for example, he was attacked by the governor for “making the Negroes Christians, and [making] them rebel and cut their Throats.”
In the seventeenth century, the concept of race, as we know it, did not exist; the concept of “Whiteness” had not yet been created. So slave owners created the ideology of Protestant supremacy, which used religion to justify slavery.
Protestant Supremacy
These documents reveal some misunderstood aspects of colonial slavery. English slave owners thought of Christianity—and especially Protestantism—as a religion for free people, and they worried that a baptized slave would demand freedom and possibly rebel. As a result, they excluded most enslaved people from Protestant churches.
I felt that this was an extremely important aspect of early colonial slavery and that it had not been fully recognized. So in my book, I gave it a name: Protestant supremacy. Protestant supremacy, I came to understand, was the forerunner of White supremacy. White supremacy uses racial designation to create inequality. But in the seventeenth century, the concept of race, as we know it, did not exist. And most significantly, the concept of “Whiteness” had not yet been created. So slave owners created the ideology of Protestant supremacy, which used religion to justify slavery.
I turned to the legal archives to understand this better. I read through all of the laws passed on the island of Barbados in the seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries. In the earliest slave laws, I found, colonists didn’t call themselves “White”; they called themselves “Christians.” Protestant slave owners constructed a caste system based on Christian status, in which “heathen” slaves were afforded no rights or privileges while Catholics, Jews, and nonconforming Protestants were viewed with suspicion and distrust but granted more protections.
This is why it was so controversial for Quakers and other missionaries to introduce enslaved people to Christianity: because it threatened to undermine Protestant supremacy. So the next question is, how did this change? How did Protestant supremacy become White supremacy?
From Protestant Supremacy to White Supremacy
We’ve already seen how Protestant supremacy was challenged. It was challenged by missionaries, including the Quakers, and by enslaved and free Blacks, who wanted to become Christian: people like Marotta.
But in each case, it was challenged differently. I’ll start with the missionaries. Quaker, Anglican, and Moravian missionaries responded to Protestant supremacy by trying to argue that Christianity and slavery were perfectly compatible. Protestant missionaries drew on biblical descriptions of slavery as well as the ideal of the “godly” household to encourage slave owners to allow enslaved people to convert. They noted that Christian slavery had a long and well-established history in Europe and the Catholic American colonies. Missionaries also tried to defend slave conversion by arguing that enslaved Christians would be more docile and harder working than their “heathen” counterparts.
For an example of this, we can return to the Quaker William Edmundson, who is often thought of as one of the first “antislavery” Quakers. But when he was attacked by the Governor of Barbados for worshiping alongside enslaved people, he responded by saying: “[i]t was a good Work to bring them to the Knowledge of God and Christ Jesus, and . . . that would keep them from rebelling or cutting any Man’s Throat.” The implications here are clear: Conversion would make slavery safer; it would make enslaved people less rebellious.
Enslaved Christians fought Protestant supremacy in a different way. As we saw in Marotta’s letter, they tended to argue that they had a right to practice Christianity, to read the Bible, and to worship together. Over time, more and more enslaved and free people of color fought their way into Christian churches, influenced by theological, practical, and social motivations.
One of these individuals was named Charles Cuffee. Cuffee, who was probably born into slavery, was baptized on September 9, 1677, in an Anglican church in Barbados. The minister of the church noted that Cuffee had recently been “freed,” making him the first free Black man to be baptized on the island. In 1689, 12 years after his baptism, Cuffee brought two children to the baptismal font: Thomas, aged ten, and Mary, aged five. The minister noted that they were the “son & dau of Charles Cuffee free Christian negro.” By joining the Anglican Church, Cuffee was making a claim for himself: As a free Christian man, he had acquired most of the markings of a freeholder. According to Barbadian law at the time, he would be eligible to vote in elections and, at least hypothetically, run for office if he could acquire enough property.
It was in response to free Black Christians like Charles Cuffee that English slaveholders began to create White supremacy. Soon after Cuffee brought his children to the baptismal font, Barbadian lawmakers wrote a new law, redefining citizenship to include the word “white” as well as “Christian.” This was one of the first times that the word “white” was used in the legal records. The law declared that “every white Man professing the Christian Religion . . . who hath attained to the full Age of One and Twenty Year, and hath Ten Acres of Freehold . . . shall be deemed a Freeholder.”
