Quakers and Slavery - (Princeton Legacy Library) by Jean R Soderlund (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

is book explores the growth of abolitionism among Quakers in Pennsylvania and New Jersey from 1688 to 1780, providing a case study of how groups change their moral attitudes. Dr. Soderlund details the long battle fought by reformers like gentle John Woolman and eccentric Benjamin Lay. The eighteenth-century Quaker humanitarians succeeded only after they diluted their goals to attract wider support, establishing a gradualistic, paternalistic, and segregationist model for the later antislavery movement.

Originally published in 1985.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

From the Back Cover

"Quakers and Slavery is an impressive monograph, a carefully argued and unpretentious study that provides the best analysis yet available of the origins, character, and limits of antislavery sentiment for any segment of the slave society of eighteenth-century colonial British America. This is a work of genuine excellence."--Jack P. Greene, The Johns Hopkins University

Review Quotes

"Jean R. Soderlund describes and analyzes how Quakers in the Delaware Valley moved from an unthinking but extensive involvement in slavery in the late seventeenth century to a commitment to eradication of this evil among themselves before the end of the eighteenth century. . . . Taken together, the three variables [described by Soderlund] provide a powerful and persuasive framework within which to view the `Divided Spirit' that characterized the Quaker response to slavery between the 1680s and 1780s."---Owen S. Ireland, William and Mary Quarterly