Holy Nation: The Transatlantic Quaker Ministry in an Age of Revolution 9780226255767, 022625576X

Table of contents :
Contents
List of Abbreviations
Introduction: Holy Nation
Part I: Combat, 1754–89
1. Zion in Crisis: Friends as the Israel of Old
2. Lamb-LikeWarriors: The Quakers’ Church Militant
Part II: Compromise, 1779–1809
3. Walled Gardens: Friends’ Schools
Part III: Concession, 1793–1826
4. The Still, Small Voice: Quaker Activism
5. The Whole World My Country: A Cosmopolitan Society
Conclusion: At Peace with the World, at War with Itself
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index

Citation preview

holy nation



american beginnings, 1500–­1 900 A Series Edited by Edward Gray, Stephen Mihm, and Mark Peterson

Also in the series: Conceived in Doubt: Religion and Politics in the New American Nation by Amanda Porterfield The Republic Afloat: Law, Honor, and Citizenship in Maritime America by Matthew Taylor Raffety Beyond Redemption: Race, Violence, and the American South after the Civil War by Carole Emberton Frontier Seaport: Detroit’s Transformation into an Atlantic Entrepôt by Catherine Cangany A Hercules in the Cradle: War, Money, and the American State, 1783–­1867 by Max M. Edling

holy nation

The Transatlantic Quaker Ministry in an Age of Revolution

sarah crabtree

the university of chicago press chicago and london

Sarah Crabtree is assistant professor of history at San Francisco State University. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2015 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published 2015. Printed in the United States of America 24  23  22  21  20  19  18  17  16  15   1  2  3  4  5 isbn-­13: 978-­0-­226-­25576-­7 (cloth) isbn-­13: 978-­0-­226-­25593-­4 (e-­book) doi: 10.7208/chicago/9780226255934.001.0001 Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data Crabtree, Sarah (Sarah Lelia), author. Holy nation : the Transatlantic quaker ministry in an age of Revolution / Sarah Crabtree. pages ; cm. —­ (American beginnings, 1500–­1900) isbn 978-­0-­226-­25576-­7 (cloth : alk. paper) —­isbn 978-­0-­226-­25593-­4 (e-­book)  1. Quakers—United States—History.  2. Society of Friends—United States— History.  3. Quakers—Political activity—United States—History.  4. Religion and civil society—United States—History.  I. Title.  II. Series: American beginnings, 1500–­1900. bx7636.c73 2015 289.6'7309033—dc23 2014038336 ♾ This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso z39.48-­1992 (Permanence of

Paper).

contents

List of Abbreviations

vii

Introduction: Holy Nation

1

Part I: Combat, 1754–­89

29

1.

Zion in Crisis: Friends as the Israel of Old

31

2.

Lamb-­Like Warriors: The Quakers’ Church Militant

61

Part II: Compromise, 1779–­1809

93

Walled Gardens: Friends’ Schools

95

3.

Part III: Concession, 1793–­1826

131

4.

The Still, Small Voice: Quaker Activism

133

5.

The Whole World My Country: A Cosmopolitan Society

165



Conclusion: At Peace with the World, at War with Itself Acknowledgments Notes Index

197

v

219 223 271

a b b r e v i at i o n s

EDA

Esther Duke Archives, Westtown School, West Chester, PA

FHLD

Friends Historical Library, Dublin

FHLSC

Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore College

HSP

Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

LRSF

Library of the Religious Society of Friends, London

MHS

Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston

QSCHC Quaker and Special Collections, Haverford College

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Holy Nation

O

nly days before General Cornwallis would surrender to the American forces at Yorktown, Philadelphian Quaker Anthony Benezet penned a doleful letter to British Friend Morris Birkbeck. He reflected on the human costs of war, mourning the death and destruction the past six years of fighting had wrought, and ruminated about the ways in which this conflict would impact the future of the Religious Society of Friends. For Benezet, this turn of events was clear evidence of divine influence at work in the life of his coreligionists and he believed that the transatlantic Quaker community must remain loyal to one another and distinct from the world around them in the coming future. He thus urged Birkbeck to accept the impending rupture between Britain and the American colonies, and confided in him a hope that Quakers on both sides of the Atlantic could overcome this political fissure. Expounding on an oft-­quoted scriptural verse, he reminded his British counterpart: As a people we are called to dwell alone, not to be numbered with the Nations, content with the comfortable necessaries of life; as pilgrims and strangers; to avoid all incumbrances [sic], as was proposed to Israel of old, to be as a Kingdom of Priests, an holy Nation, a peculiar people to shew [sic] forth the praise of him that hath called us.1

For Benezet, the Society could survive the fissures of war only if its members remained united in faith, steadfast in their opposition to war, and impervious to the encroachment of worldliness. It was highly significant, of course, that at the exact moment when Americans seemed poised to wrest political independence from the British Crown, Benezet chose to emphasize that members of the Society of 1

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Friends—­wherever located—­formed “a Kingdom of Priests, an holy Nation.” Birkbeck was almost certainly familiar with these sentiments, as both this biblical passage and the set of beliefs to which it bore witness were commonplace among transatlantic Friends. Pacifists since their origin amidst the English Civil War, Quakers’ peace doctrine determined much of their horror-­struck reaction to the violence that marked the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Yet in addition to their very real concern about the carnage of war, their alarm also stemmed from more parochial anxieties. With a far-­flung membership that stretched across an ocean and spanned two continents, Friends worried that the Society would not survive the turmoil resulting from the hostilities between Great Britain and the American colonies. Past experience taught them to anticipate political repercussions as a result of their antiwar protests, and Quakers feared that their tight-­knit religious community would become one more casualty of this fracturing. Agonizing over the possibilities of a moribund or, even worse, a bifurcated membership, Friends labored zealously to combat external pressures and to heal internal divisions among their membership. The precariousness of their situation caused them to reexamine the foundations of their theology and their kinship. As a result, the American War of Independence forced Quakers to acknowledge publicly what many of their ministers had predicted privately during the Seven Years’ War: if Friends hoped to obey divine law and to survive as a unified religious community, they could no longer subsume their identity under the shield of the British Empire. Instead, they had to reenvision the source of their unity in terms of religious accordance rather than political union. As the British Empire fragmented, Benezet encouraged his fellow members to form instead a “Kingdom of Priests, an holy Nation,” refocusing their energies on the Quakers’ diasporic religious community and reformulating the Society’s identity around a transcendent religious doctrine. This renewed devotion, he believed, would unite its scattered and beleaguered membership and inspire them to return to the Society’s more observant roots. He was correct in his estimation. Friends, like many other Protestant sects, had long espoused the universal church ideology of early Christianity. Yet as the violence and political ruptures of the eighteenth century persisted, Quakers gradually abandoned this hope and increasingly found solace and salvation in the idea of a holy nation, an earthly Zion, a gathered community of the chosen, the elect in the here-­and-­now, rather than in a World to Come. In so doing, they relied on the paradigmatic language of the Zion tradition from the Hebrew scriptures to describe and promote this community. Accordingly, Quakers the world over drew important parallels



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between the eighteenth-­and nineteenth-­century Society of Friends and the ancient Israelites. These links, elaborated more fully in the next chapter, rested on the fundamental conviction that Friends, like Jews, conformed to a law that marked them as a chosen, distinctive, and separate people. Moreover, Friends identified with the Jewish experience of persecution and diaspora, drawing parallels between Quakers’ affliction during wartime and the suffering endured by ancient Hebrews. In these ways, when Anthony Benezet likened the Society to the “Israel of old,” he tapped into a widely and dearly held belief. This correlation gave Friends license to infuse their political suffering with religious significance. It also justified their detachment from earthly matters, recasting their peculiarities as conformity and their isolation as connection. Perhaps most important, it reinvigorated their belief in their own prophetic voice, emboldening them to increase the frequency and vehemence of their critiques of worldliness.2 Yet against the political backdrop of this era’s wars for independence and empire, Friends’ appropriation of the Zion tradition did not merely provide consolation to Society members or vindicate their distinctiveness. Quakers’ allegiance to their holy nation was a forceful articulation of political resistance, one in direct response to the patriotic rhetoric that fueled a strengthening state. They challenged the burgeoning nationalist sentiments and allegiances that characterized these decades by insisting that their compatriots had invested in a decidedly unholy nation. Seventeenth-­ century Friends had sought to disassociate themselves from the sullied world around them, their millennialist theology encouraging adherents to be “in the world, but not of the world” while awaiting end times. By the late eighteenth century, however, many Society members had begun to identify the emergence of the nation-­state as the corrupting and divisive force that most threatened true, pure Christianity. Benezet therefore drew on Hebraic tradition as a means of encouraging members “not to be numbered with the Nations,” or, one might say, to be “in a nation, but not of a nation.” And yet the Society did not simply turn inward, adopting a quietist stance as many previous historians have suggested. Instead, they actively responded to the violent ruptures caused by nationalist revolutions and imperialist campaigns by reformulating their theology. Ministers such as Samuel Fothergill recognized that there was no place for devout Quakers within the worldly nations in which they lived or the worldly states under which they labored. More important, there was no place for the divisive and bellicose ideologies of nationalism or patriotism within Quakerism. Thus, he instructed Friends—­“aliens and exiles” in a foreign land—­to “prepare [their] minds for action,” as God was “laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone

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chosen and precious” that would enable them to remain “united to [Christ], all dear to one another, a royal priesthood, a holy nation.”3 For Fothergill, as for Benezet, the survival of the Society depended on its members aligning themselves with coreligionists instead of compatriots and uniting behind religious ideology rather than shifting geopolitical borders. Friends’ holy nation, therefore, was a theological, political, and emotional response to the upheaval of these critical decades, as members explicitly conceived and cultivated their transnational community in contradistinction to the political and cultural projects of both nation formation and state strengthening. In a world of empires and now nations, Friends envisioned themselves as a (holy) nation—­though, importantly, not a holy state. The language and logic of nationhood had saturated transatlantic political culture in the late eighteenth century, as movements begun in the United States, France, and Haiti made familiar the discourse of nationalism and patriotism. Friends suffered swift and severe consequences, as critics labeled them aliens and those in power accused them of sedition. In this context, the Society’s pro­ mulgation of Zion was a forceful response to a new political landscape, as members insisted they were not aliens, or traitors, or interlopers but rather citizens of a holy nation that transcended both geopolitical borders and worldly law. Importantly, however, Quakers borrowed only the language of nationalism. They did not mimic emerging structures of the state nor did they reproduce patriotic language or ideology. The Society’s membership remained fiercely independent, its leadership decentralized, and no member would ever be required to demonstrate fealty through ceremony, tribute, or sacrifice. The Zion tradition was simply a way for the Society to transform from a “nation” within an empire to a nation among nations: a people, bound by common ancestry and shared doctrine, who demanded recognition of their sovereignty by the governments under which they lived. Some marginalized sects embraced the new ethos of nationalism and patriotism, hoping that the state would reward them with protection in return for their devotion. A few outright rejected it, retreating from the world around them in an attempt to maintain their spiritual integrity. Quakers, however, tried to do both simultaneously. In this way, it was not merely their religious difference that was at issue but their religious nationalism—­or, more precisely, their religious transnationalism. Quakers relied on the Hebraic tradition of Zion not only as a way to explain their theological dissent or their cultural idiosyncrasies, but also as a means of articulating a new, cosmopolitan possibility. Their “nation” would be a transnational community founded on the principles of divine law, an entity at once theologically inspired and politically informed.4 Their “citizenry” would cohere



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around a worldview informed by inclusivity, equality, humility, and peace. There would be no “state” and no “magistrates” as all authority rested with God, and each of God’s subjects followed the leading of her own spirit. This Zion was markedly different from the energy their compatriots invested in national identity, the allegiance they pledged to the worldly state, and the obedience they granted to those in power. It also put into relief the ways in which those in power relied on aesthetics and cultural production—­and, in particular, the importance of homogeneity—­to advance their nation-­ and state-­building projects. The outcry against Friends’ distinctive dress, speech, and mannerisms demonstrates how nonconformists (religious and otherwise) challenged perceptions of sameness. These fault lines shed important light on the complex role of religion in the formation, expansion, and potential disruption of the nation-­state or the empire-­state.5 The chapters that follow explore this “holy nation” and the fraught relationship between its citizens and the governments under which they lived in order to recast the relationship between religion and nation in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Friends’ community, transnational in its orientation, attempted to displace the nation as the primary means of social and political organization. Members’ primary allegiance to God and to one another caused significant conflict with both leaders and citizens of the nations in which they lived, as Quakers recognized a different authority than the geopolitical state and advocated policies that ran counter to the government’s worldly agenda. This project, then, builds on the contrast between the “holy nation” conceived by eighteenth-­and nineteenth-­century Quakers and the “worldly” nations constituted by the revolutions and wars for empire that raged on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean from roughly 1750 to 1820.6 Political and cultural historians have long focused on aspects of this period as crucial to the development of nations and nationalism as well as to the history of imperial expansion. A series of violent struggles, beginning with the Seven Years’ War, continuing with the American, French, and Haitian Revolutions, and concluding with the Napoleonic conflicts and the War of 1812, ushered in new forms of government and bore witness to the growing strength of empires. As both factors in and consequences of these events, people began to recognize nationality as a distinguishing characteristic and, consequently, to identify first and foremost with other members of their “imagined community.” To the extent that historians have examined the function of religious belief in the events of this era, they have tended to concentrate principally on how Christian identity, faith, and practice strengthened nationalist

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movements and served the interests of the state. Scholars, most notably Linda Colley and Carla Pestana, have traced the ways that religion created a perception of internal cohesion when conceiving and expanding nations and empires. Many important works have highlighted the ways in which the Anglican Church, for example, fused the interests (and power) of church and state. Catholicism too allowed for the mingling of religious and national culture, particularly in the cases of the Irish resistance or pre-­Revolutionary France. Shared theological worldviews, even loosely speaking, reinforced feelings of kinship among a population and gave credence to assertions of a unified homogenous citizenry.7 Similarly, many scholars have long noted the ways that both nationalist movements and imperialist campaigns often appropriated religious language and symbols, linking their legitimacy and virtue with that of the church. These direct and indirect equations of faith in God with faith in nation helped to solidify the authority of those in power. The blending of politics and theology in these instances took many forms. Particularly in the case of supporters of the American Revolution, religious ideology helped to garner support for the nation, to validate support of the government, and to sustain support for the war. In England, anti-­Catholicism moved many people to support campaigns against the Irish and the French, and at least one scholar has demonstrated that sectarianism accounted for much of the population’s internal division regarding the American war. Though many involved in the French Revolution sought to displace and even annihilate the Catholic Church, some have argued that the Revolution itself had deeply religious origins. And in Haiti, several scholars have maintained that spiritualism inspired many revolutionaries to rebellion.8 Historians also point to the ways in which religion influenced how a nation’s government and its people understood their relationship to each other and to the rest of the world. Scholars of religion such as Ruth Bloch, Thomas Kidd, and Mark Noll argue that Protestant millennialism, deism, and evangelicalism all influenced people’s vision for the new United States, and led many to pronounce independence a providential blessing.9 The latter two authors in particular highlight the role of faith in government and civil society, suggesting that a pan-­Christian republicanism defined and energized the new nation. The democratization of religious and political life, as Nathan Hatch famously argued, went hand in hand.10 Importantly, even those who portray the role of evangelical religion in starkly different terms, as in Amanda Porterfield’s powerful Conceived in Doubt, still describe a cooperative and reciprocal relationship between religion and state power.11



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In all these instances, religious and political ideologies complemented one another, allowing supporters to work in tandem or even encouraging adherents to comingle. This synergy bolstered those in power and strengthened the geopolitical state. When religious and political ideology diverged, however, this difference highlighted dissimilarity and fueled antagonism between competing visions of the nation. If these divisions existed within the boundaries of a nation-­state, it could disrupt the perception of homogeneity that Ernest Gellner and others have argued must be attained for a population to cohere as a nation. Indeed, as Anthony Marx has maintained, those in authority recognized that such internal friction could portend rebellion, secession, or civil war and moved decisively to suppress or eliminate the discordance. As the following chapters demonstrate, those in power did recognize the danger of Friends’ very public dissension and frequently took swift and retributive action against them. Some attempted to cajole the Quakers, others tried to debate them, while still others endeavored to silence them. Most of these efforts failed. Friends rejected the divisiveness of national identities, insisting that they were not exclusively or even primarily “American,” “British,” or “French.” In fact, rather than emulate national patterns of dress or speech, they conformed to such noticeably peculiar fashions that famed abolitionist Thomas Clarkson later confessed that “the Quakers differ more than even many foreigners do from their own countrymen.”12 This worldview has frequently been misconstrued, as many of their contemporaries—­ and more than a few historians—­ unfairly categorized Friends as mere Anglophiles. None other than Thomas Jefferson alleged that “a Quaker is essentially an Englishman, in whatever part of the world he is born or lives.”13 This rendering not only paints with a very broad brush, but misinterprets the meaning behind Friends’ protest of the American Revolution. Quakers the world over refused to identify with or involve themselves in the project of nationalism (and the violence it often entailed), purposefully claiming kinship only with one another. Members of the Society also objected to the ways that champions of nationalism and patriotism often infused their jingoistic rhetoric with religious imagery. Quakers cautioned people not to mistake nationalism for spirituality, actively opposing the growing correlation between God and country, religion and citizenship, spirituality and patriotism. Thus did New York Public Friend Hannah Barnard warn her Irish audience against “the national divinity of the time being called in to make it the work of ‘Almighty God’ . . . each contending party, by turns, lays claim to the divine

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benediction and professes to consider the battle and victory as those of the Lord of Hosts!”14 For Barnard, as for her fellow Quakers, the God that they worshipped could not be called on to fan the flames of political discord, to champion a nationalistic cause, or to ensure a violent victory over an opponent. As those in power moved to solidify control, they encouraged the public to invest their energies, resources, and lives in nationalist projects. This symbiotic relationship was vital, as the recent and tenuous authority brokered by new nations depended on the allegiance of their citizenry. To garner this support, governments and citizens alike extolled a new attribute: patriotism.15 They feted devotion to the state as a laudable trait and expressed fidelity through swearing oaths of allegiance, serving in the militia, paying additional wartime levies, participating in national celebrations and commemorations, educating children in the (invented) traditions of the nation, and promoting causes and organizations that furthered the ideas and objectives of the nation-­state. Crucially, Friends balked at the pageantry of nation and state, objecting to the ways that people demonstrated their devotion to their country. These actions increased the rancor between Friends and government officials and polarized the relationship between Society members and their non-­Quaker counterparts. Infuriated by Quakers’ disavowal of “worldly nations” and their promotion instead of a “holy nation,” their detractors charged them with fanaticism, hypocrisy, cowardice, and sedition while their critics derided them as irrational, duplicitous, pusillanimous, and—­most significant—­treasonous. Clearly, Friends’ transnational community rankled the governments under which they lived as well as the citizens among whom they lived. Quakers’ broad-­minded definitions of nationhood and citizenship clashed with those employed by the nation-­state, thereby threatening to undermine the authority of rising governments and their control over the citizenry.16 This distinguished them from other religious dissenters during the same period. The Society was certainly not the only transatlantically oriented sect during this era. Many missionaries traveled along a transatlantic circuit, binding together communities of people and enveloping distant locales in theological and political debates, and many churches kept close watch on their congregants abroad. Nor were Quakers the only marginalized and persecuted people. Even excluding the sustained campaigns against the religious faith and practice of indigenous and enslaved peoples, those in power harassed the small communities of Jews and Catholics in Great Britain, persecuted Protestants in France, and passed laws restricting Baptist and Methodist worship in the American colonies. Friends were not even the



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only religious people to adopt a peace doctrine, as Moravians also observed a pacifist stance during the American Revolution and suffered acutely as a result. And countless other sects, like Puritans and, later, Methodists and Mormons, similarly employed the language of Zion to account for their experience of persecution and to reinforce their chosen status.17 Quakers, however, were distinct in a few important ways: first, Friends’ decision (only partially voluntary) to walk away from political leadership—­ most notably in Pennsylvania during and after the Seven Years’ War, but also earlier and more informally in Rhode Island and Tortola—­offers a unique opportunity to trace the conflict between church and state during these important years. Power never rested easily in the hands of Quaker leaders. Unlike their Puritan counterparts, Friends wrestled with the role of religion in politics. And unlike their Anglican counterparts, Friends tussled with the Crown. The Society’s turn away from formal politics in the mid-­ eighteenth century, therefore, highlights the changing relationship of religion to power. Furthermore, while Quakers were certainly not the only transatlantic denomination during this era, they were, to my knowledge, the only Christian sect to move from a transatlantic community to a transnational one. Some persecuted groups, like the Brethren, withdrew from the world around them, while others, like Irish Catholics, professed allegiance to a different set of leaders and laws. Only Friends seized the historical moment and the providential language of nation creation to formulate a “holy nation” meant to reimagine the relationship between religion and nation and church and state. By pledging their allegiance to Zion and promising to obey its law, Quakers alone maintained that the principles of religion and nation were not merely divergent but, in fact, contradictory. Thus, during these critical years of nation formation and imperial expansion, the transatlantic Quaker community challenged definitions of nationalism, patriotism, and citizenship. They resisted all rallying cries of “God and country,” campaigning instead for the sovereignty of a “holy nation.” Quakers’ identities were thus not only separate from but in opposition to that of the nation during this critical period, and this positionality represented a triple threat to eighteenth-­and nineteenth-­century governments. First, Friends’ primary political identity was invested not in the nation or the empire but rather in a loose, transatlantic alliance of Society members. They maintained more intimate relationships with Friends thousands of miles away than with their nearest neighbors, thereby undermining the idea of a united citizenry. Second, Quakers were united in opposing many of the governmental practices used to secure and exert state authority. They universally refused to fight in or fund the revolutions and wars advanced

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by these politicians and instead offered financial, physical, and emotional support to one another across “enemy” lines. They also rejected emerging definitions of citizenship, refusing to heed calls for patriotic devotion and sacrifice. And finally, Friends’ activism often underscored the distance between the promise of democracy and the practices that violated it. Their continued and open resistance to militia musters and drafts, their refusal to pay wartime taxes and levies, and their public condemnation of the government’s tacit sanction of slavery exacerbated the tension between Society members and political authorities. In these three ways, Friends’ holy nation challenged the common supposition that religion and nationalism were mutually constitutive during this period and demonstrated instead the role of religion in questioning the form and character of the nation-­state and offering concrete alternatives. Internal division and external pressure would cause this transnational community to adapt, wither, and ultimate splinter by the mid-­nineteenth century. Connections among scattered members, reinforced by the efforts of the itinerant ministry, had remained strong during wartime, but peace ushered in new challenges for their longsuffering community. As the pressures of nationalism mounted and state power increased, some Quakers began to reapproach their compatriots and their governments, recognizing the benefits of nationalist rhetoric and patriotic rituals when attempting to influence government policy. The body politic they encountered, however, had changed significantly in the intervening years. Successive wars had increased the power and the reach of the state, and concerted efforts at nation building had crystallized exclusionary ideas about citizenship (rooted in changing ideologies of race and gender and changing realities of labor and the marketplace). Both of these transformations had, in turn, augmented the obligations owed to and the sacrifice demanded by the government. What’s more, the relationship between religion and nation, church and state had also changed. The increasingly dynamic “religious marketplace” had generated more new sects and embroiled more new converts during the early stages of a second period of revivalism.18 Importantly, these religious bodies emerged and flourished in this new political atmosphere. Their unique interpretations of scripture and fresh challenges to divine law may have inspired a new democratic energy, but these debates addressed only the character of the nation and the boundaries of the state, not their very existence. Clearly, other religious sects had responded to the same dynamics that impelled Friends toward transnationalism by adopting more secular, more parochial, and more coercive visions of governance. These choices narrowed the range of political options for religious adherents, and most



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Protestants now subsumed their religious identity to the nation and ceded any independent spiritual authority to the state. In this way, an ever-­more fractured religious landscape actually served to delineate difference and reinforce boundaries, a process that empowered the state on both sides of the Atlantic. The Quakers’ holy nation thus seemed an antiquated, even outlandish idea to those comfortable with and in the new political terrain. Even to Friends themselves, it now seemed an impractical if not impossible dream.