Twelve years later, lawmakers refined their definition of Whiteness further. A 1709 law clarified that a “white” person could have “no extract” from “a Negro,” thereby establishing the “one-drop rule” as the definition of Whiteness and laying a new foundation for slavery and social oppression that made race seem like a natural category—something that was innate.
What we see here is the codification of Whiteness as a legal category that was specifically intended to exclude free Black Christians from the full rights of citizenship. We often take “Whiteness” as a given, but it has a very specific history. We assume that race is a biological reality when it is actually a political category. Slaveholding politicians actively created the category of “Whiteness” as part of a political strategy to protect slave ownership and restrict the voting rights of free Blacks.
With the creation of Whiteness, slave conversion became less threatening. Whiteness, rather than religious difference, became the new way to justify and enforce slavery.
Whiteness, rather than religious difference, became the new way to justify and enforce slavery.
Combating White Supremacy
As our society becomes increasingly aware of the lasting effects of White supremacy, it’s important to think about where Whiteness comes from. Most people think that race is biological, but this belief is very destructive. It naturalizes race and allows us to forget that Whiteness was created in order to legalize and justify inequality. In other words, we need to acknowledge that individuals made decisions that led to “Protestant supremacy” and to “White supremacy.” If we don’t recognize this history, we risk repeating the injustices of the past.
It’s also important to think about the many different meanings that religion had in slave societies. We see in Protestant supremacy that religion could be a source of oppression. But that’s certainly not what it meant to the enslaved men and women who fought hard to be baptized. Our histories need to keep those two facts in balance, and especially not allow the oppressive regime of Protestant supremacy to desensitize people to the experiences of enslaved and free Black Christians.
For those of us who identify with the Quaker tradition—as I do—this history invites us to think about what it really means to combat oppression. This also means confronting the uncomfortable aspects of Quaker history. When we relegate the blame for slavery and oppression to people “in the South,” for example, we are actively erasing Quaker complicity in, and support for, slavery not only in Barbados but also in Philadelphia and elsewhere in the North. This is an uncomfortable past, but it’s a past that needs to be brought into the light.
Looking carefully at this Quaker past can teach us a lesson about social justice. It shows us that it’s not enough to be radical; we also have to be vigilantly aware of history and the complexities of inequality. It’s not enough to have good intentions. We must be critically engaged with the past to understand the influence it continues to exert in the present.
Finally, history is never inevitable. Things could have developed differently. As we all know, Quakers—as well as many evangelical Christians, both Black and White—played a central role in the abolitionist movement, showing that Christianity, and Quakerism in particular, could be used to support emancipation. We can and should remember those abolitionist Quakers and learn from them. But we can’t whitewash our own history, or we risk repeating it.
A profound truth such as this from the Quakers needs to be shouted from the rooftops!
This is a topic in which I have an avid interest. Although this introduction names only Fox and his contemporaries, you know well the work of numerous subsequent Quakers, as Benjamin Lay, John Woolman, and Elihu Coleman. My own reading has prompted me to think that the words of Elihu Coleman resonated in the hearts of Nantucket Quakers, who emigrated to Guilford County, NC, in the early 1770s.
Below is a link to the initial article on the North Carolina Manumission Society:
https://www.ncpedia.org/manumission-societies
Since then, I’ve continued a similar quest to yours. If you would like, I can email a PDF of the first chapter from a book on the anti-slavery societies in North Carolina. At their height, there were more than 50, most of which were formed at the urging of Benjamin Lundy. As specifics revealed themselves, it became clear that this group made up almost half of the anti-slavery societies nationwide in 1826, membership of the aggregate was estimated at 2,500 (all able to vote, representing about 1/3 the vote for John Quincy Adams in the 1824 election, and freed as many as 3,500 slaves.
Thank you, Katharine, for your research on the problem of slavery. You give us a different way of thinking about the history of slavery, especially on Barbados.
I’m sure that this book will be of great help to people who are interested in how Quakers could be slave owners.
Thank-you so much for this article, so well written, and researched! It helps to identify where we have drawn our political and social boundaries, to further our power and control over others, and helps to educate us on how to do better! Thanks so much for the light you are bringing to this important issue.