Hell Broke Loose, or A (Short) History of the Quakers This dream did not seem so unusual or unattainable to the first generations of Quakers.19 The language of a new Israel, as well as the ideology propelling it forward, was frequently invoked during the religious reformations of the sixteenth century and the political fallout of the seventeenth century. These intersecting movements for religious and political change sowed the seeds for the Religious Society of Friends and their vision of a holy nation. In this way, the eighteenth-­century Quakers were not so much a prophetic voice or even a lone voice, but rather an echo of an earlier historical moment when a similarly violent clash between religion and nation, church and state forged the very universalism that provided the ideological (and logistical) foundation for their transnational community. Aside from untold bloodshed and carnage, the English Civil War (1642–­ 51) also produced a frenzy of religious fervor and fragmentation. This turbulent period engendered several radical, nonconformist religious sects that formally dissented from the Church of England. Puritans would become the most well known and historically significant, but others, such as Ranters, Seekers, Diggers, Levellers, Griddletonians, the Muggletonians, and Fifth-­ Monarchy Men, were perhaps equally as notorious during the seventeenth century. In fact, the religious landscape in England had never been so diverse, so quarrelsome, or more flourishing. Many people became familiar with these sects through reading the seemingly endless stream of pamphlets and broadsides churned out by the English printing press. Tract authors and street preachers promoted their principles and agendas and refuted those of their opponents. They also condemned the King, chastised the general public, and prophesied all manner of apocalyptic scenarios. These attacks against church and state finally culminated in the regicide of King Charles I in 1649, an act that called into question nearly every extant political and religious tradition, institution, and creed.

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Friends trace their origins to this heady period, when George Fox, the son of an established weaver in the county of Leicestershire in England, began his religious evolution. Fox’s contemporaries describe him as both a reflective man and a bit of a restless soul, both characteristics he confirmed over the course of his travels in the 1640s. He eagerly sought out religious leaders, particularly dissenters, during his journeys, but found himself frequently disappointed by their inability to answer his most fundamental theological questions. After beginning to despair, Fox reached a low point in 1647. He finally abandoned his search for an outward answer and turned inward. It was then that he heard a voice say, “There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition,” a revelation he interpreted to mean that “there was none upon the earth that could speak to my condition” and that it was Jesus Christ alone who “enlightens, and gives grace, and faith, and power.”20 Shortly afterward, Fox began to preach publicly, attracting a group of like-­minded believers in relatively short order. He found affinity with Seekers in Yorkshire, but by the time he experienced his vision of “a great people to be gathered” atop Pendle Hill in 1652, it seems clear that he had in mind a distinct religious movement. A group of adherents termed the “Valiant Sixty” fanned out across Europe and the Atlantic World to bring news of Fox’s gospel. These Friends addressed the Sultan and chastised the Pope, preached to indigenous and enslaved peoples, and debated ministers of every creed and the governors of a few colonies.21 While scholars continue to debate the specific theological orientation of early Friends, it is clear that these “Children of the Light” or “Friends of the Truth” loosely coalesced around a religious agenda that stemmed from their fundamentally Protestant conviction in “a priesthood of all believers.”22 According to Fox, this principle undermined many aspects of traditional Christian faith and practice including the authority of the clergy, the centrality of the church, and the importance of religious rites and rituals. Fox maintained that each believer could have a direct experience of God without the aid (or interference) of a trained minister. Early Friends thus objected to a paid or “hireling” ministry as well as an exclusionary (and state-­ controlled) house of worship. They believed that religious experience and expression could happen to anyone—­rich or poor, male or female, educated or not—­and that it could happen anywhere—­a field, a forest, a tavern, a stable, a ship. Friends therefore regularly convened open religious gatherings (simply termed “meetings”), which were conducted outside the confines of the church (Fox condemned them as “temples” and “dreadful houses of God,” although most Friends simply termed them “steeple-­houses”). These



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assemblages had no formal schedule or agenda (Quakers observed an “unprogrammed” liturgy), and all were invited to participate in the proceedings as soon, as often, and as spontaneously as the spirit moved them. Friends also rejected most formal religious ceremony, such as hymns, and denied church sacraments, including baptism and communion, regarding them as external relics that distracted from genuine spiritual transformation. Instead, they insisted that the Holy Spirit revealed truths to believers after a period of silent waiting. This experience was understood as someone being “in the light”; those who regularly shared these personal revelations were recognized as ministers by the Society. Both male and female Friends earned reputations for fanaticism in the earliest years of the movement. They regularly disrupted Anglican Church services and publicly upbraided those in power. Some particularly ardent adherents gained in notoriety for even more drastic measures, including eating their own feces, claiming to be able to perform miracles (including raising people from the dead), donning sackcloth, running through the streets partially or entirely naked, covering their bodies in ash, or riding into town backwards on an ass.23 As a result, Society members frequently found themselves in front of a magistrate, one of whom mocked Friends’ tendency to “tremble at the word of the Lord” and—­supposedly and everlastingly—­ labeled Fox and his followers “Quakers.” Within a generation, war had ended, Charles II had assumed the throne, and the frenzied atmosphere both within England and among members of the Society of Friends had largely subsided. And yet the Crown remained eager to reestablish the dominance of the Anglican Church and to quell the political threat posed by renegade religious sects. The Quaker Act was thus passed in 1662, formally outlawing Quaker worship until the Act of Toleration in 1689, a period of such extreme hardship for Friends that many fled Great Britain for the New World.24 In response to this persecution by the Crown, the Society underwent an internal restructuring. George Fox and his soon-­to-­be wife Margaret Fell, a wealthy and influential convert to the Society, began a process of formalizing the faith and practice of adherents—­a change that at least one historian has described as “a sharp right turn.”25 One of the most significant steps in this process of “Gospel Order” was the decision by Fox, Fell, and Richard Farnworth (author of Testimony from the Brethren, an early tract on discipline) to recognize a series of meetings in different locations—­largely but not exclusively in the British Isles, the Caribbean, and the American colonies—­as well as establishing the hierarchical structure of these meetings discussed in more detail below. Society members also came to adopt

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other behaviors and habits that outsiders perceived as both remarkable and peculiar. One of the most immediate and apparent identifiers of Quakerism was members’ clothing, the most visible manifestation of their testimony of simplicity. In principle, Friends rejected unnecessary luxuries and outward displays of distinction or wealth. Historians have begun to challenge the notion that all Friends adhered to “plain dress” (Fell herself is supposed to have condemned it as a “silly poor gospel” and continued to wear the colors and cloth appropriate to her station); however, outsiders associated grey suits, broad-­brimmed hats, unadorned bonnets, and simple aprons with the Society of Friends for well over two centuries.26 In keeping with this devotion to plainness, Friends declined to use the “pagan” names for days and months, dating their documents “first day,” “second day,” and “third month,” “fourth month.” Members of the Society also chose plain speech when addressing others (using “thee,” “thou,” and “thine” instead of “you” and “yours”), as a means of exemplifying their belief in the equality of all persons. In a similar vein, Quakers refused to doff their cap to anyone (“hat honor”), rejecting most all such outward forms of ceremony and deference. This rejection, while certainly perturbing to some elites, was not as legally or politically problematic as their refusal to swear oaths to the government, in court, or as part of a contract. (Friends insisted that their actions bore witness to the life of truth they led in the eyes of God, each other, and their own consciences, thereby rendering oaths unnecessary.) Perhaps most troublesome of all, Friends declined to tithe, maintaining that the practice was not one observed by early Christians but rather a popish invention. Over time, Friends came to adopt a variety of religious principles, many only after individual members were “led” by a “concern” (an idea or leaning prompted by the Spirit) to lobby the Society to adopt an official position on the issue. Quakers rejected Sabbath keeping, opened their businesses on holy days, and generally avoided participation in days of fasting or of thanksgiving. They also opposed (and, where in positions of political power, sometimes banned) cockfighting, dueling, lotteries, theater, and most nondevotional literature, believing that such frivolities turned one’s attention away from spiritual reflection and increased animosity among Christ’s followers. Many Friends observed and advocated temperance and opposed usury. Some advocated for peaceable relations with and equitable treatment of American Indians and began—­haltingly—­to move the Society toward abolitionism. One of the more (in)famous positions associated with Quakerism was the opportunities for women to participate as equal partners in the worship and business of the Society. Friends held that “in the light, there



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is neither male nor female,” and the sect benefited from women’s active participation in its meeting structure and its traveling ministry.27 Indeed, one prominent historian has suggested “it is possible that the Quakers became a closed, withdrawn society in part so that the women could live more comfortably with a social role that was not universally acceptable”28 while another maintains that “the history of Quakerism runs counter to this separation of spheres. Values of love, humility, empathy, and philanthropy were not feminized in Quakerism.”29 There remains considerable debate among scholars as to the status of women within the Society of Friends, but there is no doubt that they experienced opportunities unavailable to women of other religious denominations.30 Friends differentiated between meetings for worship and meetings for business. The former were usually held on “first day” (also on fourth day) and at a specific site designated for that purpose, but could occur more frequently, spontaneously, and at different locations. The bulk of organizational work took place in meetings for business, each composed of all the local meetings in a given area. They were also then organized into a tiered system: monthly, quarterly, half yearly (only in some locations and mostly for worship), and yearly meetings with each individual meeting sending appointed representatives to the next level. Quarterly and yearly meetings also convened specific meetings for ministers and elders. As a testament to the influence of Fox’s and Fell’s ideas about women’s spiritual equality, both men and women participated equally within meetings for worship, although they maintained separate (and not quite equal) meetings for business.31 Finally, in the 1670s, Quakers established one additional layer of meeting structure in Britain: the Meeting for Sufferings (the American colonies followed suit in the 1750s).32 Its members (exclusively male until the turn of the twentieth century) met quarterly, charged with raising funds and lobbying on behalf of imprisoned Quakers, though the committee would eventually assume a more active and political role during Friends’ abolitionist campaigns. Three distinct named roles existed within Quaker meetings: “minister,” “elder,” or “overseer.” All others were simply in attendance, though those in the audience could be members or nonmembers. Meetings conferred formal recognition to ministers deemed to have received the gift of speaking directly from the Holy Spirit. If ministers felt called to conduct official visits to other meetings, meetings granted a “certificate” confirming their good standing in their local meeting, outlining a general plan for their journey, and asking other meetings to “receive” them. Though never formally paid, yearly meetings would reimburse traveling ministers for those expenses not

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covered by their hosts. Meeting elders, not officially recognized until the eighteenth century, were men and women who watched over both ministers and the laity. Overseers were often wealthy or influential members in the community who acted as trustees for the Society’s property and funds and served as arbiters in disputes between members. Together, those who served in these three capacities provided leadership at meetings for worship and for business. All Friends discussed in this book were ministers, most all eventually became elders, and quite a few assumed the role of overseers. As a result, the voices highlighted in the ensuing chapters were the strongest and the loudest among the Society’s chorus, their theological and political positions the most strident. Individually and collectively, Quakers recorded their proceedings (though almost never their sermonizing) and corresponded with each other incessantly. Most meetings for business followed the same standard procedures. The clerk kept meticulous records of the proceedings, and all present waited until they felt a “sense” of the meeting to be recorded in the minutes. Attendees also heard queries from lower meetings or answered them from higher meetings, although these reports often assumed written form in England and oral form in America. At the close of each yearly meeting, those in attendance composed an epistle, addressed both to other yearly meetings and to the community of Friends at large, portions of which would be “read out” at other gatherings. This rigid, complicated, and centralized organizational structure was remarkable, particularly considering that Friends never composed more than a miniscule percentage of the overall population. In the 1660s, estimates place membership around 66,000 people in Britain and Ireland, or just under 0.76 percent of inhabitants.33 Numbers were greater in North America, but not dramatically so. In part because of these persistently small numbers, the Society remained an incredibly tight-­knit community well into the nineteenth century. Quakers frequently called each other “cousins”—­both to signify that they were all members of the same spiritual family and because frequently they actually were blood related. This integration and close connection earned Friends a reputation for being “tribalistic,” a stereotype that was not entirely inaccurate. The Society not only observed birthright membership but also “turned out” (excommunicated) any member who “married out” (endogamy, or to wed a non-­Quaker), thereby ensuring that future generations of Friends would become increasingly set apart from the rest of society and intertwined with one another. Also, because of both their attempt to avoid compromising their religious principles and their exclusion from many formal political, legal, and civil channels, Friends preferred



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to do business with one another. And finally, some outsiders interpreted the Quaker predilection and reputation for silence as aloofness. Criticizing them for their cold and standoffish demeanors was a bit of a self-­fulfilling prophecy, but Friends could be unforthcoming with non-­Friends.34 While Quakers could appear monolithic from the outside, they represented quite diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. Society members had a reputation for being both prosperous and miserly, partially because of their association with Jewish stereotypes but mostly because of their exclusion from and renunciation of elite society. Many professions were closed to Friends as a result of their prohibition from universities. Scores of Quakers thus turned to the merchant trade, a vocation well suited for members of a far-­flung, close-­knit community.35 Hence, particularly in Great Britain, Friends hailed from some of the wealthiest families—­the Penns, Barclays, Darbys, Lloyds, Clarks, Rowntrees, Frys, and Cadburys just to name a few—­ but the majority were middling and sometimes quite poor. The Society often appointed committees to help Friends in “low circumstances” providing food, clothing, firewood, and other necessities as well as sponsoring the education of their children. Particularly in the American colonies, Quakers were more likely than not to be farmers, especially in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York, a trend that increased after their westward migration in the nineteenth century. As a result, although the centers of Quakerism at the turn of the eighteenth century were metropolitan—­namely, London and Philadelphia but also York, Dublin, and Newport—­the majority of Friends still lived in decidedly more rural locales. Until this point, this brief introduction to the Society, its history, theology, and membership has covered what historian William Braithwaite referred to as the “first” and “second” periods of Quakerism, or the beginnings and consolidation of the movement. Rufus Jones argues that Friends then entered in a period of stasis in the first half of the eighteenth century, a phase he and most historians since have characterized as “quietist.” Contemporary accounts suggest the initial dynamism of the early movement had declined and discipline languished within monthly meetings. Membership in many areas—­particularly Scotland and Ireland—­declined precipitously during this period, and the sons and daughters of some of Quakerism’s most noted founders—­such as the Penns and the Barclays—­left the Society altogether. Beginning in the late 1740s, however, Friends in Great Britain and North America initiated a period of “Reformation” within the Society that lasted for almost forty years. Marked by renewed attention to discipline and a revitalized itinerant ministry, influential members on both sides of the Atlantic urged their coreligionists to rededicate themselves to

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Quakerism. By the end of the eighteenth century, the Quaker world thus looked considerably different than the century prior. In the British Isles, the Society remained strongest in England and Wales. While Scotland was once the home of famed Quaker apologist Robert Barclay, most of its meetings had been “laid down” (discontinued) by the end of the eighteenth century. Only one transatlantic minister—­John Wigham—­called Scotland his home, and most traveling Quakers spent little time there during these years.36 Friends’ presence in Ireland was mostly confined to English transplants in Ulster County or concentrated in a few other key locales—­Dublin and nearby County Kildare as well as Cork. Their numbers too had declined during the eighteenth century, and American and British ministers traveled there frequently in the hopes of reinvigorating these “lifeless” meetings.37 Ministers usually reported feeling “low” after their visits, but at least fifteen Public Friends hailed from Ireland during these years. Most prominent among them was the reformer Mary Peisley who accompanied Catherine Payton during her travels on the American continent, their work largely credited with launching the Reformation. The Shackleton family and their school Ballitore was also a center of Quaker influence in Ireland. Abraham Shackleton was famously the schoolmaster of Edmund Burke, and his granddaughter, Mary Shackleton Leadbeater, was a noted author and political figure in her own right, debating Burke and other prominent British politicians about Irish politics. Finally, Irish Friends inaugurated one of the biggest controversies in Quaker history when they tangled with visiting New York minister Hannah Barnard over her “unorthodox” views at the turn of the nineteenth century. Barnard would be turned out of the Society, and many contend that Friends’ presence in Ireland nearly evaporated during the “intellectual awakening” that followed her trial.38 Thus, by the late eighteenth century, London and York were the two largest concentrations of Friends in the British Isles. York is perhaps best known in Quaker history for its imprisonment of several Friends for nonpayment of tithes, an unfortunate event that occurred amidst a revival among local Society members. Lindley Murray, famed grammarian, lived in York during this period, as did Anna Braithwaite, the conservative minister who spent years battling an impending schism in the United States.39 London alone, however, was universally acknowledged as the center of the Society. The wealth and prestige of its members and its role as the historic seat of Quakerism as well as the size and importance of the city and its proximity to the seat of political power made it the foundation for and the nucleus of the Friends’ worldwide community. Of all the yearly meetings, London was, to use a common Quaker phrase, first among equals. Its



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membership was notoriously conservative, its leaders imperious, and its deliberations slow, but all ministers traveling through Europe ensured their journeys included the London Yearly Meeting, eagerly seeking its approval and protection.40 London Yearly Meeting also oversaw small communities of Friends in the Caribbean and the European continent. Quaker membership in the Caribbean had dwindled to almost nil by the turn of the eighteenth century, as the days of Friends’ significant presence on the islands (especially Tortola) had disappeared. Several Public Friends continued to travel there well into the nineteenth century, both to offer support to lone members who remained and to gather information for their work on behalf of abolition; but they found only sporadic “low” meetings conducted in the houses of elderly Quakers. And yet at the same time, the London Yearly Meeting expanded onto the European continent in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Small but significant Quaker communities emerged in several locales, as the preaching of Friends and the movement of soldiers during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century introduced scores of new people to Quaker theology. Several sparsely attended Friends’ meetings began in France during and after the French Revolution. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, tiny meetings sprang up in Pyrmont and Minden in Prussia and were incorporated regularly into the travel routes of several Public Friends. A few enclaves survived in Holland, and several soldiers in Norway who claimed to have been influenced by Friends’ peace witness during the Napoleonic Wars subsequently converted to Quakerism. Finally, in one of the most remarkable episodes of this period, Czar Alexander I invited a number of London Friends to establish a meeting in Western Russia and to serve as his advisors on issues of educational and agricultural reform. Public Friends immediately expanded the scope of their ministry to include this easternmost outpost, and Quaker merchants attempted to draw them into their business networks.41 Of course, the only place in the Quaker world or imagination that could rival London was Philadelphia. The colony founded by convert William Penn as a religious safe haven for Friends remained more or less under Quaker control until the mid-­eighteenth century. The next chapter discusses in more detail Friends’ exit from power after the Seven Years’ War; however, the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (founded in 1681) remained the largest and most significant yearly meeting in the colonies. The intertwining of religion and politics was a persistent feature of Philadelphia Quakerism in the eighteenth century, as several important transatlantic ministers came from Pennsylvania’s most prominent families. Religious ties

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introduction

then connected these families to other notably devout members who made up in zeal what they perhaps lacked in worldly goods and power. Thus, a sort of “inner circle” of the Society can be detected during the period covered in this study—­one that included but was by no means limited to the Pembertons (Israel, James, and John), Nicholas and Sarah Waln, Henry and Elizabeth Drinker, Anthony Benezet, Samuel Emlen, Thomas Scattergood, Rebecca Jones, and John Woolman (though he was from New Jersey) as well as members of several other important Pennsylvanian families such as the Wistars, Norrises, Biddles, Copes, and Evans. These Philadelphia families would remain important bulwarks within the Society for generations, particularly as many rural Friends began leaving the Delaware Valley for Ohio in the nineteenth century.42 New England Friends claimed a longer history than those in Philadelphia (New England Yearly Meeting was the first in the world, established in 1661), though their membership was never as large. Quaker families amassed considerable political and economic capital in Newport and Providence, Rhode Island. Indeed, historians estimate that almost half of the population of Rhode Island colony belonged to the Society, and Friends held the governorship for thirty-­six consecutive terms (more than one hundred years).43 In the eighteenth century, Moses Brown was an important leader within the community, and schoolteacher Job Scott became an important Public Friend. Nantucket was perhaps more thoroughly Quaker than any other locality well into the nineteenth century. The Starbuck, Coffin, Macy, Hussey, Swain, and Gardner families, among others, dominated local Nantucket meetings while the Rotch-­Rodman family continued its influence even after relocating to New Bedford on the mainland. Numbers of Friends in other areas in New England were quite small, although in the difficult years after the American Revolution, Friends established several new meetings in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Friends’ presence continued to diminish in New England in the nineteenth century as many Friends either left the Society for the Unitarians or left New England for upstate New York and Michigan. Friends trace their origins in New York to the very earliest days of the colony; George Fox actually made a point of visiting with Quaker families on Long Island in 1672. The New York Yearly Meeting began in 1696 and continued to grow in numbers and prominence throughout the eighteenth century. One of its most famous (or infamous) ministers, Elias Hicks, was a member, as was conservative minister David Sands and the aforementioned liberal minister Hannah Barnard. The Nine Partners Boarding School anchored the community for nearly a century, and Friends in both New York



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City and Rochester would play leading roles in Quaker efforts regarding abolition, universal education, woman’s rights, and American Indian affairs. Friends also began to gather for worship in the southern colonies as early as the 1650s, and the Society formally convened three Yearly Meetings south of the Mason-­Dixon line by the end of the seventeenth century: Baltimore (1672), Virginia (1696), and North Carolina (1698). Meetings were rather mismanaged in the early years, as British minister Sophia Hume discovered during her months-­long visit in the mid-­eighteenth century. Eventually, all Friends in the South would be profoundly affected by the debate over slavery, as ministers like Robert Pleasants from Henrico County, Virginia—­ himself a former slave owner—­ worked valiantly to convince other members to manumit the enslaved people trapped on their plantations.44 The situation was even more complicated for Friends in North Carolina as the state explicitly prevented individuals from freeing their slaves without the legislature’s approval. When Thomas Newby and others attempted to end their enslavement of forty African Americans in 1776, the government, ironically, accused Friends of trying to foment a rebellion and passed a law allowing county courts to seize and resell illegally manumitted slaves. Quaker ministers like Richard Jordan and Charity Cook worked incessantly over the next decade to convince fellow Friends of the immorality of slaveholding as well as to find a solution to this political and legal dilemma.45 Quaker presence in North Carolina, as in the rest of the South, diminished as individuals (and sometimes entire monthly meetings) either joined other religious societies less concerned with abolitionism or decamped for free soil in the Ohio Valley.46 Enough Friends migrated to the Northwest Territories that Western Friends outnumbered those on the East Coast by the mid-­nineteenth century. In recognition of this demographic change, the Society established Yearly Meetings in Ohio 1813 and in Indiana in 1821. These western meetings would become pivotal during the Great Separation or the Hicksite Reformation of the 1820s. Though the schism would be formalized only in the United States, Friends in the Americas and in Great Britain faced daunting questions about the place and shape of Quakerism in a modernizing world. This perhaps “fourth” period in the history of Society, one Pink Dandelion has marked as the moment at which “Quakerism ceased to be a coherent whole,” precipitated another decline in membership as disheartened members fled the strife of the rupture.47 Thus, in the nearly two centuries between the Society’s emergence as a religious movement and its great schism, membership declined sharply. Approximations over time are difficult to ascertain, in part because there were

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so many birthright members who did not attend meeting and so many nonmembers who did. Thomas Hamm estimated that there were about 100,000 Friends in North America at the time of the War of Independence (0.03 percent of a population of about 3 million people). At the time of the schism, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting counted fewer than 26,000 members, and that number only continued to drop. Travelers to Nantucket could find only one lone surviving member by the end of the nineteenth century, and the Society disappeared almost entirely from the religious landscape of Georgia and South Carolina.48 A similar trend befell the Society in Great Britain. By the mid-­nineteenth century, Friends counted even fewer members than during their early years and, given the population explosion of the eighteenth century, constituted an even more infinitesimal percentage of the population (one out of 1,100 people in 1856 as compared to one out of 130 people in 1680).49

Sources, Method, and Organization It is thus safe to say that in its nearly two centuries of existence, the Religious Society of Friends remained a small, scattered sect, often marginalized and frequently maligned. Their infamous peculiarities made them particularly vulnerable to persecution, and as a result, acutely attuned to changes in the world around them. The transformation of Quakerism, therefore, reveals much about the political and cultural dynamics of the Atlantic World during this volatile period, their transatlantic ministry an important window into the complexity of the era. Public Friends labored zealously to refocus the attention of their coreligionists and to reformulate the identity of the Society. They strove to redeem and redirect their struggling flock as Quaker influence waned amidst the shifting political landscape of these turbulent decades. In this way, these ministers traveled along the very fault lines of religion and nation. Their journeys physically enacted the holy nation they envisioned, as their routes brought them across geopolitical borders for the express purpose of cohering a transnational religious community. I reconstructed this “holy nation” through a close study of the sermons, diaries, and correspondence of eighteenth-­and nineteenth-­century Public Friends. One hundred and ten recognized ministers crossed the Atlantic on “truth’s errand” from roughly 1750 to 1820, a peak period of Friends’ transatlantic activity.50 Of those, fifty-­nine were from the American colonies, forty-­two from Great Britain, six from Ireland, one from Scotland, and two from France. Fourteen of these ministers died while visiting a foreign



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land, nearly all after contracting a disease (one minister, William Crotch, tragically committed suicide after being accused of financial and sexual irregularities). Nearly half of these itinerants were female Friends (fifty-­one women to sixty men). The standard length of journey for both men and women was between one and three years (two years was the most common), although a few ministers traveled overseas for almost a decade. Perhaps surprisingly, women were one and a half times more likely than men to stay abroad for longer than three years. Men were much more likely, however, to make multiple trips, as twelve men but only four women journeyed abroad again. The socioeconomic background of these ministers varied considerably. Many were members of incredibly affluent families and subsidized their travel from their own private fortunes. Friends like Samuel Neale, Elizabeth Drinker, and Nicolas Waln were urbane and wealthy members of considerable social standing within their respective communities. Several ministers, like William Allen, Stephen Grellet, and John Pemberton, spoke several languages and counted important political figures as their close acquaintances. Others, however, came from more humble circumstances. Women like Patience Brayton, Mehetabel Jenkins, and Charity Cook hailed from agricultural areas and could boast little in the way of formal education, using scribes to send letters back to their families, and often confessed their intimidation both when traveling abroad and when addressing wealthy and influential Friends. Public Friends kept detailed journals during their travels, cataloging their routes, hosts, and engagements as well as their religious labors and inward struggles. The former tendered useful information for subsequent ministers who often recreated these journeys during their own subsequent visits. Thus, a thoroughly typical page from Mary Capper’s diary of her French travels, informs the reader: “Just arrived at the Castle and Falcon . . . we arrived at Stratford at ten o’clock, and there met with several of Bingham’s Friends . . . Breakfasted at Tetsworth . . . sent for Dr. Knowles . . . Nancy Fry, a very pleasing young person, drank tea with us . . .”51 These kinds of details offered helpful guidance for future ministers in planning their visits, so much so that it was not uncommon for Public Friends to take these journals with them on their own forays into the same foreign lands and seek out the places and people mentioned in the accounts. The religious labors and inward struggles, however, were intended to provide direction and encouragement to readers. This function frequently made these journals seem stiff, formal, and rather formulaic. The account of ministers’ early lives included in these accounts often bordered on the

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hagiographic, and the religious sentiments they purported to express during ministerial visits were so brief and archetypical as to appear meaningless. Personal feelings and opinions were kept to the barest minimum and often communicated in clipped and coded passages. Mary Dudley’s description of her visit to Ireland was thus entirely characteristic: “Went again to meeting, where after a hard, laborious travail of spirit, the command seemed clear to sound the call formerly uttered ‘Wash ye, make ye clean &c.’ . . . Life exceedingly low . . . Sat with the children . . . which was a season of great favor and liberty . . . dear M.R., was beautifully engaged in speaking to the various states . . . which amidst this arduous work, has been deeply plunged and discouraged.”52 Here, readers may have learned what were important Bible passages to read and perhaps found comfort in the joys and sorrows of the ministry but, in all probability, gleaned little else from these terse and somewhat superficial accounts. The prescribed and proscribed nature of these pages resulted in part from customs of Quaker speech, culture, and theology and may indeed have communicated more to readers steeped in these conventions. In part, however, the lack of individuation stemmed from the proscriptions that governed Friends’ public testimony. In Britain, a committee gathered by the London Yearly Meeting, called the Morning Meeting, oversaw (and edited) the publication of all Quaker writings to ensure that each tract conformed to the proper standards of Quaker faith and practice (as determined by the notoriously conservative membership). The colonies also attempted to follow this procedure, but it was never as centralized, and each yearly meeting delegated the task to ad hoc committees.53 As Public Friends labored to encourage allegiance to their holy nation and conformity among its citizens, they guarded the published works of their ministry as closely as they monitored the public actions of their membership. The private letters and unpublished diaries of Public Friends included many of these same formulas—­low meetings, promising members, difficult travels, inspired revelations—­but the patterns and networks of correspondence demonstrate how well connected their holy nation was during these decades. Members, no matter how remote, were thoroughly integrated into the Society. News traveled fast in the Quaker world, as exemplified by the letter Philadelphian minister Rebecca Jones wrote to British minister Ann Alexander telling her about the New York Yearly Meeting (an account of which she had received from a visiting Irish Friend), asking her where British evangelist and sometimes-­Quaker Dorothy Ripley was (she was traveling between New York and Boston), and instructing her to have Martha Routh (a British minister who herself had just returned from a long trip in



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the United States) write her about “all matters & things.”54 In this way, Public Friends’ religious labors were as much about cultivating and maintaining connections among the Society’s far-­flung membership as they were about preaching. The Quakers’ holy nation was thus a lived reality, a spiritual, emotional, ideological, and material community that spanned geopolitical borders. Its transnationalism had clear political implications in a world beset by nationalist revolutions and imperialist campaigns. Its cosmopolitan ethos posed a clear challenge to strengthening states. Interpreted in this way, Friends were indeed peculiar, not for their radical theology or plain dress but for their presence at the crossroads (and crosshairs) of broader social, political, and economic transformations in the Atlantic World at the turn of the nineteenth century. The character of this Quaker community illustrates the possibility for religious groups to resist the pressures of nationalism and patriotism. Its successes, seen most clearly in its members’ coalition building and political advocacy, demonstrate the potential of transatlantic networks to effect change. Its shortcomings, underscored by the decline in and fragmentation of the group’s membership, reveal the difficult negotiations between religion and nation, church and state that persist in the modern world. To address these dramatic changes both inside and outside of the Society and to highlight the role of the Friends’ holy nation in navigating this transformation, I have split this book into three sections, divided thematically and arranged chronologically. The sections move forward in time, although they overlap slightly, as different parts of the Quaker community grappled at different moments with the dramatic changes unfolding in the world around them. As a whole, these chapters reveal an important moment of divergence between religion and nationalism in the late eighteenth century followed by a convergence of religion and the state in the nineteenth century. This period began during the Seven Years’ War, although it was expressed most clearly and most forcefully during the American Revolution. Part 1: Combat, 1754–­89 thus addresses the consequences of these two very global and yet very local wars for Friends on both sides of the Atlantic. The two chapters in this section explore the effect of the transition from subjecthood to citizenship, each arguing that Quakers’ relationship to one another and to the governments under which they lived changed dramatically during the course of these thirty years. Chapter 1, “Zion in Crisis: Friends as the Israel of Old,” argues that Quakers drew parallels between their own religious community and the ancient Hebrews as a means of navigating

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the increasingly imbricated relationship between religion and nation in the mid-­eighteenth century. The Seven Years’ War and the attendant reformation within the Society forced members to confront the inconsistencies between divine mandate and an imperial agenda, while accusations of Friends’ disloyalty unleashed an angry wave of protests against prominent members of the Society. This tension escalated sharply during the American Revolution, as Quakers on both sides of the Atlantic protested the violent rupture between the two countries and desperately sought ways to preserve their holy nation. Chapter 2, “Lamb-­like Warriors: The Quakers’ Church Militant,” details the ways in which Friends declared (spiritual) war on the governments under which they lived, using every weapon in their (theological) arsenal to oppose the War of Independence and the political realignment it produced. Quakers continued to press for an expanded definition of citizenship after the war’s conclusion, attempting to roll back the equivocation between sacrifice on the battlefield and submission to the state with service to God. By the turn of the nineteenth century, it became increasingly clear to Friends that they had fallen short in their efforts to prevent the intertwining of religion and nation, amend definitions of citizenship, or impede the solidification of state power. As a result, internal divisions began to plague the Society, as members disagreed about the best way forward for the Society. Thus, Part 2: Compromise, 1779–­1809 includes a third chapter entitled “Walled Gardens: Friends’ Schools” that addresses these strains on the Friends’ holy nation. Quakers retreated behind the walls of their Society during these three decades, focusing much of their efforts on instilling the values of their “holy nation” within the next generation of members. Chapter 3 explores the ways in which these efforts served as both an internal and an external compromise, as Friends used guarded (Quaker-­only) education as a means of healing the divides within their Society and of calming their critics. This compromise position ultimately proved untenable. Part 3: Concession, 1793–­1826, consists of two chapters: “The Still Small Voice: Quaker Activism” and “The Whole World My Country: A Cosmopolitan Society,” which examine the plight of the Friends’ holy nation in the nineteenth century. As Chapter 4 argues, Quaker involvement in social reform movements was as much an attempt to reapproach their governments as it was to reproach them. Friends hoped that their activism would supplant the suspicion and resentment their compatriots and governments had harbored toward them for decades with goodwill and accolades. This participation, however, came at a steep price. Quakers’ reengagement with the world around them



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weakened their community from within, as Friends abandoned their identity as a distinct, separate, and united people. And yet while many scholars focus on the internal pressures plaguing the Society during this period, the loss of a cohesive community and its transnational ideology was also due to external forces. In the mid-­eighteenth century, many of their contemporaries had lauded Quakers as “citizens of the world” and celebrated them as archetypes of cosmopolitan citizenship. This praise, however, evaporated in the wake of the French Revolution. Their former admirers suddenly became their harshest critics, as the ideals of cosmopolitanism were rejected in favor of wartime patriotism. Chapter 5 explores this about-­face, arguing that it marked the foreclosure of cosmopolitan possibility in the Atlantic World. The book’s conclusion, “At Peace with the World, at War with Itself,” examines the effect of these internal divisions and external pressures, arguing that the Hicksite schism of 1826–­27 was a product of the very same forces that had plagued the Society for three-­quarters of a century. In this way, the Great Separation finally accomplished what the political prosecutions of the eighteenth century could not: it broke apart the Friends’ holy nation. Taken together, these chapters examine the transnational orientation of the Society of Friends and its implications within the eighteenth-­and nineteenth-­century Atlantic World. I use this holy nation as a means of exploring the difficult and complicated relationships among religion, nationalism, patriotism, and cosmopolitanism during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, arguing that Quakers’ religious (trans)nationalism challenged emerging definitions of nationalism, patriotism, and citizenship.55 As a community spread over several continents and called by God to fight for change, Friends’ identity was not invested primarily in nationality but rather in religion. This identity of Friends simultaneously linked them together across great distance and set them apart from their nearest neighbors. Distinct from the world around them in their dress, language, behavior and theological politics, Quakers were a visible alternative to the idealized citizen of the modern nation-­state. These differences caused Friends to experience increased harassment and suspicion by political authorities as well as their fellow compatriots. Ultimately, this book engages with the history, organization, language, and theological politics of the religious Society of Friends. I do so not to highlight the intricacies and oddities of a small and marginalized sect, but rather to use their unique positionality and worldview to examine transatlantic relationships during a period of political upheaval. Quakers’ attempts to sustain their relationships amidst the turmoil of revolution put into relief the ways in which nationalist and patriotic rhetoric generates

28

introduction

exclusionary identities for and ideas about community. Their insistence on maintaining relationships that reached across geopolitical borders challenges us to recognize the alternative forms of community and nationalism that existed (and clashed) during this important era. Friends’ protest against war and taxes likewise complicate our ideas about the consolidation of political power in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and encourages us to rethink the gendered definition of citizenship. Their work on behalf of education and charitable organizations also demonstrate their key role in connecting and training extrapolitical, transatlantic reform networks as well as publicly confronting repressive and exclusive governmental policies. Finally, their continuing commitment to cosmopolitanism—­and the rejection of this ethos by their former allies—­invites us to rethink the role of the state in foreclosing the very Enlightenment principles that marked this political moment and these political movements. By therefore recognizing the possibilities and consequences of the Quaker’s holy nation, we can begin to understand the complex relationships between religion and nation, patriotism and dissent, and revolution and reform that continue to impact similar discussions today.

pa r t i

Combat, 1754–­89

chapter one

Zion in Crisis: Friends as the Israel of Old

I

n the aftermath of the Seven Years’ War, British minister John Griffith urged Friends to follow the example set by the ancient Hebrews. He re­ minded his fellow Quakers that “through all the heathenish rage of their adversaries, the rising up of the rulers of the earth against them, and the people imagining vain things concerning them,” the Israelites had remained faithful and that, as a result, “their bands were not broken, nor their cords cast away.”1 Clearly, Griffith intended to draw parallels for his audience between the Jewish community of old and Friends’ experiences during the recent hostilities. Quakers, particularly those in the American colonies, had suffered acutely during the late war as a result of their religious prin­ ciples. Society members on both sides of the Atlantic endured resentment from their neighbors and suspicion from the governments under which they lived, and their opponents took to the press to vilify Friends for their re­ fusal to support the campaign. Several Quakers experienced marked eco­ nomic hardships, and the Society itself lost what little political power it had amassed. This turmoil both inside and outside of the Society was of grave concern to the majority of Friends, as they worried that external pressures would cause internal fractures among the Society. Accordingly, ministers like Griffith highlighted the example of the ancient Hebrews to encourage their coreligionists to remain united and steadfast in the face of such trials. They focused in particular on the endurance and cohesiveness of the Jewish community, touting the example of the Israelites as a people who survived periods of protracted warfare and intense persecution. Only a decade later, however, many within the Society of Friends had moved beyond simply drawing inspiration from Hebrew scriptures. Devout ministers initiated what some scholars have termed a “Reformation” within the Society that sought to prevent backsliding among its membership. 31

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Troubled that the political upheavals occurring outside of the Society had caused members to drift away from the core tenets of Quakerism, they preached restoration and revival. Public Friends endeavored to unite their scattered and besieged followers behind an identity and a theology that transcended worldly divisions. They did so by attempting quite literally to shape their community of faith into the mold of biblical Israelites. These ministers no longer turned toward the Jewish community for motivation or for strength but rather implored their fellow members to become a modern incarnation of the ancient Hebrews, to forge a new Zion. They instructed their followers that God had called the elect to belong to this nation, to fol­ low its law, and to accept its citizens as both their coreligionists and their (holy) compatriots. Significantly, Friends maintained that this nation was not only an ethe­ real, spiritual community to be realized in the afterlife but a concrete com­ munity here on earth that impacted worldly politics. This declaration was not made in a vacuum nor was it a politically neutral claim. Quaker minis­ ters purposefully deployed the language of nationhood when invoking the Zion tradition as a way of responding to the political ruptures and realign­ ments endemic to the late eighteenth century. Anyone touched by this turmoil recognized the profound ways in which the Seven Years’ War and the Napoleonic conflicts had altered the relationship between subject and crown as well as the new political identities and loyalties generated by the American, French, and Haitian Revolutions and the Irish Rebellion. Friends, however, confronted what they perceived to be two additional threats to their religious community resulting from these series of events: the expand­ ing power of a centralized state and the increasingly exclusionary nature of the nation’s “imagined community.” Society members openly worried that these phenomena would undermine the distinctiveness of Quakerism and the bond among Friends. The compulsory duties required of the citizen by the state clashed with the Society’s unique religious tenets while the centripe­ tal powers of nationalism threatened to pull Friends toward their non-­Quaker compatriots and away from their coreligionists. As a result, many Society members began to search for a way to resist the worldly demands of the state and the artificial divisions of nations. Friends’ assertion of a holy nation, therefore, was an attempt to main­ tain the precepts and the cohesion of the Society amidst the chaos of the world around them. It was also a highly politicized pronouncement given the imperialist and nationalist movements that engulfed the Atlantic World during this tumultuous era. Quakers’ identification with Zion (at first, the historical nation of Israel and later, their own iteration) was an attempt to

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sustain the Society through dis-­identifying with the empires and nation-­ states coalescing around them. Put simply, Friends’ articulation of holy nationhood attempted to maintain religious unity through political sepa­ ration. This alignment challenged the geopolitical foundations of nation-­ states, as Quakers maintained that religious and political bonds formed a stronger foundation for community. It also disrupted the process by which nation-­states solidified control by denying the affective bonds necessary for nationalist sentiment and defying the compliance required by the state. Fi­ nally, it contested the conformity to the hierarchy of the state and to the sway of national customs. This chapter traces the imbricated relationship between the Quakers’ evolving theological identity and the political movements of the late eigh­ teenth century. The Society attempted to counter the mounting pressures of nationalism and imperialism by invoking the theology of the Old Testa­ ment. The universalist propensity of religion coexisted uneasily with the particularizing tendency of nationalism and the state-­strengthening expres­ sions of patriotism. Friends, desperate to preserve the transnational orienta­ tion of their sect, turned to the Jewish faith tradition as a means of resisting these twin pressures. In particular, ministers on both sides of the Atlantic culled four key concepts from the Jewish faith tradition and relied on these tenets when confronting the pressures wrought by warfare and national­ ism: (1) A communal belief in their identity as a “chosen people” subject first and foremost to divine law. This conviction in an elect status helped Friends to justify their refusal to comply with laws that conflicted with their religion as well as to defend their distinctive political ideologies and cultural practices to their critics. (2) A shared history of persecution that defined their relationship with the governments under which they lived. Friends insisted that the state did not have the authority to prosecute them for defying its will and relied on the bonds forged through this mutual suf­ fering to endure these experiences with persecution. (3) A reciprocal ex­ perience of diaspora that bound together their scattered community. This orientation helped Friends scattered the world over to remain committed to the faith and to each other by denying the importance of the geopolitical boundaries of nations and empires and allowed Quakers to welcome new members into the fold from distant locales. (4) A collective responsibility to prophesy to stir others to repentance and reform. Friends used their proph­ esying to condemn the character and actions of nations and empires as well as to articulate a vision for a more peaceable future. Taken together, these four tenets represent what I have identified as the Quakers’ interpretation of the Zion tradition.

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This chapter also examines the evolution of Friends’ deployment of the Zion tradition as they first confronted the violent imperial contest of the Seven Years’ War and then faced the divisive force of nationalism during the American War of Independence and the subsequent fracturing of the Brit­ ish Empire. These conflicts impacted American Friends more profoundly than British Friends, as the war was waged, literally and figuratively, in their backyards and in their meeting houses. At the same time, however, Friends in other locals similarly seized hold of the Zion tradition when con­ fronting the backsliding of their membership as a result of their direct expe­ rience with the destruction of warfare, state persecution, or the divisiveness of nationalism. Thus, when violence reached the shores of France during the Revolution, Great Britain during the Napoleonic conflicts, or Ireland during the Rebellion of 1798, Society members took up the language of Zion once again. They insisted that, as chosen people, they did not have to pay the wartime levies in Great Britain. They endured intense persecution and suspicion in revolutionary France. They gathered diasporic members into the fold from the Caribbean, Holland, Norway, Prussia, and Russia during the Napoleonic conflicts. And they prophesied during the Irish Rebellion, standing in testimony to both sides in the conflict. Thus, during these cru­ cial last four decades of the eighteenth century, in locations as far-­flung as the Ohio Territory and St. Petersburg, Russia, Friends relied on Hebrew scriptures to encourage their coreligionists to adhere to a stricter interpre­ tation and observance of Quakerism—­one that resisted the discordance of nationalism and warfare. Friends’ experiences during this era transitioned them from an allegori­ cal interest in the history of the Jewish people to a fervent desire on their part to embody the Israelite community of the Hebrew scriptures. They did so to maintain unity among their far-­flung membership and to defend their beleaguered community against its critics. At the same time, how­ ever, Quakers not-­so-­subtly accomplished these goals by using the idea of a holy nation to displace a worldly nation or, put another way, by asserting religious unity as a means of resisting political ruptures. Friends’ modern translation of Zion thus served as an attempt to both evade and condemn the nationalist fervor spreading across the Atlantic World. By disrupting the homogeneity essential to building an imagined national community and by rebuking the obedience required to solidify the power of a state, Friends heightened the suspicion toward them already harbored by their compa­ triots and their governments. This chapter explores the ways in which the four tenets of the Quakers’ Zion tradition interacted with the crises inside the Society of Friends as well as the crises outside of it—­in other words, it

zion in crisis

35

demonstrates how their holy nation was a response to chaos inside of the Society created by the turmoil of warfare, nationalism, and state-­building while simultaneously analyzing the challenges it posed to these processes.