This is such a wonderful essay and so important at this time in history. I used to work at Pomona Hall in Camden, NJ. One of the descenda
nts, Marmaduke Cooper–of the founding Cooper family of Camden–owned slaves in the 1780’s and was read out of meeting when he refused to sell them. When I first read this I could not understand why this was so. Now, with the benefit of your scholarship, it makes much more sense. Thank you for this important perspective.
Dear Dr. Gerbner,
Thanks for this brief, clear, and powerful history. It occurs to me, reading your essay, that Benjamin Lay (subject of a recent biography by Marcus Rediker) seems to have been radicalized about slavery over several years in Barbados. I was surprised that Lay himself went to Barbados in the first place, given its centrality in slave-based sugar production. Learning that Barbados was a haven for Quakers helped me put that piece in place. That Lay was as disappointed in Philadelphia’s slave-owning Friends as he had been in Barbadian Friends, becomes clearer also.
Do you know the book, Fit for Freedom, but Not for Friendship? Takes a hard look at how 20th and 21st century Friends have hidden behind the legacies of braver ancestors … represents a challenge for us all.
From Trenton Monthly Meeting of Friends (PYM)
How can you talk about slavery in the Quaker world and not include Newport, Rhode Island?
Slavery and Quaker faith are relevant to my ancestry, who were slave-holding Quakers here in Carteret County, NC (and surrounding environs). Having said that, my understanding is that as time went on, fewer Quakers supported slavery, which led to them feeling uncomfortable here in pre-Civil-War North Carolina, and led to their migration.
What an utterly fantastic essay!
Thank you for your work on the topic of Quakers and slavery and the history of white supremacy. Your article brought up some interesting connections and offered a good read to anyone with an interest in the topic. I look forward to reading your book.
I have been thinking about the topic of Quakers and slavery for some time now. I have had on my mind whether Quaker slave owners used slaves to build meeting houses and schools. I expect that did happen and I have been left wondering what, if anything, the meetings and schools are doing to recognize it? Are their attempts at reparations? For example, are the descendants of the slaves being offered scholarships to the schools?
Even if it turns out slaves were not used in the direct building of the schools and meeting houses, surely the money their work earned for the Friends who owned them was. That is certainly a lesson we cannot forget.
I have not yet read your book. I am confident it will elaborate on the points you wrote about in your article and I am hopeful some of these topics I brought up might be covered as you elaborate on the complex way slaves were used to build Quaker wealth.
I have been trying to understand how my Quaker ancestors could have justified slave ownership ever since I discovered that my 4x great grandfather left his slaves to his son who promptly freed them. My ancestors were early settlers of an area of Bristol County, Massachusetts, that was originally part of the Town of Dartmouth but is now known as Westport. I had contacted a woman who works for the Dartmouth Preservation Group after she had written a blog that described a book recently written by Kathryn Grover. The book is: The Fugitive’s Gibraltar, Escaping Slaves and Abolitionism in New Bedford, Massachusetts. In turn, I have sent her a link to your article. I still find it difficult to wrap my head around this whole idea of slavery, but it is interesting to see the issue from a different perspective. Thank you for posting this article. There is also an article that I just found online about Paul Cuffee, a man born on Cuttyhunk Island, off the coast of Massachusetts, who was one of 10 children of a freed slave who became the weathiest black man in America. I’m not sure if he was related to Charles Cuffee at all or if the surname is purely coincidental. Here is a link to that article: https://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/who-led-the-1st-back-to-africa-effort/
I am impressed with the truth, always.
This essay reminds me of our complicated heritage. –
African-Americans were not the only slaves in the New World. –
For example, in colonial days, Native Americans were sometimes sold into slavery as well. –
Reference: “Colonial Enslavement of Native Americans Included Those Who surrendered Too” —
https://www.brown.edu/news/2017-02-15/enslavement
How wonderful, it is to know the truth, especially about the Quakers involvement in slave Trade and how the race supremacy started. It is written, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” Probably free from all the present World Hypocrisies. Thank you for a highly informative essay.
“New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America,” Wendy Warren, 2016. Professor Warren’s book taught me that whether or not my colonial ancestors held slaves, they profited from the Atlantic slave trade. Perhaps, they grew crops or fished to feed the slaves of Barbados. (Most food was imported. The sugar crop was much too precious to devote any of the land to food.) Perhaps they built ships to move enslaved people between New England and the islands. Perhaps they lent money to ambitious farmers or sailors to increase their yields.