The Zion Tradition In the strictest sense, Zion was a literal place.2 God promised the city of Jerusalem (and Mount Zion) to the Jewish people in return for their fidelity. Both while in control of the holy land and while in exile, Jews were to sepa­ rate themselves from the surrounding nations and follow their own laws and traditions. The book of Leviticus in particular outlined God’s instruc­ tions: “I am the Lord your God; I have separated you from the peoples. . . . You shall be holy to me; for I the Lord am holy and I have separated you from the other peoples to be mine.”3 God commanded them to be “set apart from the nations”4 and directed them not to “associate with these nations that remain among you.”5 If the Israelites followed these divine commands, God would set them “in praise, fame and honor high above all the nations he has made” and make them “a people holy to the Lord your God.”6 The nation of Zion was thus “a precious cornerstone for a sure foundation,”7 a place so pure and strong that “all the nations shall stream to it.”8 The literal nation of Zion under the control of the twelve tribes of Israel formed “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation,” the scriptural passage so often quoted by Friends.9 They embodied the law, love, and power of God, and thus, according to a line of scripture also frequently quoted by Quaker ministers, “the law will go out from Zion, the word of the Lord from Jeru­ salem.”10 The “holy hill”11 of Mount Zion was meant to serve as a beacon to other nations, and indeed the Jews (and later, the Friends) believed that “Jerusalem will one day be acknowledged by the nations as the imperial capital where the divine suzerain will settle international disputes, thus bringing an end to war.”12 Jewish tradition held that God intended for their holy nation to serve as an example to all others and promised to “set [Israel] high above all the nations of the earth.”13 Yet during periods of exile and diaspora, the nation of Zion assumed an additional, more conceptual meaning. According to scripture, the tribes of Israel did not uphold their part of the covenant, despite prophetic warn­ ings—­adopted by Quaker ministers—­that “the Lord will scatter you [the Israelites] among all the nations, from one end of the earth to the other. Among those nations you shall find no ease, no resting place for the sole of your foot.”14 During these periods, Zion became both a literal place and a term used denoting the scattered Jewish nation. Regardless of the country

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in which they lived, mothers and fathers of Israel remained part of this nation of Zion.15 They pledged their loyalty to it, continued to follow its customs, and recognized their coreligionists as its true citizens and their true compatriots. Zion was thus as much an idea and a state of mind as it was a literal place, and Friends understood themselves to be its primary inheritors. It was this metaphorical interpretation of the Zion tradition that Quaker ministers attempted to propagate during the Reformation of the mid-­eighteenth century. These Friends were upset that the Society’s initial radicalism had receded, its missionary fervor all but ceased, and its dis­ cipline, particularly regarding aesthetics and marriage, had languished. In some areas Quakers still encountered problems with the authorities, as Friends on the periphery ran afoul of the government by refusing to muster for militia drills while more devout members lodged protests against oath-­ swearing and church tithes. But the Society, by and large, had reached a tenuous agreement with those in power: if they kept to themselves and if they kept quiet, they could live within the borders of the British Empire rel­ atively unmolested. Indeed, this truce so flourished in the early eighteenth century that Friends even wielded significant political power of their own in areas such as Tortola, Philadelphia, Rhode Island, Nantucket, and York. The accord did not last for long. The British Act of Toleration of 1689 had granted Friends a modicum of religious freedom; however, only within the British Empire and only during a time of relative peace and stability. The Crown governed an array of people from different nations, ethnicities, and religions, and this diversity existed more easily within an imperial structure than a national constitution. Empires required the loyalty of their subjects; they did not yet require the affective bonds of a nation. Moreover, the large and diverse population of cities such as London diminished the impact of the Quakers’ conflicts with the government. Finally, the Crown relied on a mercenary army. While Friends’ refusal to serve in the mili­ tary was objectionable to those in power, it did not threaten the Empire’s stability or survival. These conditions cast Friends as peculiar and anoma­ lous rather than hostile and seductive, though a shifting political landscape soon brought stiffer resistance. As subjects became citizens (and citizens became soldiers), the governments under which Friends lived began to de­ mand more of the Quakers. Their inability and therefore refusal to comply with the state or to support the nation became increasingly threatening, especially during times of war. The window of toleration, opened in the late seventeenth century, would slam shut by the mid-­eighteenth century.

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As violence erupted across the Atlantic World during the last half of the eighteenth century, Quakers were forced to defend and enact their peace principles, thus moving their observance of nonviolence from theory to practice. More to the point, devout Friends did not simply refuse to take up arms; they refused to aid the war effort in any way, physically, financially, or symbolically. The religious and political space that Friends had man­ aged to carve out for themselves thus evaporated beginning with the Seven Years’ War in 1756. Quakers’ delicate balance between religious principles and obedience to the Crown fell apart as attempts to “render unto Cae­ sar” proved in vain. These conflicts reinaugurated campaigns of persecu­ tion against Friends, both extralegal and sanctioned, and the divide between Quakers and non-­Quakers worsened and widened as a result. Elders within the Society, already concerned about the waning disci­ pline and increasing worldliness of their coreligionists, became even more alarmed about Friends’ ability to remain committed to their principles and to each other amidst this renewed persecution. Their ministry reflected this anxiety, as Public Friends on both sides of the Atlantic devoted their en­ ergies to implementing reform within the Society. Significantly, as more pious and prominent members attempted to explain and enforce this Ref­ ormation, they began to infuse their sermons with references to ancient Hebrews. They relied on these examples for consolation, for direction, and for validation. Thus, ministers maintained that “the Lord will search Jeru­ salem, he will thoroughly search the Quakers, he will blow away the Chaff, but the Wheat—­oh the weighty wheat he will gather into his holy garner.”16 In trying to restore the Society to its former, purer state, they searched for true believers among them. With the stakes this high, reformers could not abide any member who did not share fully in this quest; they turned out those who failed to meet their standards. Thus did itinerant minister Sophia Hume lament: “Oh! The many false brethren amongst us, who say they are Jews, but it evidently appears that they are not.”17

A Chosen People As the Reformation made manifest, members of the Society of Friends be­ lieved themselves to be a people apart, a people whom God blessed with divine approbation. Yet with this privilege came responsibility and hard­ ship, as Quakers believed themselves to be a people charged with conveying the truth to their peers. They expected to endure much affliction, but they also trusted that their perseverance in the face of these trials would prove

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to themselves and to others the righteousness of their intentions. Minis­ ters extrapolated from the Jewish faith tradition, drawing simultaneously on scriptural and historical evidence to explain the difficulties facing their membership. Public Friends, for example, addressed their coreligionists as “Jerusalem’s progeny”18 and as fellow members of the “Tribe of Judah.”19 Israel Pemberton, influential minister and former member of the Penn­ sylvania legislature remarked that “our People has been much favored,” describing the Society as “a people . . . raised from amongst the multi­ tudes resorting thither that will repair to the ensign of the Lamb set up in Zion.”20 And ministers such as New Jersey native Joshua Brown skillfully appropriated passages from Hebrew scripture concerning Israel’s war with Amalek21 and Elisha’s struggles with the Syrians22 to provide historical and religious links between eighteenth-­century Friends and ancient Hebrews in his sermons. Even outsiders commented on the strong connections, as when Thomas Clarkson remarked on the similarities. “The Quakers,” he wrote, “like the Jews of old, whether they be rich or poor, are brought up, in obedience to their own laws.”23 The parallels were clear: the Israelites had reaffirmed their devotion to God by remaining faithful in the face of adversity. Their fidelity had, in turn, garnered divine favor and preserved them as a people, thereby confirming their status as God’s chosen people. Millennia later, the Quakers hoped to follow the same course and therefore achieve the same ends. In pursuing this course of action, Friends maintained that God called them to demonstrate their faithfulness through a strict observance of their peace testimony and a divestment from the world around them. Their obe­ dience in these two regards would, they believed, confirm their elect sta­ tus. Failing to follow these precepts, they feared, would break the covenant between God and the Society. Reformers therefore strove to enforce strict discipline among the membership, and issued ominous warnings to back­ sliders. One American Friend thus penned the following prophesy to an unnamed British correspondent: I firmly believe the Lord will raise a number and endow them with a spirit of true understanding, that they may divide the Word aright, that like the Benjamites may cast a stone to an Hair’s Breadth that the waste places may be rebuilt and that . . . Sion may once more arise, and shake herself from the dust, and put on her beautiful Garment, that her Light may shine forth as a Lamp that burneth, that thro’ the Brightness of its Luster, the honest Enquires may be brought within her Borders and be­ come co-­inhabitants and join with her.24

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Such weighty language was increasingly common among Friends from the 1750s onward, as Quakers believed that they alone understood the pathway forward and therefore had a responsibility to bear witness to those around them. Outsiders resented Friends’ belief in their own exceptionality and took exception to their unpopular prophesies, though this friction only fur­ ther confirmed Friends’ confidence in their “chosen” status. In this way, the pressure for Quakers to perceive themselves as distinct from the rest of the society came from inside and outside of their religious sect; it spread among the scattered Quaker communities and increased with each episode of war­ fare that they confronted. At each encounter, those immediately faced with the violence and those attempting to minister to them seized on the Zion tradition as a way of safeguarding their small community as best they could. This trend began during the Seven Years’ War. Particularly in Pennsyl­ vania where the Quaker Party controlled the government, members of the Society found themselves in a difficult position. For years, Friends dutifully paid taxes to the British Crown, arguing that this action did not violate their pacifist principles. Even if the government used these monies to conduct warfare, Friends maintained that they had merely “rendered unto Caesar.” Loyal subjects of the Empire, they made every effort to fulfill those respon­ sibilities that did not conflict with their religious principles. This delicate balancing act ended, however, when the King directed Quaker leaders in Philadelphia to fund the war directly. What’s more, the colonial legislature voted over Quaker objections to place a reward on Indian scalps brought back from the frontier. The escalation of this conflict, combined with the changing dynamic of the colonial government, forced the issue, and the hair-­splitting position of the Quaker legislators became untenable. Friends recused themselves from public office by 1756, and the Quaker Party, led by Benjamin Franklin, became Quaker in name only.25 United behind a renewed commitment to their pacifist principles, nearly every member of the Society opposed the war, although their protests ranged from private criticisms and subdued acquiescence to public censure and open confrontation. Ministers encouraged their flock to condemn vo­ ciferously the violence spreading across the frontier and to withdraw from what they perceived to be the corrupting force of the world around them. The outbreak of war, therefore, had forced Friends’ hands. When directly confronted with violence, Quakers’ staunch pacifism reminded those in­ side and outside of the Society of their distinctiveness and consequently of their inability to serve worldly governments or even to mix with those not part of their religious sect. Several ministers, particularly those promoting the Quaker Reformation, reinforced this notion of Friends’ need to remove

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themselves from society. They reminded their listeners that “Israel was to dwell alone, they were not to be numbered among the nations,”26 and fur­ ther that “it is their safety to be separate and dwell alone.”27 Only alone together could they speak freely in the “language of Canaan” that outsid­ ers neither could understand nor respect,28 and if they were forced to live in mixed company, they should look for Quaker elders who would serve as their “anchors in Israel” and who would help them to keep their faces turned “Zionwards.”29 This belief in their exceptionality sparked a range of negative emotions from their neighbors as well as from the governments under which they lived. Friends’ pacifism, particularly in the context of the ongoing violence on the Pennsylvania frontier, enraged those around them. Their critics launched a print crusade against the Friends, decrying their opposition to the war. One anonymous author, later revealed to be Hugh Williamson, was particularly vocal in his opposition to both the Quaker Party and the Society itself. “For God’s sakes,” he entreated his readers, “are we always to be slaves, must we groan forever beneath the yoke of three Quaker coun­ ties?”30 He then continued with a scornful denunciation against the Society itself, charging: “They have cheerfully and liberally espoused the cause of our Indian enemies, inflamed their anger against the province, and thereby occasioned the massacre of many a hundred innocent people.”31 Along these same lines, a famous cartoon entitled “An Indian Squaw King Wampum Spies” accused a lustful Israel Pemberton of being “in bed with the enemy” (see fig. 1.1). The caption described Friends as ignoring the dangers faced by those in the backcountry while disingenuously lecturing their fellow citizens about the duties of conscience. As such, their critics charged, Friends permitted American Indians to murder white residents, plotted the overthrow of the government, and impoverished the colony. For Williamson and this anonymous cartoonist, the Friends were outsid­ ers whose power over the colony was a threat to its safety. Under their “with us or against us” mentality, Quakers’ practice of nonviolence placed Society members in league with Pennsylvania’s enemies. The war caused Friends’ detractors to consider the pacifist Quakers as untrustworthy sub­ jects of the colonial government and therefore dangerous to those around them. Revealingly, however, the main focus of the anti-­Quaker efforts dur­ ing the Seven Years’ War was on removing Friends from public office and demonstrating their fundamental incompatibility with the duties of gover­ nance. Detractors indicted them for aiding the enemy, but few went so far as these two propagandists did when accusing them of being the enemy.

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Fig. 1.1. H. Dawkins, An Indian Squaw King Wampum Spies (1764). Image courtesy of QSCHC. Here, the artist captures the growing anti-­Quaker sentiment during the Seven Years’ War, accusing the Friends (represented by Israel Pemberton) of being “in bed” with the enemy.

In other words, their critics lambasted Friends for their supposed support of American Indians, and thus for being flawed imperial subjects, but they still recognized them as Pennsylvanian and as British. They were part of the Empire—­an infuriating and regrettable part, perhaps, but undoubtedly members of the imperial community. This attitude began to change in the American colonies during the af­ termath of the Seven Years’ War. The fury sparked against the Quaker Party by Friends’ recent conduct aroused even deeper suspicions about the entire Society and unearthed long-­simmering resentments against Friends them­ selves. Anti-­ Quaker authors maintained that Friends’ pacifism signified their fundamental “apartness” from the rest of society and that both their nonviolence and their separation posed equal threats to those outside of

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their religious sect. Indeed, for some of their critics, the Society’s very ex­ istence challenged the stability of their government. These opponents held that the Quakers’ belief in their status as a chosen people was merely a pre­ text for their notorious tribalism and that this insularity had the potential to shake the very foundation of civil government. In fact, one anonymous author concluded his first anti-­Quaker tract by quoting the political phi­ losopher Hume: Factions subvert Government, render Laws impotent, and beget the fiercest Animosities among Men of the same Nation, who ought to give mutual assistance and protection to each other. . . . They naturally propagate themselves for many Centuries and seldom end but by the total Dissolution of that Government, in which they are planted. They are besides, weeds which grow more plentifully in rich Soils and tho’ despotic Government are not quite free from them, it must be con­ fessed, that they rise more easily, and propagate themselves faster in free Governments.32

This author built on Williamson’s resentment against the Quaker Party to express a growing apprehension about the problem posed by the Soci­ ety of Friends itself. This passage cautioned that the diversity of subjects within an empire was fundamentally destabilizing and criticized the British Crown for being too tolerant of the religious, ethnic, and national differ­ ences within its borders. The move from an antipathy toward the Quaker Party to a hostility toward the Society as a whole signified an important transition. During the Seven Years’ War, critics alleged that Friends’ vision of themselves as a chosen people challenged the British state; Friends’ insistence that their relationship to the divine superseded their relationship to the government challenged the authority of the state. In arguing that they did not have to obey any law that conflicted with their conscience, they suggested that the state did not have the authority to expect or demand automatic or absolute compliance from its subjects. This conflict arose acutely during times of war when the state required of its subjects military service, the payment of levies, and the swearing of loyalty oaths. The struggle between the British Crown and the Quaker Party during the Seven Years’ War, therefore, was one between religion and state that would reappear throughout the eigh­ teenth and nineteenth centuries during outbreaks of war. The shift to an antagonism toward the Society as a whole, however, por­ tended the rise of an American nation, expressed in its earliest stages as a

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nascent patriotism or nationalism. This worry that Quakers’ avowal of their “apartness” disrupted the affective bonds between “Men of the same Na­ tion” connoted a need for homogeneity among a budding American nation that did not exist in the same way or with the same urgency in the British Empire. By their very nature, empires contained “nations within nations,” and a strong centralized state held together this diverse array of people.33 A nation, however, relied on its citizens to identify with one another and to invest themselves in the “imagined community.” Quakers emphasized their connection only to each other; their affinity was not with their nearest neighbors but with their fellow Society members wherever they resided. In this way, Friends rejected the affective appeal of the nation, divesting from the geopolitical community to devote themselves to their religion. When the American nation would attempt to separate itself from the British state a decade later, this transnational kinship and its dis-­identification with the nation would threaten to undermine its claims to legitimacy. Friends’ critics charged that such disloyalty endangered the ability of the British Crown—­and later, of the American government—­to rule effectively. As a result, the harassment and persecution of Friends that began during the Seven Years’ War escalated exponentially during the American War of In­ dependence, an experience that would come to define the relationship with the governments under which they lived during the late eighteenth century.

Persecution Friends’ experience of persecution was woven into the very fabric and foun­ dation of the Society. From its inception, the Society endured harassment from its neighbors as well as from those in power. Indeed, Quakers con­ sidered these hardships such an elemental and fixed part of their identity that they established separate meetings for worship, for business, and for suffering. Suffering, in other words, became codified as part of their faith. During the latter half of the eighteenth century, devout Friends had many opportunities to reflect on the parallels between their situation and that of ancient Hebrews as they reacted to the warfare and harassment that began again in earnest in the 1750s. Persecution also became a defining characteristic of their relationships to each other and to the governments under which they lived. Friends wrote extensively about their own distress as well as that of their coreligionists. Their stories, much like the narratives of Hebrew prophets or of early Chris­ tian martyrs, bore witness to their faithfulness and to the divine purpose of their mission. It also bound together their community through a shared

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experience of sacrifice. Ministers learned of the suffering of their transatlan­ tic brethren and sympathized with them, as in this letter from Pennsylva­ nian minister Sarah Morris to Irish minister Samuel Neale. On learning of his ordeal, Morris wrote: “I often feel thy sympathy in relieving nearness, or being present in spirit tho’ absent in body, confirming me in the faith that the Lord’s people are one in him, and tho’ the bonds are of union are strengthened by our sufferings for his testimony.”34 The Seven Years’ War and the American Revolution inaugurated a new period of intense suffering for Friends with penalties meted out by the press, rival religious leaders, vigilante neighbors, disgruntled business partners, and, eventually, military and political officials and punishments ranging from ridicule and ostracization to imprisonment, exile, and even death. As Friends attempted to explain and endure their sufferings, they found solace and inspiration in the example of the ancient Hebrews. Thus did British Friend John Fothergill offer this advice to Pennsylvanian Quaker John Pem­ berton during the American Revolution: “May the sufferings to which you are exposed be made the sources of blessings to you. Often do I reflect on the history of the Jewish People with humbling admiration.—­Plain indeed are the instructive lessons it affords.”35 In other words, this trope had become so widespread by the beginning of the American Revolution that Fothergill needed only to allude to the ancient Hebrews to offer support and solidar­ ity to his American Friend amidst the suffering and separation the Society endured during these difficult years. Toward the beginning of the Revolution, attacks on Friends followed the same course as during the Seven Years’ War, remaining mostly confined to nonofficial channels. Several published editorials censured the Society, and anonymous broadsides impugned the reputations of its members. The infa­ mous “Spanktown controversy” filled the newspapers from New England to the Carolinas for more than a year, recycling incriminations from the Seven Years’ War by accusing Friends of siding with the enemy.36 Mobs gathered outside of Quakers’ homes and businesses, breaking the windows of their residences and storefronts, and crowds confronted members of the Society when they attempted to attend weekly meetings for worship. And yet as the war wore on, the campaign against the Friends spread further across the population and began to operate via pseudo-­official conduits. Pennsyl­ vanian ministers Robert Walker and his wife, for example, were shot at by a group of American militiamen who then ransacked his home and stole his food, furniture, and specie.37 New York minister Daniel Sands and his wife were also victims of these semiofficial attacks. According to his ac­ count, five hundred soldiers surrounded their home. He overheard several

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of them discussing whether to kill him and his wife, and one of the guards stationed outside their house shot at them through their window. The mi­ litia then plundered his home, stealing most of its contents.38 In both cases, the soldiers claimed their acts were retribution for Friends’ repudiation of the revolutionary cause: if the Quakers refused to donate to the American war effort, the militiamen would ensure that they contributed one way or another. Neither Walker nor Sands ever uncovered any proof that officers had directed these soldiers to target Society members, but each certainly believed that the perpetrators suffered fewer if any consequences because of the anti-­Quaker sentiment of the military, the government, and the popula­ tion at large. In this way, these acts of violence could be categorized some­ where between vigilantism and the sanctioned targeting of Friends by an arm of the government. As the war progressed, those in power took a more active role both in forcing Friends to contribute to the war effort and in punishing them for their observance of the peace testimony. All over the colonies, nearly ev­ ery Friend suffered from the distraint of property imposed by the govern­ ment in lieu of war taxes, as Elizabeth Drinker famously and meticulously detailed in her diary.39 The Society also lost much of its property, as its meetinghouses were used as headquarters and makeshift hospitals by both sides during the conflict and often damaged or destroyed as a result.40 The starkest examples of government prosecution occurred during the difficult years of 1777 and 1778 when the American cause was perhaps at its nadir. The Pennsylvanian government exiled—­without trial—­fourteen prominent Philadelphian Quakers and one British Public Friend to Virginia under sus­ picion of treason.41 The same officials hanged two Friends for treason—­also without trial—­as they had provided directions on a river crossing to a Brit­ ish officer. In Massachusetts, a wealthy Nantucket whaler, William Rotch, was charged with abetting the British, as were several Friends in New York. These extreme reactions against the Society by their neighbors and their governments were a product of clashing ideologies. Friends’ adherence to the Zion tradition—­particularly their insistence that they were a people apart and subject only to divine law—­became an increasing problem for governments in the late eighteenth century. Political leaders interpreted Friends’ tribalism as an impediment to rising nationalist sentiment and their allegiance to divine law as a threat to fledgling governments. Indeed, in a pamphlet strikingly reminiscent of the pseudonymous tracts penned during the Seven Years’ War, another anonymous author from Philadelphia lambasted Quakers for their failure to support this second war. Character­ izing Friends as disingenuous and disloyal in his historic Common Sense,

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Thomas Paine appended to its second edition an appeal entitled “To the Representatives of the Religious Society of the People called Quakers.”42 Paine, himself raised in a Quaker family, remained irked that they “dabbled in matters, which the professed Quietude of your Principles instruct you not to meddle with,” despite the fact that Friends had withdrawn from par­ ticipation in formal politics. Significantly, however, he further alleged that they exhibited “a tendency to undo that continental harmony and friend­ ship” that Paine valued and that the rebel cause needed. Here, he accused them of hypocrisy, cowardice, and disloyalty, misgivings already present before the armed conflict began that would be shared even more widely dur­ ing and after the war. Paine continued his rebuke of Friends, accusing them of “departing from the right way,” and reproached the Society for ignoring the best interests of the people and instead “putting in for a share of the business.” He concluded by cautioning Society members that if they failed to remove themselves from the political debate, they would be “disavowed and reprobated by every inhabitant of America.” These anti-­Quaker feelings were thus shared by many and disseminated widely during the Revolution. Friends were enemies and traitors who hid behind religious rhetoric to disguise their attempts to undermine the war effort and to undercut the government. As a result, Paine told Friends to “preach repentance to your king,” perhaps deliberately taking advantage of the linguistic slippage between the titles used for both King George and the Christian divine. Indeed, another author similarly employed this sar­ donic play on words when complaining that “too great a number of the members of this State are the avowed votaries of submission to higher powers.”43 Clearly, both of these authors used these accusations of disloyalty to mark Friends as interlopers and to suggest that their allegiance rested elsewhere. They existed outside the boundaries of the American nation—­an allegation, it is important to note, critics did not lob against the Society during the Seven Years’ War. During that period, Friends were considered unsuited to governance and unreliable subjects of the Crown, but they were still subjects of the British Empire. The nationalist focus of the American Revolution, however, could not abide this same diversity. Opponents now interpreted Friends’ opposition to the patriot cause as an impediment not only to the war effort but also to the process of nation building. Thus, when the Pennsylvania government arrested thirty Friends and exiled twenty-­two to Virginia, the indictment targeted members of the Society specifically for not having “manifested their attachment to the American cause.”44 The American nation, as well as the eventual American state, required

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a political and cultural homogeneity that Friends’ difference (and diffidence) was thought to violate. Postwar editorials spell out this conflict even more plainly. Following Paine’s lead, one author labeled Friends “British subjects, aliens, and cowards who had no share in the declaration of independence, in the formation of our Constitution, or in establishing them by arms.”45 Strikingly, this author branded Friends as “aliens,” or people living outside the purview of the governments under which they lived. The Quakers rec­ ognized this attempt to brand them as outsiders, remarking after the war’s conclusion that they were “treated as aliens and enemies to their country.”46 The transition here from their poor showing as imperial subjects to their fundamental incompatibility as citizens of a nation is clear. During the Seven Years’ War, this harassment served as an attempt to remove them from power. During and after the American Revolution, these persecutions demarcated them as outside of the polity. For their part, the Society insisted that its membership had “remained committed to itself, and not to a foreign land.”47 Noteworthy, of course, was the striking absence of any attempt to affirm its loyalty to the Ameri­ can cause, nation, or state. Friends sought repeatedly to reassure their crit­ ics that they did not ally themselves with the enemy but could not bring themselves to pledge their own allegiance to the governments under which they lived. British minister Thomas Colley thus promised the King that “we have no plot to facilitate, no friends to serve, no interest at state, but that of all mankind,”48 while Pennsylvanian John Pemberton pledged to the Ameri­ can revolutionary government: “I have no sinister view, or worldly concern to promote, but singly, the honest and upright Discharge of a duty.”49 For his part, Job Scott insisted, “I had no desire to promote the opposition to Great Britain; neither had I any desire on the other hand to promote the measures or success of Great Britain.”50 As these examples make clear, the Society was ready and willing to disavow its allegiance to the opposing side but unwilling to identify itself with the nation or empire in which they lived. It “remained committed to itself”—­the chosen people, the elect nation—­ rather than aligning itself with any worldly cause or government.51 This positionality, however, posed a threat to the very foundation of the nation-­state. Fledgling governments could not abide a people living within the borders of “their” country who refused to identify with it and, more important, to recognize its authority. An editorialist in the Gazette agreed: These men certainly are not in earnest, when they talk and write of liberty and of the sacred rights of conscience. Their conduct contradicts all

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their speeches and publications; and if they were truly sensible of their folly and wickedness in opposing the new government, instead of trying to excite a civil war (in which they will bear no more part than they did in the late war with Great Britain) they ought rather to acknowledge, with gratitude, the lenity of their fellow citizens, in permitting them to live among us with impunity, after thus transgressing and violating the great principles of liberty, government, and conscience.52

Echoing Paine’s claims, this author contended that Friends “transgressed and violated” the very underpinnings of the new American government: a sense of belonging and of fraternity as well as a belief in a shared commit­ ment to and willingness to sacrifice for the nation. As a result, Quakers, both individually and as a community, suffered intense persecution during and after the war, an experience that would bond together an increasingly fractured and scattered community.