Those Philadelphia Quakers in 1688 knew that the mercantile system, based on the unpaid labor of enslaved people, worked quite well for everyone else. They could not honestly afford to tamper with success.
Reparations are certainly necessary, and they will not negate our historical complicity.
This is so interesting and important. I just read Mrs Dred Scott and was surprised that Dred Scott’s owners were Unitarian.
So grateful for this article, yet I want to lift up the *many* American Quakers of African descent who have been ministering to us white Friends for **years** about racism and white supremacy among us. Why does it take a white person, a scholar, to tell us (white people) the same history—and even more recent racist events— that Friends of color have shared, and yet we give such weight to the words of this white scholar?
If white readers haven’t already done so, please let’s look at the Oct 2014 issue and the Jan 2019 issue of FJ and (re-)read them, now that we have this author’s research to (re-)frame our understanding. I think there are other fairly recent FJ issues dedicated to race/racism as well.
We white Friends must come to terms with the whitewashing of our own faith tradition’s history, and our part in maintaining the abolitionist/white savior myth: before Friends were abolitionists, a majority of Friends enslaved other human beings—and resisted freeing them or telling the full truth of our flawed condition at the time and thereafter.
Thank you. I teach in North Carolina, History among several things. I knew that Friends held slaves, but I did not know the depth of it. Thank you for educating us.
Quakers came on the scene 1647/8 and found the institution of slavery.
It was completely legal, moral and ethical.
It had existed for millennia.
The Trans Saharan Slave Trade was particularly brutish.
It was out of this that the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade begun.
In less than two centuries, it was outlawed atleast in Britain and its colonies and no longer thought of as moral or ethical.
It was Quakers who though not permitted to hold a seat in Parliament in Britain because they refused to take an oath of allegiance who orchestrated the end of slavery through the same Parliament.
After 1807, the naval power of Great Britain ended slave trading even though in America with the invention of the Cotton Gin in 1795, the blockade was evaded.
Wilberforce, an evangelical Christian, became the spokesman for the Clapham Sect (mostly Quaker) in Parliament and is recognized as being responsible for the abolition of the slave trade through Parliament.
Clarkson and others carried on the fight to end slavery itself.
Clarkson’s book on Quakers is a good read.
Slavery still exists today but it is no longer considered moral or ethical and is an offence under the laws of most if not all countries.
We should deal with what we have the power to deal, We can’t change the past.
The early Quakers, though persecuted, lived within the system and ultimately overcame the system.
It is comparable perhaps to the French and other Resistances to Hitler in WWII.
There can be found some (most perhaps) members of these resistances who operated on both sides with the aim not only to survive, but also ultimately to overcome.
Schindler perhaps is an example?
How does one become a Christian?
Isn’t it a matter of individual and personal choice?
How and why would a slave become a Christian?
What did Quakers in the 17th century believe about Baptism?
The past is oft forgotten, even erased, as it can sometimes be troubling. embarrassing, make one to think (when one would rather not). Learning from the past, learning from our mistakes seems impossible for humanity. Learning from other peoples’ mistakes , not just our own, is especially hard.
That Quakers, even those of us who find agreement with George Fox’s revelation, should have a hard time overcoming their love of making money is not surprising, and , definitely, slavery was/is about making money. That that other person is a human, equal in God’s sight to ourselves, is therefore a hard thing to accept. That such acceptance did finally come is a wonder, after all. Wilberforce, Lay, Woolman, Cuffee, Dred Scott, Frederick Douglas, all must be remembered and studied. Martin Luther King Jr. said it well, “they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” I had never considered the idea of “Protestant Supremacy”. But you, Ms Gerbner, teased it out of the records. An excellent article, I must try and read the book.
Wow! What an important piece of information that has been left out of our Quaker history tellings! This is important not just for Quakers to read, but for everyone, in order to understand more deeply the roots of “whiteness,” and its connection to Protestant Supremacy in the colonies. Thank you!!!
Here, the Quakers are being made to face at least some of the truths about their relationship with slavery. I do also commend Ms Gerbner for taking a closer look into these matters of Christianity vs slavery; and then the political development of racial distinction. We all certainly need to understand the birth of white supremacy and the vitality of it. She has indeed come up with some new energy for finding truths. Let’s see if she delves into issues concerning the Quakers’ taking of Native lands under pretense of affording them homage. They need to face themselves on that issue too.