Diaspora By the end of the American Revolution, weary Friends gathered together their members and their resources in an attempt to regroup and reorient. They had endured an intense campaign of persecution that diminished the Society’s political power, impoverished many of its members, and assailed the very foundations of Quakerism. Many Friends thus took comfort in British minister Samuel Fothergill’s oft-­quoted sermon, when he reassured his audience that no matter what they had to endure and no matter how far removed they were from one another, “the Lord is still with Zion.”53 In the wake of these turbulent years, Public Friends once again assumed the important role of serving as “watchmen on the walls of Zion.”54 This task meant working tirelessly to maintain unity in the face of the fracturing of the British Empire by “gather[ing] the scattered and dispersed sheep, from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south, to the great shepherd, to the one shepherd.”55 This language of diaspora infused Quaker theology. Friends seized on the Jewish experience of exile and diaspora as a means of emphasizing that the Society transcended geopolitical borders and of providing its members the justification necessary to reassert their status as removed from and above worldly politics. Quakers argued that they, like the ancient Hebrews, had lost their formal political power and become increasingly scattered across great distances. They also maintained that both communities had

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forged lasting kinships in the face of these extreme obstacles—­kinships that transcended geopolitical boundaries and remained faithful to divine law. These parallels proved essential to Friends as they confronted three dif­ ferent kinds of diasporas beginning in the late 1770s. The first experience was one of literal exile, involuntary and voluntary. The Virginia Exiles en­ dured banishment while other Friends voluntarily fled the violence and the persecution. In a second sense, however, the fracturing of the British Empire following the American War of Independence was another kind of diaspora for the Society of Friends. No longer united by the British Empire, they had only their religious ties to bind them, inspiring many Quakers to identify ever more closely with the nation of Israel and to rely on their holy nation to transcend the worldly boundaries of empires and nation-­states. Third, this transformation began to attract the attention of non-­Quakers in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Some responded positively to the Friends’ message and attempted to join their Zion, while others warned of the dangers of this orientation and attempted to destroy the Society’s holy nation. Their membership during these years thus became even more far-­ flung, as each convert seemed to inspire a new round of persecution, which in turn seemed to draw more converts. These three diasporas—­individual, Societal, and transnational—­informed Friends’ theology and inspired their transformation, their reincarnation, of the ancient Hebrews’ Zion. This first experience of diaspora, banishment, afflicted dozens of indi­ vidual Quakers during the 1770s and 1780s. The case of the Virginia Exiles was an extreme example in that it was both a deportation and an impris­ onment, but many other Quakers became more or less refugees as a result of the Revolution. The Quaker community on Nantucket was particularly devastated by the war, both because the new government persecuted them as loyalists and because the war destroyed their livelihood, the whaling in­ dustry. In fact, of all of the injured parties of the revolutionary era, perhaps no one better exemplified Friends’ experiences with persecution and dias­ pora than William Rotch, a wealthy Quaker whaler from Nantucket. Born to a prominent family, he counted among his acquaintances some of the foremost families in Massachusetts. He had amassed significant political and economic capital by the eve of the American Revolution and, until that point, had experienced little conflict between his business empire and his Quaker convictions. The war, however, destroyed this harmony. Caught quite literally in the crossfire between the British and the Americans, Nan­ tucket was devastated. Despite repeated pleas by the islanders, neither the British army nor the Massachusetts government provided adequate supplies

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to the island. William Rotch attempted to seek help from both sides, alter­ nately leading a group of men aboard a British vessel to request provisions and then writing to the American army imploring them to send any rations they could spare. He was, for the most part, unsuccessful. Even if either camp could have spared any materials for Nantucket residents, neither was much inclined to help Rotch, of all people. He had gained notoriety by sinking an entire ship filled with bayonets rather than allow them to be used for “blood-­letting” and then by attempting to declare Nantucket an independent—­and neutral—­state, ready to do business with both sides. He was put on trial for treason during the early years of the Revolution, and, though he was acquitted, his reputation mirrored the island’s economy: nei­ ther ever recovered.56 Fatigued by these political battles and fearful for his business empire, Rotch relocated his whaling business to Dunkirk, France. In a cruel twist of fate, he and his family arrived only a few years before the outbreak of the French Revolution.57 And in perhaps one of history’s greatest ironies, he and his son were then summoned in 1791 by the revolutionary government to answer for their refusal to support the cause of liberty. His speech to the members of the Assembly, entitled “The Respectful Petition of the Chris­ tian Society of Friends called Quakers delivered before the National As­ sembly,” bore what for Rotch must have been a disquieting resemblance to his protests against the American and British authorities during the War of Independence. While choosing not to indict him, the revolutionaries never­ theless ignored his pleas for religious tolerance, and thus, only a short time later, Rotch was forced to petition both the National Assembly of France and the local officials for permission not to illuminate his house in obser­ vance of French victories.58 In another ominous parallel, riotous mobs had descended on the Rotch home when they heard of his plans to keep his win­ dows dark, threatening to burn the house to the ground with its inhabitants trapped inside. Frustrated, Rotch and his eldest son Benjamin fled France for Great Britain under the cover of night shortly thereafter. Unfortunately for the Rotch family, their ordeal was not yet over. Af­ ter escaping the oppression in France, William and Benjamin were appalled to discover that the British authorities were inspecting their private corre­ spondence for evidence of sedition.59 Benjamin was further shocked when his neighbors accused him of being a spy for Napoleon. Apparently, they believed his Quaker garb was evidence of his “foreign-­ness” and thus his disloyalty to the British Crown—once again confusing cultural homoge­ neity with political loyalty and perpetrating a “with us or against us” men­ tality that eliminated neutrality as a viable political stance.60 Exhausted

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by their travails, William Rotch finally returned to the United States to settle in New Bedford, and Benjamin Rotch left the Society of Friends altogether. The story of the Rotch family illustrates the perception of Friends—­by themselves and by others—­as a people without a country. Wandering exiles and citizens of no worldly nation, their enemies ostracized them from and chased them out of many of the places where they attempted to reside. These experiences confirmed for these Friends in particular their connec­ tion to the diasporic identity of the Jewish people as a means of explaining their exile. The holy nation of Zion was the only “country” to which they could belong as they drifted from place to place. More to the point, it cor­ roborated their status as a chosen people who suffered persecution and thus were forced to live in exile under various inhospitable governments. A cen­ tury earlier, the Quakers had managed to carve out a space for themselves within the British Empire under the Act of Toleration. Nationalist revolu­ tions eliminated this space; however, as the laws of the British Empire no longer protected them as they wandered ever farther afield. The fracturing of the British Empire that resulted from the American Revolution thus shook the very foundation of the Society of Friends. Pre­ viously, Quakers had considered themselves a distinct people who lived and traveled within the British Empire. They appealed for redress to the Crown and the Parliament. They struggled mostly against the Anglican Church. They enjoyed the protection guaranteed by the British Act of Tol­ eration. But then suddenly, many Friends were no longer British subjects but American (or French) citizens. This radical change had the immediate consequences of forcing Quakers to find a way to remain united in the face of these political divisions to explain how the now transnational Society of Friends could exist outside the context of the British Empires and to heal the internal fissures caused by the late war. In both these regards, London Yearly Meeting led the way. Its annual epistles reflected an overt attempt to maintain the connection between the British and American Yearly Meetings in spite of the political partition. Thus, in the closing years of the war, London Yearly Meeting reassured its American correspondents that “though outwardly separated from you, be­ loved friends, yet as brethren of one family, and united in the same glo­ rious cause, we partake of your burthens and exercises.”61 Public Friends sought to reaffirm the message of the yearly meetings, and their travels and epistles during the immediate postwar period illustrated their attempts to comfort their membership that the fragmentation of the Empire would not cause a fragmentation among the Society.62 American Friends in particular

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sought to reassure themselves that American independence did not sever the ties with their British coreligionists and that, if they remained bonded to one another, they could endure this period of intense suffering and would emerge stronger on the other side. As part of this endeavor, Friends discounted the importance of the na­ tion and nationalism on individual and group identities during this crucial period. New York minister Henry Hull, for example, told his British audi­ ence that “before [God] all the nations of the Earth are but as the small dust of the balance.”63 And Rhode Island minister Job Scott, in a famous prophesy made from his deathbed, warned Friends not to be distracted by the “great commotions and overturnings in the nations,” as they were insignificant in comparison to “the [divine] foundation that cannot be moved.”64 Perhaps as a way of highlighting the instability and insignificance—­or at least the porousness—­of national borders, Quaker ministers actually increased their transatlantic travel during this period of intense political instability despite the significant risks they incurred by traveling in active war zones and in crossing enemy lines. The volume of correspondence also rose markedly, as attested by the epistles and letters that flew back and forth between Ameri­ can and British meetings and members during this period. Friends’ writings during this period reflect these anxieties. Sophia Hume worried that Friends needed to focus on “the recovery from captivity our scattered and languishing society.”65 Years later, William Rotch described the Society as “a poor scattered people, who in this day needs every help to gather and cement us to the true head of the Church”;66 he pledged his loyalty to every member “the world over wherever they [were] scattered.”67 Devout Friends in both the United States and Great Britain shared these concerns and moved immediately to bond their membership in spite of the recent political hostilities. They sought to accomplish this objective through travel, as the period following the American Revolution marked the high tide of transatlantic crossings. More Public Friends crossed the ocean during these years than at any other time in the seventeenth, eigh­ teenth, or nineteenth century, despite the fact that Quakers believed it was “harder to travel now in this day and time than ever was in any age of the world since we were a people.”68 Indeed, at every level of the Society, Friends endeavored to heal the fissures caused by the American War of Independence. No less than Lon­ don Yearly Meeting comforted its audience in both Britain and the United States, promising that “united in the same religious fellowship, and baptized by one spirit, into one body, we salute you in the sympathy of the gospel

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of Christ and remain your Friends and Brethren.”69 Ministers too conveyed their anxieties and reassurances about the political separation. New York minister David Sands reflected the biblically infused language of London Yearly Meeting when he pledged to William Jackson that “we being many are one Bread being Baptized by the one Spirit in the one Body.”70 When traveling in Great Britain, Pennsylvanian Friend Robert Valentine rejoiced that “I have had to admire all the goodness of God in filling my heart with that Love, that wisheth well to the whole Flock and family. I cou’d not have thought I cou’d have loved a people in so endeared a manner as I do Friends on this side of the water. I attribute it all to ancient Goodness.”71 And Mas­ sachusetts minister Mehitabale Jenkins wrote that the bond among Friends was one “which time nor distance I believe will wear out.”72 She further believed that the “yunaty of brethren and sisters is pracsus thing to me” and reflected on the love “that causes us to remember and pray for won another if we are unduly separated in bodey. I can not expras the lov to the full that I feal to som of you in tham parts. Oh may it continue.”73 In each of these cases, American Friends reassured themselves that Ameri­ can independence did not sever the ties between them and their British coreligionists. In an attempt to span the divide between them, some Friends began to treat trinkets they had exchanged as important objects with a significance that reverberated through generations. These items became touchstones of the connections among the far-­flung membership, a way of remembering the visits of luminaries sent to enliven their communities. So, for exam­ ple, James Pemberton sent Joseph Oxley a copy of Daniel Stanton’s jour­ nal to read with his children.74 Susanna Horne presented the children of her Philadelphian host, Bernice Allinson, with a copy of Lindley Murray’s book to remember her by after she had left.75 And Friends honored these gifts and the connections they represented for generations. The granddaugh­ ter of eighteenth-­century British minister Elizabeth Wilkinson presented nineteenth-­century Public Friend Mary Swett with a shawl worn by her venerable grandmother during her travels.76 And in the 1793 will of Penn­ sylvanian Public Friend Deborah Morris, she left her personal effects to Re­ becca Jones, Samuel Griffith, and Mary Swett, all transatlantic Quaker min­ isters she had met through her service to the Society. Indeed, Mary Swett received the pin cushion that Irish minister Sarah Grubb had given to Mor­ ris during her trip to Ireland in 1771, demonstrating that these momentos remained valued by generations of Quakers.77 It would be a stretch to think of these items as relics within the Society, but it is clear that at least some

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of the worldly trinkets left by ministers became important symbols to gen­ erations of Friends meant to draw together a scattered religious community. The urgency with which these Friends now sought to reaffirm the unity among their membership reflected the predicament they faced as a result of their membership now divided between two political entities. Without the shield of the British Empire to unite and protect them, Friends were forced to reconsider their religious community. Put simply, the rupture caused by the American War of Independence forced the transatlantic Quakers to articulate a new vision for the suddenly transnational Society of Friends. Ministers once again turned to the Zion tradition to articulate this religious identity in light of the new political reality. Thus, Rebecca Jones drew an explicit comparison between eighteenth-­century Quakers and ancient He­ brews. In two letters to her neighbor John Pemberton that bookended her four-­year journey throughout Great Britain and Ireland, she reminded him that she was called to “rebuild the walls of Zion that are in many places sadly broken down and repairing the Breaches that are so conspicuous,”78 a feat meant to ensure unity “amongst the scattered tribes of Israel.”79 Friends thus borrowed the language of diaspora from the Jewish faith tradition to account for their position as a “scattered people” not only spread over two continents but newly confronting two nations and navigat­ ing two states. This response marked a transition for the Quakers, as they moved from embracing the example of the Hebraic community to reen­ visioning the Society of Friends as a holy nation. Whereas before the War of Independence Friends had looked to the Jewish community for inspira­ tion and validation, after the war they sought to embody the tradition of the biblical Israelites, to become not just an elect people, but the nation of Zion. Only three decades previously, John Churchman had written to Irish minister Mary Piesley that Friends were “wandering pilgrims” stand­ ing outside “the Gate of Sion.”80 The Quakers, in other words, remained literally and figuratively outside the boundaries of that holy space. After the American Revolution, however, Quakers believed that they were no longer outsiders. They had, as Pennsylvanian minister Thomas Ross wrote while abroad in Great Britain, achieved “the Establishment of Zion”81 and were now tasked with working for “Zion’s prosperity, and the Enlargement of her Borders.”82 Quakers spread the good news of their Zion through the efforts of their itinerant ministry while government officials inadvertently made even more people aware through their public persecution of Friends. As a re­ sult, people from the far corners of North America and Europe began to

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proclaim their adherence to the tenets of the Society, thereby solidifying a sense of the Quakers as a diasporaic society. Small meetings emerged in France, Prussia, Scandinavia, and Russia, and Public Friends immediately began to correspond with and visit members in spite of the harsh reaction by those in power. Friends’ principles began to spread in North America as well. Quaker merchants trading with the residents of several Caribbean islands began to hear of meetings of silent reflection taking place in and around the sites of long-­dormant Quaker meetinghouses. When famed min­ ister Stephen Grellet arrived on the shores of Haiti after the Revolution, the island’s residents greeted him as a hero. Apparently, they had been told that any “man in grey” was an abolitionist and a friend to black people. The Nantucket Friends who fled to Nova Scotia discovered that their new neighbors already knew of Quaker principles and were therefore keen to welcome the Society into the area. And, as mentioned in the introduction, by the early nineteenth century, more Quakers lived west of the Mississippi than in the former loci of Quaker power in the East. Surely, some of these converts were inspired by visits from Quaker min­ isters. Indeed, Friends seemed to have recaptured some of their former mis­ sionary zeal by the early nineteenth century. Ministers traveled from Haiti to St. Petersburg, from Nova Scotia to Italy, and from Scotland to Iowa. However, these renewed visits cannot account for all of the new adherents. Oftentimes, Friends journeyed to these locales after residents had requested ministerial visits; other times, they arrived only to discover that people had already heard of Quaker principles, thereby rendering their new translations of Fox’s writings or of Barclay’s Apology unnecessary. Those who expressed a wish to follow the Society’s principles seemed to have learned about Friends for two reasons: their observance of silence or, broadly speaking, their reputation as reformers. The former encompassed a variety of pietistic sects who often linked themselves to Friends but never formally affiliated with the Society. The latter perceived Friends as both religious and political allies, united in a struggle against some manifestation of state power—­more often than not, war and slavery. In this way, these converts were probably not, strictly speaking, Friends but rather “friends.” The Quakers’ belief in and practice of Zion appealed to them, and they sought to join as citizens in this holy nation. Scattered across Europe and North America, these adher­ ents made this community even more diasporic—­and even more explicitly political. Zion was, for them, a way of testifying against the practices of the state and declaring their allegiance to a different nation, a transnational and cosmopolitan community of prophets.

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Prophesy Friends believed that an integral piece of the Zion tradition was God’s intention for Zion to serve as the standard-­bearer for the nations and its people to lead the rest of the world toward righteousness. Indeed, Friends often quoted those scriptural passages that highlighted the divine right and the divine responsibility to judge worldly nations.83 Quakers thus rejected the authority of government officials and maintained that these nations needed to subject themselves to divine will. In this way, Society members were not antiauthoritarian, as some of their critics had suggested; rather, they believed that God was the ultimate sovereign, divine law the highest arbiter, and religious conviction the only moral authority. As a result, sev­ eral Quaker ministers were influenced by the biblical story of God’s Trial of the Nations in which God called on the nations to resolve the question of who actually controlled history.84 Samuel Fothergill often preached on this theme, urging leaders to remember their worldly limitations and the path they needed to follow to obtain salvation.85 “Methinks,” he wrote, “I would have all nations to consider themselves designed to have a part in the unspeakable wisdom and mercy of God, in the offers of grace, and in the glo­ rious riches of an eternal kingdom, which is prepared for all who sincerely love him.”86 Thomas Colley, a contemporary of Fothergill, expanded on this same idea of the gift of grace, asserting that if Friends could “removeth the face of the covering that is spread before all nations,” then “the pure prin­ ciples of truth and righteousness may come to be manifested, and our minds to be united to him, and thereby come to a settlement upon that founda­ tion which standeth sure.”87 Similarly, fellow Pennsylvanian John Griffith warned his audience: Those who otherwise esteem it, turning their backs thereupon, violating the blessed testimony thereof in its several branches, will (unless they repent) be wholly rejected and cast off, as being unworthy of so great an honour, as that of holding forth a standard of truth and righteousness to the nations and others will be called and chosen for that great and glori­ ous work.88

Friends believed that this responsibility was theirs as the new Israel, and they worked tirelessly to that end over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Since Quakers believed that they, as a chosen people, spoke for God, they similarly believed that they had a duty to speak their truth to power. They

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therefore addressed (and dressed down) those in power, condemning those actions that Friends believed betrayed God’s plan and holding other nations to account. This tradition began in the seventeenth century with Friends’ infamous refusal to doff their hats in public or to their social betters. In the eighteenth century, however, these protests became more strident and more explicitly political. While members of the Society had formally and informally petitioned governments since its inception, the language they now employed to describe this responsibility reflected the way that Quaker theology had changed in response to the new political order. Their response began with a pronounced and determined retreat. Elders within the Society advised members to withdraw from the world around them, rather than engage it. Thus British Friend John Fothergill had written this advice to Philadelphian Quaker James Pemberton during the American Revolution: “My heart is united with many amongst you—­keep quiet, mind your own business—­your kingdom is not of this world.”89 Friends on both sides of the Atlantic frequently repeated this sentiment, as they encouraged their fellow members to keep their own counsel as a means of avoiding unduly angering their neighbors or their governments. After decades of sustained warfare, however, Quaker ministers began to advise their flock much differently. They now envisioned themselves as a nation in their own right, a people whose sovereign and whose laws were at least on par with those of other governments. As a result, their attitude toward other governments became more pointed. London Yearly Meeting, for example, instructed its members: “it is an awful thing to stand forth to the nation as the advocates of inviolable peace,” but reminded readers that this was their divinely ordained responsibility.90 William Rotch, also responding to the violence resulting from the French Revolution, agreed. “I feel a willingness to contribute my mite in any manner,” he wrote to his son-­in-­law, “to nations, kindred, tongues, and peoples, the whole world over, for the promotion of the cause of righteousness in the earth.”91 Only a few years later, Job Scott prophesied on his deathbed that “a day of dis­ tress would come in which the faithful in our Society would be as Saviors upon Mt. Sion.”92 Friends were no longer supposed to withdraw or remain silent. They were being called to action by God, who, they believed, had bestowed them with a singular ability to interpret the political events un­ folding around them. As a result, they no longer held the ancient Hebraic nation up as a standard of righteousness but believed that they themselves now provided the example for others to emulate. In this way, the Friends promoted their holy nation as a way of critiquing worldly nations. Minis­ ters felt moved to condemn worldly nations, for “these abominations [war

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and slavery] have been, and are, supported by the civil power among all na­ tions.”93 They used their sermonizing as occasions to censure the conduct of nations and to urge those within its geopolitical borders to repent and to join with them in their cause. They further promised that if “a nation, or a people, or a particular person” followed their lead, they would earn “favour with Almighty God.”94 For Friends, this path of justice and righteousness was embodied in Zion. Thus American minister William Matthews wrote before his 1782 journey to Great Britain that it was “the fervent prayer of my heart that Zion may become the beauty of nations and Jerusalem the praise of the whole Earth and in every place.”95 He reiterated this sentiment on his arrival home, writ­ ing in his diary that “a lively concern for the restoration of primitive beauty is the fervent prayer of my heart [so] that Zion may become the beauty of nations.”96 British minister William Hunt echoed this desire, pledging that “Sion [would] become the glory of nations.”97 For these Friends, their Zion was a nation that would lead others to righteousness. The chapters that follow describe in greater detail the course of action to which the Quakers believed worldly nations should adhere. Peace, of course, was the princi­ pal intent. As nearly every Public Friend repeated in nearly every sermon, they prayed for a time when people would finally “beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; and nation shall not lift up sword against nation neither shall they learn war no more.”98 Friends believed fervently that those who joined with or followed Zion would usher in a peaceful world.

Zion Marching Clearly, the stories from the Hebrew Bible imparted deep and profound meaning to the Quaker community. American and British Quakers in par­ ticular focused on the endurance and cohesiveness of the Jewish commu­ nity as they faced the impending political fragmentation of the American War of Independence. No longer bound by the British Empire, Friends on both sides of the Atlantic embraced the example of the ancient Hebrews as a people who survived periods of intense persecution and prolonged separa­ tion. At the same time, however, the Zion tradition went beyond simply providing these forms of comfort and validation to a beleaguered religious sect. The Quakers looked to the ancient Israelites as an example of a people who resisted the pressures to conform to the faith, traditions, and appear­ ances of the dominant society. Friends thus patterned themselves after the

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Jews of the Bible—­hoping, like them, to triumph over the subjugation by a powerful empire, to endure a centuries-­long campaign of persecution by those of other faiths, and to withstand a series of diasporas that scattered them across a great distance. Quakers, in other words, modeled their reli­ gious and political identities after that of the ancient Hebrews as a way of remaining a people united to one another and yet apart from the nations in which they lived. In so doing, they seized on the prophetic language of Exodus and Isaiah that characterized the Israelites as “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation.”99 Friends used this language as a way of maintaining their identity as both a cohesive and a distinctive people. Their vision of “a holy nation” cast their apartness as a precondition to their re­ lationship with God, thus positing their spiritual community as not only separate from their worldly community but superior to it. In this way, the Friends’ articulation of Zion was an intentionally and intensely political claim. They invoked the Zion tradition and this language of nationhood in the face of the political rupture and realignment endemic to the late eighteenth century. Their persistent identification with ancient Hebrews prompted those both inside and outside of the Society to interpret these theological justifications as forceful political critiques of the move­ ments and events that engulfed the Atlantic World during this tumultuous era. Their distance from and alternative to the imagined community of the geopolitical nation complicated their compatriots’ attempts to solidify their own claims to nationhood. Indeed, as geopolitical communities reimagined themselves as nations and as imperial subjects clamored for their rights as citizens, Quaker critics charged that Friends’ insistence on their political and cultural distinctiveness undercut fledgling nations and governments. The Society’s claims to be a holy nation thus disrupted the homogeneity demanded by their compatriots and deemed necessary by the state to so­ lidify its control over its citizenry. In this context, Friends’ distinguishing characteristics, previously considered mere idiosyncrasies, rapidly became perceived as an impediment to the process of amalgamating a people into a nation and uniting a nation behind its government. Put simply, an empire could make allowances for these differences, but a nation could not. As a result, Quakers transitioned from a people looking to Zion to a people of Zion during the late eighteenth century. The dramatic changes in the world around them sparked this shift within the Society; the response of its membership, in turn, provoked a forceful reaction against the Society by those in power. Friends’ avowal that they were a “chosen people” rankled those around them, and their insistence on this elect status resulted in an

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escalation of tensions between Friends and the governments under which they lived. These underlying tensions developed into a campaign of perse­ cution against Friends in war-­torn areas, as the governments under which they lived sought to quash protests by the Society. As its membership fled these retributive acts and faced a new political order, Friends began to envis­ age themselves as a diasporaic people. Quakers the world over consequently seized on the Zion tradition as a means not only of uniting their scattered community but also of allowing them to gather new members into the flock from distant locales. Shared experiences, practices, and beliefs bonded these new and old members, as they shared the conviction that they alone had a responsibility to stand in testimony to the governments under which they lived. As God’s “chosen people,” they believed they spoke on behalf of the divine and carried out God’s will on earth—­a prophetic zeal that brought them repeatedly into conflict with those in power. In a world of nationalist revolutions and imperials wars, these modern prophets found comfort and inspiration in the Hebraic prophets of old. As they engaged those in power, they thus fashioned themselves as holy warriors, as soldiers in a church militant.

c h a p t e r t wo

Lamb-­Like Warriors: The Quakers’ Church Militant

T

he violence that began with the Seven Years’ War continued almost unabated for the next half century, engulfing much of the Atlantic World. And yet amidst the din of war, Quakers raised their voice to protest and mourn the bloodshed. Friends remained convinced that God condemned this worldly strife, citing the scriptural precept that “nation should not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore” as proof of a divine directive for peace.1 As a result, Friends continued or revived many of the tactics they had employed during the English Civil War to protest the conflict. Quaker men, for example, persisted in their refusal to muster for the militia. Friends forbade fellow members from selling or donating any kind of supplies to the government or the military. Society members encouraged one another to boycott official days of prayer and of thanksgiving. Friends also attempted to persuade nonmembers by holding large public meetings and widely distributing tracts in which they condemned the profanity of war. Many ministers even traveled to military encampments in order to decry the blood spilt over these all-­too-­worldly matters and to convince soldiers to put an end to the bloodletting. In all of these ways, the Society of Friends opposed the seemingly endless wars of the late eighteenth century. They launched an extensive, aggressive, and coordinated crusade against warfare, pursuing what later Friends would term “waging peace.” One of the ministers who led this crusade was Job Scott. Born just before the Seven Years’ War, a young man during the American Revolution, and a seasoned minister traveling through Europe during the wars that followed the French Revolution, Scott’s life and ministry spanned these tumultuous decades of the eighteenth century. Lamenting how “dreadful wars have raged, through almost all ages and nations!,” he worked tirelessly to spread

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a doctrine of peace throughout Quaker meetings in the American colonies, France, Ireland, and England.2 He implored his audiences to adopt a peace testimony, repeating the biblical precept that “the time will yet come when ‘Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.’ ”3 Yet as Scott traveled throughout the transatlantic Quaker community, he brought with him not only a message of peace, but also a declaration of war. Laboring with wayward Friends for months, he “wag[ed] almost constant war with Babylon, and her merchants and merchandise,”4 and promised his listeners that “the Lord is raising up a living army in this nation, who if they stand faithful, will yet become more and more useful in the militant church.”5 Scott’s preaching convinced many people to “drop their warlike weapons and intentions” and “to sign articles of peace,”6 but he continued to worry about the future of the Society of Friends, as “the work, or rather warfare, was hard for some.”7 Scott’s ministry represents the efforts among eighteenth-­century Quakers to bring about not only an end to war but also an end to dissent within their own ranks. Friends pursued an internal battle during these turbulent years, as wartime pressures tested members’ allegiance to their holy nation. Caught in the crossfire, often quite literally, war-­weary Friends struggled to maintain communication between meetings and connections amongst their membership. Devout Quakers fretted that the difficult and divisive realities of war had caused many of their members—­especially their young men—­to question and even to reject their faith. The Society’s ministry and leadership thus redoubled their efforts to reinforce their coreligionists’ allegiance to Zion, its tenets, and its membership. A new generation of Public Friends crisscrossed the length and breadth of the ocean, “beating about the borders” of their holy nation to reinforce a sense of community and a doctrine of conformity.8 External pressures complicated this twofold mission, however. The series of wars for empire and independence that marked the late eighteenth century fundamentally altered the political, economic, and cultural landscape of the Atlantic World. New definitions of belief and belonging emerged from the ashes of these conflicts, recasting relationships between subjects and citizens and nations and empires. The American War of Independence and the French Revolution were particularly key in this regard, although even in Great Britain, political leaders invoked the need for residents to provide for the common defense during the Irish Rebellion in 1798 and the feared invasion of England by Napoleon. Wartime leaders invoked this figure of the citizen-­soldier to establish both a new means of conducting military campaigns and a new way of envisioning political governance.

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Militarily, the citizen-­soldier marked a departure from the wars of previous centuries that relied chiefly on mercenary forces. It represented instead a new prototype: a nonprofessional force of patriotic citizens who willingly joined the cause and who shared in common a starkly delineated but often poorly defined set of political principles. The citizen-­soldier, therefore, united disparate factions around the virtue of volunteerism, as leaders feted the “ordinary” men who became militia members to defend their “homeland.” Those in power then used the perception of his bravery, loyalty, and service to argue for the political inclusion and participation of male citizens—­and to demand military service and allegiance from all fighting-­ aged men. In this way, the archetype of the citizen-­soldier was emblematic of the ways in which eighteenth-­century revolutions melded militarism and nationalism together into one mutually constitutive process by linking support for the nation with support for the war. This model highlighted the dedication of these fighting men to the nation, which, in turn, underscored the righteousness of their cause and reinforced the necessity of victory at any cost. It also served to mobilize the population, making the outcome of the war contingent on the unquestioning and unyielding support of the citizenry. Finally, it reinforced the active (and gendered) nature of citizenship, as opposed to the passive (though not ungendered) nature of subjecthood. As a result, military service, patriotism, and citizenship became inextricably linked, in rhetoric if not in reality, as popular and political culture insisted that wars were won and governments were formed through the voluntary participation of citizens who risked their lives for the love of their country. Clearly, then, the increasingly iconic citizen-­soldier also signified fundamental changes in the ways that eighteenth-­ century peoples thought about religion, about the state, and about the gendered dimensions of both of these ideological frameworks. The Society experienced these transitions profoundly. The demands and hardships of war had challenged their commitment to pacifism, and yet many Friends began to believe that these emerging ideas about identity and loyalty posed perhaps an even larger challenge to Quakerism. Simply put, Friends could never be citizen-­soldiers, nor could they participate in any political system that rested on such a foundation. Wartime fervor linked nationalism and patriotism with religious doctrine, and the state grew stronger as a result of this connection. The political and cultural ideal of the citizen-­soldier relied on religious ideals of service, devotion, and sacrifice, weakening and even supplanting earlier ideas of subjecthood and of Christian manhood. Friends resisted what they perceived was a profane and even parasitic cooptation of a sacred relationship

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to the divine. Their non-­Quaker compatriots, particularly those involved in military or political leadership, interpreted this refusal (correctly) as a rejection of the nation-­state, its government, and its military campaigns, but also charged (incorrectly) that it was a display of cowardice. This accusation of cowardice revealed the gendered shift in the discourse around citizenship that the citizen-­soldier emblemized. Men—­“real” men—­chose to risk their lives to defend their homeland and, significantly, the households that formed its backbone. As Linda Kerber has argued skillfully, this obligation to voluntary military service was paired with the privilege of citizenship.9 To participate fully in the governance of a nation-­state, one had also to participate in its defense. Many historians have highlighted the gendered consequences of this twinning, as it systematically eliminated women from the formal political sphere. There were also clear ramifications for American Indians and for African Americans, as the franchise expanded along lines of race, legal status, and sovereignty, and for disabled veterans, who rearticulated their masculinity in the face of their physical sacrifice. No one has yet, however, examined the consequences for able-­bodied white men who loudly proclaimed their unwillingness to fight. The paradigmatic figure of the citizen-­soldier had also become an essential component of a new model of masculinity. As pacifists, Quaker men stood in opposition to the ideal of the citizen-­soldier and to the model of government founded on his service. Critics, angered by male Friends’ opposition to war, often accused Quaker men of effeminacy, thus implicitly denying their right to participate in governance. Male and female Society members struggled to find a way to rebut this critique and to assert their right to govern themselves within the context of both their holy nation of Zion and the worldly nations in which they lived. This chapter argues that Friends attempted not to displace or expunge the model of the citizen-­soldier but rather to appropriate and redefine the standard at this critical juncture, a decision that ultimately undermined their larger and longer-­term religious and political project. Their strategy was in keeping with Quakers’ promulgation of the Zion tradition. Quakers conceived of Zion as both an identity and as a governing structure parallel to the nation and to the state. Friends, in other words, did not seek to abolish models of nationhood or to extinguish nationalism; rather, they attempted to refashion and reproduce them to suit the needs of their transnational religious community. They too relied on the language of belonging, defined obligations of citizenship, and underscored the importance of loyalty. They employed them, however, in the service of their holy nation, arguing that Quakers should not, would not be compelled to betray their

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religious principles in the service of an earthly nation or a geopolitical state. As a result, Friends thus also envisioned a spiritual army analogous to a worldly military force and, as with their conceptualization of Zion, adapted longstanding religious concepts to their current political situation. This time, they borrowed from the early Christian ideology of the church militant, relying on passages from the New Testament to argue that a holy nation needed a holy army to defend its borders, its population, and its creed. It needed these warriors to heed their nation’s calls to arms and to join their fellow soldiers in a force of likeminded believers. And it needed a committed citizenry willing to serve and to sacrifice on its behalf and at its behest. Consequently, eighteenth-­century Society members chose to appropriate the language and the ideology of the citizen-­soldier to cohere a military force of their own. In sermons, letters, and diaries, Friends routinely styled themselves as “old fellow soldiers” in an “army of God”10 sent by their “great commander” to “distant battlefields.”11 They maintained that the devout among them were “clothed upon with ‘the whole armour of God,’ ”12 avowed that divine will was their “Battle Axe and weapon of war,”13 and trusted that God “covered their heads in every day of battle.”14 The sermon of influential British minister Samuel Fothergill was typical, as he implored God to “strengthen those who are enlisted into thine army, ‘engaged under thy banner, and that turn the battle to the gate,’ that they may so act, and ‘so fight the good fight of faith’!”15 London Yearly Meeting similarly encouraged its audience: “Wherefore, dear Friends, we exhort you ‘Take unto you the whole armour of God . . . be willing to be invested, by the Captain of our salvation, with every article of his heavenly armoury.”16 Members from every level of the Society expounded on key biblical passages from the Hebrew scriptures and from the Christian New Testament to counter the archetype of the citizen-­soldier with a parallel translation rooted in Quaker belief and practice.17 This chapter explores this rhetoric, elucidating the seeming contradiction between the militaristic language employed by the Friends and their staunch commitment to pacifism. It resolves this paradox by exploring the Quakers’ forceful rejection of these new models of war, citizenship, and gender. In so doing, it argues that Public Friends believed that they were members of a “church militant”: a religious army impelled to wage spiritual war against any person or institution that opposed the divine mandate of peace. Historians have analyzed how religious ideology informed justifications for war, but fewer scholars have considered the ways in which militarism infused religion, and no one has appraised its influence on the male and female members of those sects who observed a peace tenet.

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Both a religious and a political worldview, the Quaker church militant served to unify the diffuse Quaker community and to govern the ways that members responded to the people and events inside and outside of the Society. Specifically, Friends adopted and reappropriated this martial language and ideology to accomplish two interrelated goals. First, Quakers contested the violence endemic to the creation and preservation of nations and empires and argued against the widely accepted notion that nationalism and militarism were inextricably linked. Friends maintained that there was an authority and a cause higher than those of worldly governments and nations and that it was this authority (God) who decreed that “the lion shall lay down with the lamb.”18 This persistent and vociferous declaration interrupted the increasingly automatic conflation between religion and nation and the ways in which worldly leaders relied on both religious ideology and practices to naturalize an almost reflexive support of war and an undisputed expectation of military service. These efforts complicated attempts by the state to use theological justifications for its agenda, as Friends’ constant presence in public debates about governmental policy impeded attempts by authorities to claim a pan-­Christian mandate for their worldly agenda. These efforts also established a means by which Friends could continue their antiwar agitation without compromising their separatist identity. The language and imagery of the church militant not only allowed them to repair the foundations of Zion amidst the divisions and devastations of war, but also allowed them to remain separate from but engaged with the world around them. Taken together, their protests acted to draw clear distinctions between the sacred (divinely ordained peace work conducted by members of the holy nation of Zion) and the profane (violent conflict promulgated by worldly nations and empires). Second, Friends promoted the church militant as a means of answering their critics who hailed the citizen-­soldier and decried Quaker cowardice. Combatants in each army performed similar duties and served similar functions for their nations and their leaders who, in turn, lauded similar traits among their volunteer forces. In this way, Quakers continued to create alternate institutions and ideologies that promoted a religious worldview and that cohered a transnational community of believers. Friends used the language of service that accompanied their practice of the church militant to reject the increasingly exclusive association between citizenship and military service. Their activism sought to rearticulate the responsibilities and obligations of citizenship, as they professed allegiance to a religious and not a geopolitical entity. Their service in the church militant did not require a compromise of their peace witness or their distinctiveness, and Quakers

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therefore used this imagery to resist the idealization of the citizen-­soldier. This creative appropriation ultimately failed to displace the gendered association between military service and citizenship. True, in the Quaker church militant, women could soldier alongside of men and could therefore, in theory, lay equal claim to the privileges of citizenship within Zion. But unfortunately, while female Friends used their service to the church militant to circumvent many of the strictures of eighteenth-­century femininity, the rhetoric of the church militant reinforced some of the subtler but most pervasive and persistent ideologies of masculinity for male Society members. They answered charges of cowardice with attestations of their bravery and sacrifice instead of questioning the gendered rhetoric that underpinned these charges. In this way, the language of the church militant failed to move Quakers beyond contemporary ideas about one’s obligations to the nation-­state or beyond prevailing conventions about masculine strength and independence and feminine weakness and subservience. Society men clung to their status as soldiers to prove their valor, to demonstrate their willingness to risk their lives on behalf of a higher cause, and to initiate other men into a fraternity of likeminded believers. The Quakers thus transformed the ancient Christian concept of a church militant to meet the needs of their eighteenth-­century Zion, a transnational community of besieged and beleaguered pacifists mired in a world of hostile governments engaged in a seemingly endless series of wars. Public Friend Stephen Grellet perhaps put it best, when he described the Friends as a people “under the standard of the prince of peace,” who will “lead the world into our Israel.”19 They began to employ this specific version of this paradigmatic Christian figure at the outset of the American Revolution as a means of responding both to the violence that surrounded them and to the emerging expectations of service and sacrifice that threatened to consume their membership. As this chapter explains, the church militant rose to prominence during wartime, but stymied during peacetime. Holy soldiers, therefore, decamped from the United States after the Treaty of Paris to engage their foes on European battlefields during the French Revolution, the Irish Rebellion, and the Napoleonic conflicts. They resurfaced briefly in the United States during the War of 1812, but for the most part, their rendering of the church militant amidst these wars and revolutions did not survive the cessation of violence that followed in Europe or America. Nevertheless, those ministers who crusaded for peace during these tumultuous decades envisioned their service as a means of protesting the violence that surrounded them and the persecution they suffered as a result of their pacifism. They engaged enemies domestic and foreign, fighting to maintain

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unity within their own ranks while also struggling to defeat their opponents on the front lines. Significantly, soldiers in the church militant fought on behalf of God and the holy nation of Zion instead of the worldly governments and geopolitical nations. Yet as their identity, practice, and rhetoric became infused with nationalist ideology, their attempt to envision a bold alternative to the nation faltered and left the Society weakened by internal divisions as much as external pressures.

Recruiting As Job Scott lay on his deathbed, thousands of miles from his home, he reminded those present that “a christian’s life is (as he minds his proper business) a continual warfare.”20 This imagery was by no means unique to Quakerism, as the contrast between Friends’ use of violent imagery and their avocation of peace seemed neither incongruous nor out of place to their eighteenth-­century contemporaries. Their audiences were familiar with the Christian concept of the church militant and with the Society’s arguments for pacifism, as Quakers were not the only or even the first Christian sect to advocate holy warfare or to practice a peace testimony.21 In actuality, their descriptions of spiritual warfare were part of a religious tradition over a millennium old. Early Christian theology divided the church into two discrete entities: the church militant (ecclesia militans) and the church triumphant (ecclesia triumphans).22 In this initial rendering, the church militant simply referred to those Christians living in this world while the church triumphant signified those who had passed into the afterlife. Friends routinely invoked this earlier meaning when discussing the death of another member, as when James King assured William Rathbone that his recently deceased companion, transatlantic minister William Hunt, “now triumphs above, we militant below.”23 British Public Friend Samuel Fothergill conveyed a similar message when he prayed thusly before a large audience: “Preserve us, as in the hollow of thy hand; that from a militant state here, we may pass to a triumphant one, in thy everlasting kingdom!”24 Later, however, the concept of a militant church came to encompass both the spiritual and worldly struggle faced by each true Christian here on earth.25 This interpretation could include an individual’s spiritual crisis or worldly challenge, as when English Friend Rachel Coope declared, “I have been ready at times to cry out, must I always remain in a state of bondage? Oh, may I double my warfare, and press forward with a hope that, by the aid of my heavenly Father, I shall be enabled to become a conqueror, remembering that in due time ye shall reap if ye faint not.”26 Pennsylvanian

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Friend Nicolas Waln echoed Coope’s sentiments when he sent condolences to his aunt on the death of her husband. “Cheer up, and rejoice,” he urged her, “for the time is drawing nigh, when everlasting joy will be assigned to those, who have fought the good battle of faith.”27 For these two Friends, the battle against temptation and transgression was an ongoing contest in this life, and one in which only those truly faithful members of the church militant would prevail. Some Christians, particularly after the Protestant Reformation, pushed this interpretation of the church militant farther, applying it both to an individual’s soul and to the “spirit” of the world at large.28 Historically, this language has been associated with perfectionist and millennialist sects like the seventeenth-­century Puritans as well as with later evangelical and emotive movements within nineteenth-­ century Protestantism such as Methodism. For the Puritans, the church militant had a dual meaning, as they battled foes both internal and external and both spiritual and worldly. Some members came (literally) armed to church, but they also wielded their spiritual swords in their daily struggles against their enemies, their neighbors, and their own selves.29 The Anglican poet George Herbert echoed this missionary impulse of the Puritan church militant in his poetry, tracing the ever-­westward movement of pure Christianity under the banner of a militant church.30 This twofold interpretation persisted well into the eighteenth and even nineteenth centuries, as Methodists and members of other Christian sects “engaged in constant warfare against the world, the flesh and the devil.”31 These later religious movements continued to battle irreligion and immorality, and although they focused more of their efforts on changing hearts and minds, the corporeal strain of the church militant endured. Thus, at least one Protestant man who had fought in the American wars was eulogized as both “an old soldier in the cause of civil liberty” and “one of the oldest soldiers in the cause of Methodism—­then emphatically a church militant.”32 Two hundred years later, Christian soldiers might still be “called onward” to defend the polity. The divergence between seventeenth-­century and nineteenth-­century interpretations of the church militant, however, reflected the changing relationship between religion and nation as well as the growing power of the state. Quakerism provides important insights into both of these developments. The Puritan church militant was characterized by a militaristic and missionary zeal and reflected the fusion between church and state in their “city on a hill.” Adherents fought against their fallen selves on a spiritual battlefield, but they also defended their political community against foreign enemies in corporeal warfare. More than a century later, Methodists too