Sadly enough, she, like so many American historians seems to consider the slavery issue as Negro. Especially the Quakers were involved in Native/’Indian’ slavery. The mere fact that the first painting shows tobacco leaves has to say something to that truth.
Thank you so much for this amazing article. I have been researching a group of Quakers who settled in the Wyoming valley, Pennsylvania in the 1770s from Rhode Island. In the case of this particular family, composed of the Slocums and the Tripps, there is a lot of information in the historical record because shortly after the Wyoming Valley Massacre, 5 year old Frances Slocum was kidnapped and later became a national sensation when she was found as an old woman in Indiana, ther widow of a Miami chief.
I have found some disturbing information about the Slocums and the Tripps in the course of my research. First of all, they brought slaves with them to Pennsylvania in 1777. In fact the patriarch of the family, Isaac Tripp, who was murdered on the same day that little Frances was taken, traded the notorious Brown family horses to be used on the sugar plantations in Surinam in exchange for an enslaved girl. While the family was still in Rhode Island in 1774, they had enslaved people, both native American and African, living in their house, most likely caring for young children, including Frances, who would have been born the year before. Even more surprising, is that more than one narrative about Frances Slocum includes quotes from her that a “negro girl” was kidnapped with her when she was taken. The Wyoming Valley Massacre, and the popular narrative that Frances Slocum’s family was initially spared because they were pacifist and “friends with the Indians”, perhaps is not the real truth. There is a very strong indication that the family held not only at least one African enslaved person, but also a Native American enslaved person when they were attacked. Since by 1778, Quakers had made holding slaves a violation of Quaker statute, I sometimes wonder if they perhaps went to Pennsylvania in order to take their slaves with them from Rhode Island.
The concept of “Protestant Supremacy” is a bit limiting. It was Christian Supremacy that was stated in the Doctrine of Discovery sanctioned by papal bulls in 1493 under which the colonizers and enslavers were operating. European (implied white) supremacy was already well entrenched.:
Ten Principles of the Doctrine of Christian Discovery
1. First discovery- first European country to discover lands that were unknown to the other European countries.
2. Actual occupancy and current possession. Actually establishing a settlement in a reasonable time was required for claim of full title.
3. Preemption/European title – the discover had the sole authority for buying land from native peoples or government.
4. Indian title or Native title. – After discovery indigenous nations and peoples based on European law, lost their full property rights and ownership of land.
5. Indigenous nations limited sovereign and commercial rights. After discovery, Indigenous nations lost some sovereign powers and rights to trade freely with other nations.
6. Contiguity. Discovery claims extended to areas surrounding settlements and the full watershed of discovery mouths of rivers.
7. Terra nullius. Lands appearing to be empty based on European standards were open to discovery.
8. Christianity. Non-Christian peoples did not possess the human and natural law rights as Christians. Rights of land, sovereignty, and self-determination were lost by non-Christians upon discovery by Christians.
9. Civilization. Assumed European superiority and directed by God to bring civilization, education, and religion to Indigenous peoples.
10. Conquest. Rights assumed to be acquired by winning military battles against Indigenous peoples. (US Supreme Court later declared that Indigenous people had lost rights on discovery as if they had been conquered in a ‘just war’)
[Paraphrased from : Miller, Robert J., Jacinta Ruru, Larissa Behrendt, and Tracey Lindberg. 2010. Discovering Indigenous Lands: The Doctrine of Discovery in the English Colonies. Oxford University Press.]
This translated to statements like these in the Charter given to Lord Baltimore in 1632 for the future Maryland:
…in a Country hitherto uncultivated, in the Part of America, and partly occupied by Savages, having no knowledge of the Divine Being,…
”XII. But because , that in so remote a Region, placed among so many barbarous Nations, the Incursions as well of the barbarians themselves, as of other Enemies, Pirates, and Ravagers, probably will be feared. Therefore We have Given, and for Us, our Heirs, and Successors, do Give by these Presents, as full and unrestrained Power, as any Captain-General of an Army ever hath had, unto the aforesaid now baron of Baltimore, and to his Heirs and Assigns, by themselves, or by their Captains, or other Officers to summon to their Standards, and to array all men of whatsoever Condition, or wheresoever born, for the Time being, in the said Province of Maryland, to wage War, and pursue, even beyond the Limits of their Province, the Enemies and Ravagers aforesaid, infesting those parts by Land and by Sea, and (if God shall grant it) to vanquish and captivate them, and the Captive to put to Death, or , according to their Discretion, to save, and to do all other and singular the Things which appertain, or have been accustomed to Appertain unto the Authority and Office of a Captain-General of an Army.”
Thank you for your article.
You do not mention ANN CURWEN, who visited Barbados in 1677 and spoke against slavery.
She has a wikipedia article and her husband THOMAS has an Oxford Dictionary of National Biography article which is mostly about her.
There is probably a reference to Ann Curwen in your book, which I will try to obtain.
It’s funny, because I always had an image of Quakers being 100% anti-slavery, anti-war & full blown Abolitionist. You know, Levi Coffin and such (His house is about an hour from us, great place to visit). I knew my family (father’s mom’s side in particular), were Quakers for many, many generations, until 1910ish maybe? Just prior to the Civil War in 1860, my Quaker x3 Great-Grandparents William & Louisa Worth-Clark migrated w/their 12 children from (soon to be Confederate) Guilford, North Carolina to Economy, Indiana (my family was there until 2003). At first, I thought they left due to persecution. Upon further study, they were former slave owners. Grandfather William had sold off the slaves prior to the move (which made good moral & business sense) & had 3 boys of war age. He forseen war over slavery was near & decided to move the family, which was smart on his part. While them being Quakers & owning slaves perplexed me, I realized they still made the right decision when it “wasn’t popular.” What’s even more perplexing however, is her brother (my x4 Great-Uncle) the Governor of North Carolina Jonathan Worth, 1865-1868. The former Confederate State Treasurer, ’62-’65, “conservative” Democrat, plantation & slave owner (until 1863). He too, was a Quaker. Their other brother, John Milton Worth, was a Colonel of the Confederate 76th Regiment (6th senior), in charge of chasing down defectors/draft evaders no less. He too, was a Quaker. Needless to say, I was very surprised not just to learn of my families past, but the fact that Quakers owned slaves “and fought” to the very end.
I have seen several references to James Nayler preaching against slavery in the 1650s, though I have not been able to run down the documents.
I think any Quaker history is incomplete without the story of Friendly efforts to provide reparations, beginning in the 1770s, and reaching their peak in the 1780s and 1790s. Quite successful, apparently, in Delaware and in Chester County.
If you would like to investigate further where the anti slavery movement started, and remained strongest, you need to look at the Plymouth Colony and how the real armed hostility to slavery actually happened. Instigated by the descendants of Plymouth Colony and Boston Colony, carrying through the Missouri Compromise, the TRUE start of the Civil War!!! There is documentation that predates 1688 as far as slavery in the Plymouth Colony! Not by much, but it’s in the historical record!
Thank you for this excellent work. It’s quite fascinating. So Quakers today are OK, then? We don’t own slaves, but (here in Britain, at least) most of us do own wealth while thousands in our own country, let alone around the world, do not have the wherewithal to put sufficient food on their plates, nor heat their homes in winter. Many (most?) of these people are in work. One could argue that this is a form of slavery (or equivalent abuse) at arm’s length. We (British) Quakers are almost exclusively white, educated, middle class, comfortably-off, and pretty elderly. How, having a testimony to equality, can we live with our consciences?
“The path is broad but the gate is narrow,” says our Lord. And, “Many are called but few are chosen.” Since Adam and Eve people have used religion to justify their own evil thoughts and deeds. Christianity is no exception. Many slaves came to faith in Jesus because it is Truth and they were drawn to that Truth; others many have come with a selfish intent – in the hopes that they would be freed. In response to “The implications here are clear: Conversion would make slavery safer; it would make enslaved people less rebellious” as regards William Edmundson’s answer to the Governor of Barbados’ attack, I submit that perhaps Edmundson realized he had “poked the bear” and was back-pedaling a bit so that his cause was not completely lost. We certainly see that over and over, i.e. Lincoln’s response to the Great Compromise. It is most unfortunate that people have lost a sense of understanding of God’s Word and allowing it to be the source and standard of all truth – scientific and philosophical. In reality there is no “black” or “white” as we have descended from the same parents. No, the differences are purely ideological. And, at the same time, it is unfortunate that Christians throughout the ages lose their sense of evangelism. Christians are “superior” in that we are called, chosen, and saved. But we need to remember where we have come from – slavery to sin and all worthy of eternal damnation. Armed with that wonderful knowledge it is the task of every Christian to share the saving power of Jesus Christ with others. Alas, there are many who have called themselves Christian but were not. Nothing new. Christians are known by their fruit.