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employed a church militant to battle a fallen society, but their weapons were predominantly social and political action and their campaign was primarily to inspire religious revival among their compatriots. They focused their efforts on influencing political reform within the national government, reflecting a stronger and more stable polity than in the two previous centuries. Indeed, unlike for the Puritans and the Quakers before them, the state factored little in Methodists’ theology. Members of these later religious groups instead focused on the hearts and minds of their compatriots, believing it to be their “divine commission to confront that world,” as “criticism and reform [were] inseparable from the idea of the kingdom of God.”33 As the true followers of Christ, they were not permitted to sit idly by while immorality and iniquity proliferated; they must become “doers of the world, not hearers only.”34 Thus, rather than evincing the radical separatism of the early Puritan soldiers, the Methodist church militant worked within an established political system to effect policy change, joining movements against structural manifestations of a fallen world, such as poverty, intemperance, prostitution, and slavery. Quakerism itself bears out this evolution as its articulation of the church militant in the mid-­eighteenth century reflected vestiges of the millennialism of their seventeenth-­century origins alongside the Puritans and forecasted an evangelical and activist strain that would manifest after the mid-­nineteenth century Hicksite schism, which brought them politically and theologically closer to sects like the Methodists. And yet eighteenth-­ century Friends did not follow the path of the Puritans by establishing a theocracy nor did they work within the apparatus of the state as eventually would the Methodists. They recognized that any member of a church militant connected to a worldly political apparatus would have to, at some point, engage in corporeal warfare, and eighteenth-­century Friends observed a strict peace tenet. This aversion to violence contrasted with several other contemporary sects that had interpreted these same scriptural passages quite literally and who employed the language of the church militant to justify physical “worldly” warfare on behalf of an earthly polity.35 Seventeenth-­century Puritans in Massachusetts and Connecticut had used bellicose sermons to justify war with American Indian nations, and both loyalist and patriot ministers employed these passionate orations again in urging parishioners to arms during the American Revolution. By the mid-­ nineteenth century, this tradition had become enshrined in one of the most often-­invoked hymns inside the walls of (northern) churches as well as inside the halls of government: the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” In each of these cases, the language of the church militant assumed an additional layer

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of meaning as ministers and politicians alike invoked this imagery to propel a population toward war. For the Quakers, however, the language of spiritual warfare was not intended to be a literal call to arms. Friends never used this language to promote or condone actual violence; their rendering of the church militant was meant to spread a gospel of peace and did not extend the metaphor of a militant Christian soldier to a martial one. Indeed, unlike other Christian sects, Friends used the language and imagery of the church militant to criticize war, rather than to promote it. Quaker minister Ruth Follows, for example, decried those Christians who were “redeemed from the world and the love of it but alas are now again entangled in the yoke of Bondage and do not maintain that ‘Holy War’ that is only carried on by Spiritual weapons without which we shall never be able to put down the strongholds of sin and Satan nor ever witness and complete victory.”36 As this passage by Follows suggested, the Quaker church militant thus felt called by God to oppose the agenda of the state during times of war. Soldiers in the service of Friends’ eighteenth-­century Zion were forbidden from propagating or participating in corporeal warfare. Instead, these soldiers conducted figurative campaigns against the all-­too-­literal reality of war, seizing on the character and identity of the church militant to guide, justify, and multiply their efforts to promote pacifism. In the first decades of Quakerism, the observance of the peace tenet was uneven at best, and, indeed, Friends’ commitment to pacifism continued to wax and wane over the next century.37 Quakers controlled the government in Pennsylvania and, in this capacity, allocated money to the Crown to use at its discretion—­a clear and obvious workaround that allowed the colony to fund wars against American Indian and European enemies without Quaker legislators technically compromising their pacifist stance. In London, a few wealthy Friends had reached a similar accord, loaning their own money to the Crown to finance the King’s activities (including war). Some American Quakers had begun to report for militia muster in the southern and Caribbean colonies, and some Quaker captains had begun to arm their vessels in response to pirate raids.38 Yearly meetings mostly tolerated these loose interpretations of pacifism, and, as a result, discipline languished within the Society. Consequently, the Quaker church militant first went to war with itself. In this way, the church militant was a fundamentalist and even reactionary movement within the Society, as they sought to return their members to the foundation of Quakerism. The waning of discipline among Friends forced reformers to fight a two-­front battle: one against a state apparatus

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that promulgated violence and the other against their own membership who accommodated it. These ministers used militant rhetoric to stir followers to renewal and to action, seeking to purify the Society by returning its membership to the path of peace. This purging process diminished the Society’s numbers, but it also strengthened the unity and commitment of its remaining members and inspired a new generation of young Friends to rededicate themselves to a church militant and to the pacifist cause.39 Clearly, the itinerant ministers—­the backbone of the church militant—­ perceived their first and most important task as rallying their own troops. Over the next thirty years, Public Friends missionized within the Society, encouraging members to return to a purer form of Quakerism. Ministers also labored to keep the community united amidst these conflicts and worked to bolster morale among Friends. Those members who remained part of the flock became once again staunch advocates of peace, strict disciples of discipline, and bonded to the members of their scattered community. In this context, the Quakers’ church militant functioned as an institution—­ rhetorically but also materially akin to an army—­that enforced discipline within its ranks (as during the Reformation) and encouraged the unity of its “citizenry” (amidst the tumult of the Age of Revolution). In these cases, the Friends’ church militant acted first to unify and then to defend its “citizenry.” Public Friends labored in closed-­door, Quaker-­only meetings, attempting to bring wayward members back into the fold. Ministers such as Job Scott and Daniel Stanton in Ireland and Rebecca Jones in Scotland “beat about the border of the cities, proclaiming War with the inhabitants thereof,” refusing to leave until they had reestablished accord with the discipline and among the members of the Society.40 These crusades by Public Friends were attempts to enforce unity within the Society, no matter how small their numbers or how great the distance from each other. In this way, the Public Friends and their enactment of the church militant served as a stabilizing and unifying force, as Samuel Fothergill recognized when he prayed, “gracious God! We are divinely encouraged to supplicate thy Name, on behalf of the church militant, wherever scattered: . . . may [it] flourish in peace and stability.”41 This prayer not only underscored the need to guard against fractures within the Society but also highlighted the pressures placed on the Friends by the instability of the outside world. Onlookers reacted to this movement in a variety of ways—­some cheered the exit of Quaker legislators in Pennsylvania while others criticized what they perceived to be the extreme nature of the reforms and reformers. Many flocked to the meetings held by Quaker preachers compelled by anger, fascination, or inspiration to witness their sermons firsthand. No one outside of

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the Society, however, attempted to interfere with or put a stop to the movement, as they understood the Quaker Reformation as affecting only Friends and having little to no collateral impact on the society outside of the Society. They incorrectly assumed that, for better or worse, the reform would force the Friends to withdraw even further from the world and to descend even further into tribalism. Relieved that the meddlesome, obstructionist, and sanctimonious Friends had left Caesar to do what he would with colonial taxes and policy, no one at that point suspected that they would need the Quakers to serve as soldiers, to supply a military force, or to support another war in such short order.

Enlisting The outbreak of war between Great Britain and the American colonies ended this brief window of what might be considered either tolerance of or indifference toward the Friends. Quaker opposition to the War of Independence placed the Society’s theology back under public scrutiny and its membership back into the hot seat. The Seven Years’ War and the subsequent Reformation within the Society of Friends had prompted Quaker politicians to resign their public offices when they could no longer abide the demands of the crown, but the ensuing calamities of the American Revolution now compelled an ever-­increasing number of individual Friends to declare even their private allegiances firmly and publicly. Earlier in the eighteenth century, their opposition to war had mattered little. To be sure, their critics kept the printing presses humming on both sides of the Atlantic, turning out numerous pamphlets rejecting Friends’ theological justifications for their pacifism. Individual Quakers also suffered discrimination and harassment as a result of their peace testimony, facing distraint of property and sometimes even jail time. But by and large, there was no sustained campaign by the state to target the Society. The British Empire required only the passive acquiescence and timely tributes of its subjects and did not rely on the labor, supplies, monies, or endorsement of the Friends to fight its wars abroad. The imperial wars and political revolutions of the mid-­eighteenth century, however, cast a new light on Quaker pacifism. Of course, the divergence between the religious commitments of Friends and the interests of the state had always been most clearly manifested during moments of military conflict, but the heightened patriotic fervor that accompanied this revolutionary zeal demanded increasing demonstrations of national loyalty that Friends could not provide as a collective body or as individuals. Their

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self-­removal from the colonial assembly during the Seven Years War served as recognition by both Society members and the broader electorate of their ostensible incompatibility with political office, but the charges hurled at them during the conflict with Britain suggested they were incompatible with citizenship itself. Suddenly, withdrawing from the political sphere was not a solution. It was the problem. The patriot cause argued that the full political support and participation of all colonists was necessary for its success. As a result, revolutionaries relied on the personal and public commitments of their followers to advance their cause on both the battlefield and in the streets. Adherents aided the war effort materially and logistically, offering their labor and supplies, providing shelter, transmitting information, and of course, serving in the armed conflict. But perhaps even more important, supporters contributed to the war effort in more informal ways. As many scholars have noted, ordinary men and women circulated petitions; observed boycotts; participated in days of prayer, mourning, and thanksgiving; donned homespun clothing; sang patriotic ditties; attended parades, funerals, and fetes; constructed liberty poles; shunned loyalists; penned jingoistic poetry; wrote editorials; discussed partisan pamphlets; and rioted in the streets. These efforts provided legitimacy to the independence movement while also persuading (and coercing) others to join the cause. The revolutionary nation-­state, therefore, depended on the active par­ ticipation of all of its citizens in a way that the British Empire had not. In this context, Friends’ passive opposition was cast in a different light, one that highlighted the discordancy between the duty of their religion and the needs of the state. Though Quakers were a small and now relatively silent presence in colonial politics, many observers nevertheless tracked the Society’s response to the war. John Adams almost obsessively recorded numbers of Quaker supporters in his letters to Abigail, thinking, perhaps, that if he could win the support of “even” the Friends, then his cause would surely succeed. Thomas Paine spilled much ink decrying the Society’s pleas for peace—­a preoccupation shared by other Friends-­turned-­patriots like Betsy Ross, James Dickinson, and Nathaniel Greene. More often, however, observers decried the refusal of Quakers to participate in nonviolent demonstrations. Indeed, it seemed as though their critics found the Society’s long-­standing opposition to war less objectionable than members’ disengagement. The consequences of male Friends’ refusal to serve in the army are discussed below, but to many observers, Quakers’ absence from informal political demonstrations was equally as damning. Patriots claimed that since these displays were nonviolent, Friends actually opposed independence, not war. Of

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course, such pageantry was violent, rallying support for a nation forged in violence, but critics persisted in their condemnations. Thus, when Henry and Elizabeth Drinker kept their business open during national days of prayer, when Jacob Deane, Solomon Haight, and John Haddock refused to accept Continental currency for the supplies seized from them by the militia, or when Robert Valentine refused to light his home’s windows in celebration of American victories, the backlash was sudden and severe. For the patriots, the refusal by Society members to actively support the American independence movement through public expressions of patriotism undermined the dual tasks of winning the war and creating a new nation. Scholars examining the history of the Society and other separatist and pacifist sects during this contentious period have suggested that the members of these communities struggled to adjust their spiritual and worldly identities accordingly. Although many Quakers certainly felt called by God to join in the activist peace work undertaken by the church militant, those who felt perhaps somewhat less compelled to adhere to these strict standards were quickly put on notice by the reformers. The political crises of the eighteenth century eliminated the possibility of remaining loyal to both one’s country and to the principle of pacifism, as the leaders within both the Society of Friends and the nations in which they lived worked to eliminate any means of compromise attempted by Quaker adherents. Many fractured over disagreements about how they should mediate their relationships with national and imperial governments. A small number formed a splinter group, the Free Quakers, who chose to bear arms during the Revolution. Others, while refusing to arm themselves, agreed to serve the state in other capacities. Some of these Friends offered political advice and material support to either the British or the Americans, thus assisting the war effort if not participating directly in it. These sorts of compromises were as unacceptable to the disciplinary committees within the Society of Friends as they were to the American political establishment. By the late 1770s, supporters of the Quaker Reformation had gained traction within the yearly meeting structures and counted supporters among the most influential members of the largest monthly meetings. As a result, the Society of Friends disciplined and even turned out many members who supported the British or the colonists. Quakers in New York were punished for participating in revolutionary “festivities” and for accepting reimbursement for supplies requisitioned by the British army. Quakers in Pennsylvania were criticized for selling foodstuffs to the Americans and for providing directions to British troops. And the high profile and acrimonious dispute with Owen Biddle, a leader in the Free Quaker

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movement, filled the pages of Philadelphia papers for months on end. In this way, Friends’ disciplining of those members who engaged with the government or the military in nonviolent and even trivial ways reflected the hardening of their theological stance regarding worldly nations and nationalism. Significantly, this calcification mirrored the nation-­state’s demands for sacrifice, for unquestioning loyalty, and for outward displays of this allegiance. Members of the church militant condemned the passive acquiescence of their own “citizens” and began to demand their active and public demonstrations of allegiance to the holy nation of Zion. The Quakers, it seemed, were falling prey to their own version of nationalist fervor at the same time that patriot leaders were advocating a spiritual revival and an almost religious purging. The zealous among both sides had come to adopt a “with us or against us” mentality that eliminated the possibility of dual citizenship in a worldly nation and a divine one. In this way, Quaker reformers did as much as the American revolutionaries to eliminate the possibility of neutrality, passive acquiescence, or withdrawal as survival strategies for those Friends desperate for mechanisms to cope with the escalating demands of increasingly strident religious and political leaders. In each case, the pressure was significant to identify with the movement, conform to its ideology, and work toward its goals. Yearly meetings repeatedly called for unity among members, and local meetings dispatched Public Friends to even the most remote gatherings in an attempt to bring back wayward members to the path of peace. The formal and informal structures within the Society thus worked in concert, urging members to stay united amidst the turmoil of warfare and the disastrous consequences of these charges. “I beseech you Brethren,” London Yearly Meeting pleaded, “that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no Divisions amongst you, but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same Mind, and in the Same Judgment. Let us walk by the same Rule, let us mind the same Thing.”42 A similar exchange between Philadelphia and London Yearly Meetings during the War of 1812 made this point even more clearly: “Friends every where shew that they are walking by the same rule and minding the same thing; thus strength will be experienced to keep upon the immovable foundation, the corner stone, elect and precious, which God hath laid in Zion.”43 It continued: “When you see divisions, and parties, and rendings in the bowels of nations, stand single to the truth of God in which neither war, rent nor division is; and take heed of that part in any of you, which trusts and relies upon any sort of the men of this world; . . . for stability in that ground there will be none. . . . [R]emember that you are joined to the Lord.”44 London Yearly Meeting again concurred, reaffirming that “whatever bustlings and

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troubles, tumults or outrages, quarrels or strife arise in the world, keep out of them all and show everyone that you are the children of one family.”45 Individual ministers also incorporated this plea for unity in their sermons. British Public Friend John Hunt, later to be imprisoned during the War of Independence with the rest of the Virginia Exiles, reminded his audience that “blessed is the man that is delivered from the noise of archers. If their bow abides in strength, their branch shall grow over the walls of opposition.”46 In these series of missives, Friends’ pacifist convictions required them not only to refrain from participating in the war effort but also from aligning themselves with the identity, custom, strategy, or law of those worldly nations responsible for the violence. The task of the Quaker minister, then, was to ensure that the allegiance of scattered members remained with their holy nation of Zion. Part of this task included publicly and vehemently denying the authority of those in power whenever their practices violated Quaker religious convictions. Much of this dissent focused around the government’s call for Friends to contribute to the war effort, thus calling into question its right to require the sacrifice and service of its citizens and complicating its ability to govern effectively during wartime. Society members consistently rejected politicians’ demands of service and sacrifice, arguing adamantly that they were compelled to practice a peace testimony and thus could not obey any “worldly” laws that conflicted with this divine mandate. Thus, when the government of New Jersey put Public Friend Abel Thomas on trial for illegally crossing enemy lines (to attend meeting) during the American Revolution, he informed the court that only God, not men, could make laws. He offered biblical verses as his defense, proclaiming that he cared not for the worldly verdict of men, but only for divine judgment.47 And Quaker Joseph Hoag, playing both on revolutionary rhetoric and on the prevailing assumption that Friends were secretly monarchists, reminded his audience that “the people with whom I commune, who are sound in their principles, are all King’s men, and are remarkably attached to their King, and our King told Pontius Pilate that his kingdom was not of this world, for if it was, then would his servants fight.”48 Fellow New Jersey Quaker William Savery concurred with both men. In a series of several public sermons delivered in the late eighteenth century, he declared, “There are certain obligations that are the same in all nations and countries . . . but the whole of those things which the councils of Jerusalem forbade, are forbidden in all nations as an eternal decree.”49 For Savery, any law that disregarded divine mandate was not only a law with which Quakers could not comply but was, in fact, a law that God required them to disobey.

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Savery was not alone in this estimation, as London Yearly Meeting twice instructed Friends during wartime to avoid the “commotions on the earth, dissentions and animosities among men, and revolutions in States and Kingdoms,” and instead “evince themselves to be indeed the followers of the Prince of Peace” who “declared that his kingdom was not of this world.”50 Even outsiders commented on this orientation of the Friends. In his attempts to explain the Society of Friends to the early nineteenth-­ century leaders of Haiti, abolitionist Thomas Clarkson told them that the Quakers would obey all civil magistrates unless the laws conflicted with the precepts of the gospel.51 Indeed, this sentiment was so pervasive and persistent among Quakers that English Friend and famed grammarian Lindley Murray later included it as one of the foremost tenets in his A Compendium of Religious Faith and Practice (1815). His second section, “Duties towards our fellow-­creatures,” clearly instructed his readers, young and old alike, to obey national laws and honor the King unless and until either of these practices conflicted with scriptural commandments.52 Importantly, Friends’ insistence that divine decrees superseded earthly edicts led to another way in which members of the Society used their peace tenet as a means of driving a wedge between god and country and between divine crusades and earthly machinations. Public Friends in particular were incensed by the ways in which their compatriots used religion to validate worldly warfare and to vindicate the people who endorsed it. This merging of religious rhetoric with political agenda was certainly not new or unique; however, the violent political realignments during the late eighteenth century had inspired a new “faith in nation” that made manifest a specific and contingent relationship between church and state.53 Particularly in the context of revolutionary America, the conflation of religiosity and patriotism justified the break from Great Britain, authenticated the authority of new leaders, and delineated the boundaries of citizenship. Friends’ opposition to the war and the government it created disrupted the attempts by those in power to present a simple, easy, and neat relationship between religion and nation, and the Society’s contention that God had forbid all forms of violence interfered with the efforts of political authorities to claim divine approbation for their cause. By insisting that only peacemakers served God, Quakers rejected attempts by worldly leaders either to conscript them into their legions of supporters or to proclaim divine concurrence with their immoral wars. Friends’ continued public presence challenged the burgeoning alignment between religious and nationalist agendas, and they focused their efforts in particular on renouncing any claims by patriot leaders regarding the divine sanction of their wars. Their vision of the church militant,

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therefore, was an attempt to advocate peace as well as a challenge to people outside of the Society to differentiate between the obligations of religion and those of the nation-­state. The ministry of New York Friend Hannah Barnard illustrates these simultaneous goals. The American Revolution was a formative experience for Barnard, as she witnessed firsthand the ability of the war to tear apart communities from her vantage point in the Hudson River valley. Her increasingly vociferous opposition to war moved her to become a transatlantic minister in the war’s aftermath and to bring her pacifist message to a war-­torn Europe. She wrote often to her fellow minister William Matthews, describing her ministry as a “warfare” and relaying to him news of the “battles” she waged during her travels.54 She fought foes both inside and outside of the Society (a crusade so bold and so demanding that she eventually would be disowned), but saved her most strident critiques for the political leaders who sent others off to slaughter. In preaching peace to her audiences, Barnard decried the attempts of the national leaders to claim a divine mandate for their actions, declaring: Nor want we examples of such imperious arrogance in our own times, and existing before our eyes, of such proud and diabolical devisers of wickedness—­men who in the soul spirit of false imputation, malignity and ambition, seem to disregard the blood of thousands or millions of poor ignorant fellow beings . . .—­The national divinity of the time being called in to make it the work of “Almighty God” . . . each contending party, by turns, lays claim to the divine benediction and professes to consider the battle and victory as those of the Lord of Hosts!55

Here, Barnard not only condemned the violence of warfare, but also explicitly rejected any connection between church and state. Her work on behalf of the church militant was in the service of a peaceable divinity, not a government of “worldly” men. Essayist John Wells agreed completely. He traveled the North American seaboard, preaching his message of peace. His passion practically leapt off the page, as he penned the following sermon in all bold, capital letters: “Have the obligations of the gospel, or the terms of redemption, ceased to bind Christians to non-­resisting obedience?!” he beseeched his audiences. “Have the terms of the Covenant of Grace been changed by some recent dispensation? An intermediate space of a few hundred years, in which Christians have liberty to war and fight?”56 British minister Sarah Stephenson concurred, urging people to remember during the war between France and Great Britain that violence was “that to which

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the Lord Jesus came to put to an end” and that all true Christians waited expectantly for “the desirable day [to] approach, when the swords will be beaten into ploughshares and the spears into pruning hooks, and the people will learn war no more.”57 These public condemnations were attempts to negate their governments’ claims to divine sanction for their actions as well as to turn their mixed audiences toward the true biblical mandate of peace. Stephen Grellet, a French émigré to the United States and convert to Quakerism, echoed these points. He lamented the situation of his country of origin, lamenting: “Poor France! How is my heart afflicted in seeing all those warlike displays.” At the same time, however, he warned that God punishes those nations that sought to elevate nationalism to the level of religion. “The day of vengeance is now going to be the Theatre of War, drinking at the cup of blood she has so plentifully ministered to other Nations,” he wrote in a letter to his wife. “My spirit is overwhelmed with sadness when I contemplate the subject.”58 For Grellet, the Revolution and subsequent wars in France violated the divine mandate of peace and, as such, would continue to cause undue suffering to befall countless people until governments reconciled their worldly laws and actions with divine commandments. Grellet developed this message while traveling throughout Europe during the tumultuous first decades of the nineteenth century. He mourned the violence he witnessed during this journey, and yet prayed for the return of peace: “The whole Earth, all the elements seem to be in commotion, wars and rumours of wars! Oh for an entrance into the Christian rule. How long ere the sword be put into the scabbard, never more to be used? The Lord sends me an ambassador of peace to the Nations but the sword everywhere bereaves.”59 Here again, Grellet delineated between “Christian rule” and the conduct of nations, warning of the punishment for earthly leaders who disregard the divine plan for peace. The ministries of Barnard, Wells, Stephenson, and Grellet ran counter to the efforts by their respective nation-­states to conflate religion and nation, to elevate nationalism to religious proportions, and (with the exception of France) to use religion to justify their actions. Their continued and active public presence questioned the growing connection between religion and nationalism and the association of citizenship with support of the military. They refused to accept divine approval of the state’s violent agenda and yet rather than cede the language of the church militant to those sects that sanctioned war, they used this imagery to oppose the authorities and to advocate peace. They also used the model of the church militant to insist their adherents had an obligation only to their religious community—­a position that strengthened their own holy nation and reminded wayward followers of

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the divine command of peace. Those in power were none too happy with these adamant declarations of Friends, as these remonstrations explicitly rejected the supremacy of worldly governments and implicitly suggested these officials had committed grave sins. Many politicians justified their terms of reigns by asserting either (or both) divine approbation for or the “enlightened” leadership of their laws and administration. Friends’ appeals to a higher authority, as well as their public protests of these worldly authorities, undercut these contentions.