Nathaniel Greene, a Quaker, was a general in American War of Independence under George Washington.
George Washington had family links to the Ball’s of Barbados, a Quaker family.
George Washington freed his slaves through his will, perhaps the Quaker links???
George Fox wrote about Black and Indian slaves from as early as 1657.
” ….. there is an epistle he wrote in 1657, ‘To Friends beyond the sea, that have Black and Indian slaves’ in which he highlighted the importance of equality in the Quaker faith. Later, while preaching in Barbados, Fox witnessed the realities of slavery, leading him to call for the better treatment of slaves. This was reproduced in his text of 1676 under the title, ‘Gospel Family-Order, Being a Short Discourse Concerning the Ordering of Families, both of Whites, Blacks and Indians’,
In 1676 the Governor of Barbados imposed fines on Quakers who allowed slaves to attend their meetings.
Ralph Fretwell who was instrumental in the sale of land in Pennsylvania to Quakers in Barbados after 1681 was one of the persons fined.
He had become convinced at a meeting held by George Fox when he was in Barbados in 1671 which he attended with Lewis Morris, his neighbor, a Quaker.
Ralph Fretwell was forced to swear an oath of allegiance to the King and refused to do so.
He was dismissed as a judge for his refusal.
The name Lewis Morris also appears as a signatory to the Declaration of Independence in 1776.
His great grandfather was Richard Morris, brother of the Lewis Morris who introduced Ralph Fretwell to Quakerism a century earlier.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Quaker links??
I found the article very interesting. I have been researching a group that went into Virginia and had early Quaker roots but may not have been ‘practicing’ it formally. I noted with interest how one son, when he died, made provision in his 1819 will that his people should be given a fully stocked wagon, extra wheels, horse, and funds enough to get them to a “free state” to start a new life away from Virginia. It appeared the early teachings may have had some influence after all…
In 1676, a Quaker, William Edmundson, a wild friend and companion of George Fox, the Society’s founder, dispatched a letter from Newport, Rhode Island, to Quakers in all slaveowning places. He put forward the theory that slavery should be unacceptable to a Christian. It was “an oppression on the mind.” This caused the aged Roger Williams, the father of the colony, to denounce him as “nothing but a bundle of ignorance and boisterousness.” Edmundson also justified rebellions of slaves in Barbados, where two Quakers (Ralph Fretwell and Richard Sutton) had been fined by the governor for the crime of “bringing Negroes into their meetings for worship.”
The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade 1440-1870 by Hugh Thomas, page 458
Great article.
POW Charles II Royalist Scots, work sugar plantations of Barbados, previous to the Africans and likely intermarried.
Many great with Y-DNA verification indentured by oldest son of Rev Gregory Stone’s (Cambridge, MA) oldest John to build mill about 1656 in what became North Framingham, MA in 1700. Quaker ladies as mentioned “Two Quaker missionaries, named Ann Austin and Mary Fisher, landed on the island in 1655 and successfully converted” onto Massachusetts in 1657.
Land of Pennsylvania was obtained by Admiral Penn’s support of Charles II, which then became king.
yes Quakers did own slaves, all depends in Colonial America. North Carolina – yes.
Thank you for this enlightening article. I have been exploring colonisation in Aotearoa New Zealand for my published novel The Seasonwife and a series of novels in progress. Like Katharine, I started off with one viewpoint in relation to whalers, missionaries and Māori and changed tack when I realised that religious people were involved in some of the most nefarious activities towards land-grabbing. I sometimes felt despair at the duplicity contained in the mainstream narrative and fearful about over-turning it. But I find it so heartening to hear Katharine say that hopefully this will lead us to radical reform today. Reform in terms of reversing capitalism towards a more sharing caring society, and valuing of nurturing over competition would surely help save this beautiful planet.