Soldiering Drawing on the language of spiritual warfare, Friends promoted a unique cultural and political identity that allowed them to remain separate from but engaged with the outside world. Quaker men (and women) insisted that they labored on behalf of their religious nation much in the same way that the citizen-­soldier did for his country. They too were willing to sacrifice their possessions—­even their lives—­to defend their community and its ideals. These arguments echoed the claims of national and imperial leaders that the privilege of citizenship came with the obligation of service. This comparison was telling, as male and female Friends used the parallel as a means to defend their active resistance as their obligations of citizenship in a nation of God. Just like the citizens of revolutionary nation-­states, Friends served their “nation” to secure rights and privileges. The travels of the Public Friends were therefore campaigns undertaken in support of the “church militant” and their voluntary service analogous to army enlistment. Understood in this way, Quakers’ discussions of the church militant were attempts to respond to ideas about citizenship and its attendant obligations—­military service in particular. Beginning with the American and French Revolutions, “voluntary military service [became] central in the modern conception of citizenship,”60 and the image of the valiant citizen-­soldier guaranteed that “the supreme embodiment of proper citizenship” became a man’s sacrifice on the battle­ field.61 This not only introduced an even clearer and more rigid association between masculinity and citizenship, but also challenged the identity and ideology of the historical peace churches, as a man’s willingness to serve in the armed forces became “an integral aspect of the normative definition of citizenship.”62 Friends’ identity as peaceable soldiers in a church militant thus contradicted the assertion of a “muscular citizenship” (the link between citizenship and military service) in two key ways.63 First, Quaker women’s insistence on publicly condemning war and related governmental

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policy only reaffirmed their status as troublemakers who did not respect public perceptions regarding the proper circumscribed role for eighteenth-­ and nineteenth-­century women.64 As female Friends enlisted in the church militant as active and equal soldiers of Christ, they asserted their status as equal citizens within a nation of Zion. Second, male Quakers’ refusal to participate in war efforts highlighted their divergence from the government’s agenda and new models of masculine citizenship. Hence, the ways in which male Friends negated their critics’ challenges of their masculinity by asserting their strength in the face of persecution and their courage on behalf of God demarcated them as outsiders and agitators of both the political realm and of the gendered order (as well as a hindrance to their increasing overlap). Pacifism was not a weakness, nor was passive resistance a sign of feminine frailty. They insisted that they too risked their lives and livelihoods in a war of a different kind. This contention challenged the ways in which the embodied citizen was also gendered male, as the wars of this period increasingly and intentionally had imbued the very definition of worldly citizenship with masculine traits. Female soldiers served important and equal functions in the church militant, laboring alongside male ministers in their spiritual campaigns. Sarah Grubb, for example, wrote to Sally Dillwyn that she hoped she would “prove victorious” amidst the “din of battle” and that she was ready to “commence hostilities” if necessary.65 Stephen Grellet praised his “dear Elizabeth” in a letter to another male minister, expressing his hope that she “will hold up her hands while she fights the Lord’s battles.”66 Samuel Neale praised Mary Abel, celebrating that “she is shielded by her own Banner, which is the invincible Armour of Love”67 while Sarah Stephenson remembered Mabel Wigham as “a noble warrior in the Lamb’s war”68 and Rachel Coope styled herself a “conqueror” who promised to “double her warfare” in service of the Society of Friends.69 Rebecca Jones in particular epitomized an idealized female Quaker warrior, perhaps, in part, because she remained unmarried and therefore devoted her undivided attention to the Society. Thus, her fellow Friends lauded her for her considerable “spiritual weapons” and celebrated her unwavering commitment to the faith.70 She encouraged other women to take up the cause, thanking a fellow minister for serving as an “armour-­bearer” to other female Friends71 and urging other female ministers to continue in their campaigns for righteousness, as when she wrote to Public Friend Ester Tuke, “We are (I trust) Soldiers in the same Army, consequently instilled to hear of the several Movements therein.”72 Indeed, Jones even used the language of the church militant when praising her fellow minister John Pemberton for his help in establishing a women’s

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yearly meeting, writing to him that she “rejoiced to hear you have obtained some Conquest over the spirit which opposes the work amongst our sex.”73 This rhetoric was not entirely new: many scholars have long noted the expanded and improved roles for women within Quaker theology. The Friends, infamous for their rejection of traditional gender roles for women within their religious structure, held that “in the light, there is neither male nor female.” As a result, Quaker women had warred against their enemies and even, in the case of martyrs like Mary Dyer, sacrificed their bodies since the Society’s inception. More recently, female Friends had led the campaign against backsliders in their midst during the Reformation. The ubiquity of this martial language within the writings and sermons of both men and women, then, is perhaps unsurprising. And yet the violent conflicts of this period and the veneration of the citizen-­soldier cast a different light on the language deployed by these female Friends. Significantly, these Quaker women chose to assert their belonging and equality through bellicose imagery. They no longer used gender-­neutral language to justify their public service on behalf of the Society, preferring instead to personify soldiers at war. This strategy did not challenge the underlying connection between citizenship and military service, nor did it question the right of those in power to expect this service in return for the privilege of citizenship. Female Friends who joined the ranks of the church militant celebrated the same qualities of voluntary service, willing sacrifice, unquestioning obedience to a higher power, and unyielding allegiance to a larger community. Certainly, Quaker women attributed these characteristics to peaceable and religious service, but the ideology of the citizen-­soldier nevertheless infused Friends’ conceptualization of Zion and provided the backbone for their claims to equality within this holy nation. Quaker men also employed this gendered rhetoric, failing to envision a model of citizenship not centered on the ideals of masculine bravery and sacrifice. By the late eighteenth century, the citizen-­soldier had become an archetypal eighteenth-­century man, celebrated by his government and his compatriots alike.74 He was revered for his honor and valor, for his sense of duty and loyalty, and for his courage and altruism. He took comfort in his contributions to a bigger cause, in his submission to a higher power, and in his induction into a larger community. His service and sacrifice released him from the provincial concerns of daily, worldly life and his participation in this cause bestowed on him a new identity and initiated him into a new fraternity of likeminded individuals. The citizen-­soldier fused more traditional models of seventeenth-­century Christian manhood with a gendered identity now informed by nationalism and jingoism. This new man

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still exemplified submission, sacrifice, bravery, and integrity, but he served his country as well as his God. In this way, the citizen-­soldier tapped into powerful ideological and emotional currencies. He became a linchpin of nationalist revolutions and an emblem of patriotic zeal. As a result, this model both co-­opted and embodied a patriotic fervor that assumed religious characteristics and proportions. The Quakers, insisting that they too emblemized the ideal of masculine citizenship, buttressed this connection between manhood, citizenship, and service. Thus, at every turn, Quaker men seized the opportunity to proclaim their willingness to serve the “true” (divine) authority and to sacrifice for this noble cause. They also assured their compatriots that they concurred in the fervent belief that this service should be required of all loyal citizens of a nation. And they loudly rejected critics’ claims of Friends’ pusillanimity by broadcasting their bravery and celebrating masculine valor. Suggestively, this last affirmation seemed to appear most frequently and with the most fervency. For example, in his Lettres Philosophiques, Voltaire relayed an exchange with a male Friend in which a male Society member attempted to defend fellow members from charges of cowardice. “We never war or fight in any case,” he affirmed, but it is not that we are afraid, for so far from shuddering at the thoughts of death, we on the contrary bless the monument which unites with the Being of Beings; but the reason of our not using the outward sword is, that we are neither wolves, tigers, nor mastiffs, but men and Christians. Our God, who has commanded us to love our enemies, and to suffer without repining, would certainly not permit us to cross the seas, merely because murderers clothed in scarlet and wearing caps two feet high, enlist citizens by a noise made with two little sticks on an ass’s skin extended. And when, after a victory is gained, the whole city of London is illuminated; when the sky is in a blaze with fireworks, and a noise is heard in the air of Thanksgivings, of bells, of organs, and of the cannon, we groan in silence, and are deeply affected with sadness of spirit and brokenness of heart, for the sad havoc which is the concern of those public rejoicings.75

Here again, we see this anonymous Quaker man’s concern for stating the Society’s oppositions to war while simultaneously reaffirming the courage and strength of his fellow (male) Friends. These efforts increased with the escalation of violence in the late eighteenth century. William Savery, addressing a meeting in London during the

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Napoleonic Wars, twice repeated: “Some may say, ‘What, wouldst thou have us to be cowards?’ No! but heroes in the Lamb’s army. And who is there that needs be ashamed to be in the Lamb’s army to gain the victory?”76 He continued by exhorting the bravery of true soldiers: “O my dear friends! May we unite in a holy travail, with and for one another, that none of those whom the Lord hath peculiarly chosen from among the people . . . may by any means fall by the way, or turn their backs in the day of battle.”77 Here, Savery celebrated valor and sacrifice. He turned traditional conceptualizations of courage inside out, of course, as true heroism necessitated resisting war and waging peace. But he failed to sever or even challenge the connection between masculinity and bravery or between service, sacrifice, and citizenship. This image appeared frequently in other contemporary Quaker accounts, as ministers endeavored to answer their critics’ charges of cowardice. During the War of 1812, an American general confronted a male Quaker minister, demanding to know why Society members would not fight. He attempted to appeal to the Friends’ manhood, telling him: “I see by the look in your eye that you are no coward; you are a soldier and if an Indian was to come to your house to kill your wife and children, you would fight.” In a revealing reply, the Quaker man answered him: “ ‘As for cowardice, I ever despised it, but (pointing to the guns standing in the house with bayonets on them), General, it would take twelve such men as thou art—­and then you would not do it—­to make me take hold of a gun or pistol, to take the life of a fellow creature,’ and looked him full in the face.”78 Interestingly, the general here appealed to yet another masculine privilege as head of a household, defender of women and children. The Quaker man apparently did not take this bait, but he did agree with the officer that he abhorred weakness and fear. Quaker men thus diverged from standard practices and understandings of masculinity and masculine privilege only in their loathing of violence. Significantly, these examples illustrated that courage in the face of danger and sacrifice on behalf of a higher authority still demarcated a transition to manhood. When London Yearly Meeting composed its annual epistle to be distributed to the entire Quaker community, it addressed young male Friends with these words: Before we conclude, we are disposed to turn our attention toward you, dear youth, who are rising up to manhood. To you we would extend a tender, yet an earnest invitation. We are interested in your happiness, the church will have need of your help, and there is nothing that we

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desire more in you, than to see you advancing, in ranks of righteousness, to the Christian warfare. And your qualification will lie in humility and meekness, seeing it is the meek who the Lord teacheth his way.79

Here, London Yearly Meeting defined humility as courage and meekness as bravery, thereby once again challenging the ways in which military service had become not only the supreme embodiment of citizenship, but indeed the indication of mature manhood. Though Quaker men were willing to “die in the engagement” if called, they would not resort to violence to advance their cause or assert their manhood.80 In tutoring his young, unnamed correspondent in the “fortitude of Lamb-­like warriors” North Carolina minister William Hunt emphasized the strength and stamina Friends needed to wage the righteous, spiritual war of the church militant.81 The church militant, he explained, allowed Friends to strike an impossible balance: “to pursue as a devoted soldier with all diligence this Holy warfare . . . keeping in the peaceable spirit of the lamb.”82 This theme was repeated often, as David Hall reminded his audience that “wisdom is better than strength” and the “fierceness of the Lion is often conquer’d by the meekness of the Lamb.”83 British ministers William Ingram and William Crouch delivered sermons to “all young men” of the Devonshire House Monthly Meeting, calling on them to “be ye fervent with the Lord & strong in the power of his might as good Soldiers of Christ to endure Hardships and suffer, not as evil doers but for the testimony of faith and a good conscience.”84 Henry Hull similarly addressed the young men at a Norwich Meeting, crying, “Oh! Were the rising generation to accept this persuasive invitation from the Messiah, how would they come forth ‘as an army with banners’ turning ‘to fight the armies of the aliens’!”85 Friends and their supporters seized on these particular articulations of Christian manhood and Christian subjecthood, as they allowed them to respond to charges of cowardice by refocusing the conversation around the hardships their choices wrought. They emphasized the fearlessness and even recklessness of male Friends, as they were prepared to suffer any cost for their cause. In this rendering, war supporters were weak but war opponents were courageous. This not only explained their suffering, as Quaker men and women often sacrificed their reputations, their property, their freedom, and even their lives as a result of penalties imposed by the government for their refusal to comply with wartime policies, but also defended their valor. Thus did a French author praise the Quakers’ bravery and perseverance. “You smile,” he wrote, “but look at the Quakers. Defenseless they have triumphed over their armed persecutors.”86 “No,” he continued, “the

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Quakers do not avoid fighting to spare their own blood, but to spare that of their fellow man. Can you doubt it, you who have seen them during the late bloody war boldly venturing to succor their brethren, their countrymen, their enemies themselves?”87 A similar anecdote appeared in the Dublin Magazine: when Collet D’Herbois, a member of the French Committee of Public Safety, demanded that the Quakers join his patrols, they agreed to march without weapons. Astonished, he then demanded that the Friends fire on his prisoners. They refused, declaring that “they had much rather be amongst the persons that were about to be shot than be at all concerned in shooting them.” According to the story, “the commanding officer exclaimed, ‘This is indeed too much!,’ and was so struck with the integrity and intrepidity of their behavior that he ordered them immediately to be taken home and to remain unmolested in the future.”88 Here, these authors endorsed Friends’ efforts to recharacterize ideas of strength and promoted their attempts to move others toward different definitions of service, citizenship, and allegiance. And yet while some outsiders celebrated Friends’ courage, the Quaker church militant ultimately lost its war against war as well as its fight to expand definitions of masculinity and citizenship. Friends themselves, how­­ ever, were partially to blame. They continued to explain and experience the ideals of bravery and sacrifice in profoundly gendered terms. To be sure, men should be “lamb-­like warriors,” but Quakers still insisted that they be warriors. When ministers encouraged young boys to be “Soldiers for Christ,” they still glorified soldiering. And when male Society members insisted that they “despised” weakness and cowardice, they still distanced themselves from feminine frailties. Male Society members, in other words, were unable or unwilling to challenge the very gendered assumptions that underpinned the valorization of the citizen-­soldier—­they merely attempted to redefine the concept to include their own service in the church militant. Noah Worcester, on the other hand, correctly perceived the shortcomings of this strategy and addressed the issue directly. Too many people thought, he wrote, that “war is a school for manly virtues.” But, he continued, “if these are virtues what are vices?”89 Here, Worcester sought to redirect the conversation, urging his audience to resist the increasingly inextricable connections between masculinity and violence and between service and citizenship. Instead, he underscored the bravery in passivity and the courage of inaction. Critics rejected both the Society’s self-­justifying claims of Christian soldiering and Worcester’s more piercing criticisms of virtuous citizenship. They continued to condemn Friends as cowards and mocked their insistence

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that they risked their own lives for a higher cause. Even those who had formerly defended Quaker men, celebrating their espousal of peace, turned against them as war dragged on. Samuel Coleridge—­in no less a publication than his Quaker-­supported periodical The Friend—­sneered at the Society’s “unmanly impatience for peace.”90 Thomas Clarkson, who would eventually break with his close friend Coleridge as a result of these increasingly vitriolic screeds against the Quakers, pled with him to tone down his language. Coleridge, however, persisted, celebrating “a patriotic, anti-­ democratic manliness” and insisting that the personal virtue of soldiers was “a political example for the nation to define itself by.”91 For Coleridge, there was no room in politics or society for Quaker definitions of masculinity or citizenship. Much to the Society’s dismay, this correlation between citizenship, military service, and masculinity persisted even after American, British, and French soldiers finally quit the battlefield. As Linda Kerber deftly explained, enshrined into the US Constitution was an expectation of and reliance on voluntary military service to defend the United States against enemies foreign and domestic. Friends vociferously protested these laws, but critics once again accused Quaker men of shirking their responsibilities, ruining morale, betraying their country, and abandoning their duties as men.92 Indeed, the backlash against the Friends still revolved around two accusations that remained inextricably linked: treason and effeminacy. Friends petitioned state and federal officials in the hopes of prevailing on them to allow for true conscientious objection. Many of these initial acts included clauses allowing for conscientious objectors (or “necessary persons”) to pay a fine or to purchase a substitute.93 Friends could not abide by either of these allowances, however, as this money would then be used to support the war effort. Also objectionable were the continued distraint of property and the jail terms male members of the Society continued to incur for their refusal to muster for the militia. In their formal protests, Friends persisted in their wartime assertion that although they resided within the geopolitical boundaries of the nation-­state, its laws did not bind them nor did they recognize its supreme authority. “The relation between man and his Creator, neither can, nor ought to be prescribed or controlled by any human authority,” they lectured state representatives. “Government has no right to bring the laws of God and man into competition: and that there exists no authority in any department thereof to cancel, abridge, restrain, or modify this liberty of conscience.”94 For Quakers, worldly laws could not interfere with divine decree, as ultimately, authority did not rest within the governments of nations but rather in scriptural edicts. Moreover, Friends

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cast their appeals as service to the divine, asserting that the right of conscientious objection was the most basic and necessary of all human rights. “Our conscience,” they lectured the US Congress, was the foundation “on which depends the peace, safety and happiness of every Government.” In light of this sense of duty, “it must be allowed that . . . every restraint imposed or attempted by human Laws on the free exercise thereof, is not only an infringement on the just Rights of Men, but is also an invasion of the prerogative of Almighty God, who is the Sovereign Lord and Judge of Conscience, to whom every Man is accountable.”95 These petitions endeavored to redefine ideas about allegiance and service during the early national period, and, as a result, Friends’ criticisms of compulsory militia duty served as an attempt to challenge the authority of the nation, the rectitude of its policies, and its ability to require the service and resources of its citizens. Their protests also acted to reassert the unity of the Society of Friends and their commitment to Zion. In petitions submitted to both the Virginia and the New York legislatures, Friends lectured state lawmakers: It may be recollected too, that in every nation of the civilized world, where this society is found, they profess and maintain the same prin­ ciples.—­That no hope of reward, no dread of punishment, not confis­ cations, imprisonments, or death would induce them to bear arms against their country, or in any other cause whatever, and that every attempt to coerce them, would result, on the one side, in the triumph of principle, however severely tested, and in the unavailing persecution on the other.96

Friends the world over remained united in this most basic tenet of Quakerism and counseled the various governments under which they lived that no amount of pressure could force them to forsake their pacifist principles.

deployment This rendering of the church militant further reinforced the identity of the Quakers as an exceptional people, separate from the nation and divinely called to instruct and/or criticize earthly governments. “All worldly objects and interests [are] held in a state of subservience or secondary points of view,” they reminded Friends in an annual epistle. “Until we experience this [unconditional pacifism],” they argued, “we cannot expect to be lights in the world, nor will it be possible to manifest in life and practice that we are made free from that spirit which stands in opposition to the

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peaceable government of Christ.”97 As God’s chosen people and members of a church militant, Quakers’ role was to serve as models for other Christians. Their conceptualization of Zion mandated that they exemplify divine perfection and enact divine will. They were “divinely called upon to hold up a standard, or testimony, to the nations, against every species of war, as antichristian.”98 Adopting the scriptural language of a “city on a hill,” Quakers felt compelled to wage a spiritual war against sin. Securing the right of conscientious objection was thus not only a means of preservation and protection for the Society’s members, but a divinely ordained campaign to lead the rest of the world toward peace. This labor, however, necessitated their active and vocal presence in the affairs of the world and a sustained engagement with an earthly state. Friends’ strategy entailed a recognition of the power and permanence of this profane government. This decision signified a shift within the Quaker church militant, the third metamorphosis within this half century of warfare. They began as colonial proprietors, fusing the interests of church and state in ways similar to the Puritans in Massachusetts. After recusing themselves from government, they reconceptualized their holy army and went to war against the state itself. They had now shifted tactics again, working within the apparatus of the state to secure civil rights for their religious group and to use national laws to push forward a theological agenda. None of this is to suggest that Quakers became compliant citizens. They continued to protest against military service, to insist they were “soldiers of God” well into the nineteenth century. In so doing, male and female Friends repositioned their religious activism, comparing their service to the church militant to their countrymen’s service to the national and imperial armies—­an important precedent for debates that would follow about the expansion of the elective franchise, about taxation, about conscription and the eventual ban on hiring substitutes, and about the willingness of citizens to sacrifice “our boys” in immoral wars. But Friends’ protests in the aftermath of war also illustrate the ways in which politicians proved not just victorious in battle but also in winning the peace. The expectations of wartime were enshrined into law, as Quakers failed to secure the right of true conscientious objection. In this way, it was thus peacetime, ironically, that defeated the church militant. Friends’ acceptance of the connection between citizenship and service weakened their ability to protest a government not at war, as the rhetoric of the church militant suggested that they opposed only violence and soldiering, not the expectation of allegiance, service, and sacrifice as a requisite for citizenship.

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The rhetoric they employed in these campaigns remains significant, however. Friends provided a viable (and visible) alternative to the schisms and violence of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. They encouraged Christians to come together to eliminate the warfare and oppression associated with the nationalist and imperialist projects of worldly authorities, pleading with people of all sects and faiths to unite behind the principle of peace. Their public suffering (at times purposefully broadcast and orchestrated) served as Friends’ attempt to illustrate the ability and the potential of disciples to transform worldly persecution into spiritual and political labor. By continuing their peace witness and reform work, Quakers exemplified to their contemporaries the possibility and benefits of dedicating their energies and resources to philanthropy instead of warfare. In so doing, they demonstrated the ways in which people could reject violence, overcome worldly divisions, and promote reform—­all in the face of attempts to persecute and ostracize them. In a poem he composed to young Quaker student Mary Leadbeater shortly before his death, Job Scott encapsulated the efforts by the church militant on behalf of pacifism: Farewell salvation! Must we then be lost? Lost! Who can bear it!—­no—­we’ll war again; We’ll fight for life—­we’ll conquer, or be slain! Again equip’d, once more the fight ensues, And man’s faint heart near ev’ry battle shows; He fights by fits, then faints, and flags, and yields; Goes vaunting forth; but trembling quit’s the fields; Is this the warrior who the prize shall win? Who quit’s the field for one beloved sin? Who turns his back when he should fight for life? Ignobly yields and quits the glorious strife?99

Here, Scott returned again to the imagery of holy warfare to espouse the cause of peace to the next generation of Christ’s soldiers. Scott’s promotion of and service to the church militant was an intuitive response to the perpetual warfare he experienced during his lifetime as well as a powerful challenge to the growing association between the privilege of citizenship and the obligation of military service. It was also an intervention in the public debate concerning war and an attempt to prevent those in power from asserting religious justifications for and thus divine approval of violence. Finally, it would become a way that Friends communicated to their children

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a Quaker identity. As the Society began to establish guarded (Quaker-­only) institutions in the nineteenth century, they incorporated this peace tradition into their curriculum and thus imparted the practice of a church militant to their youngest members. Scott and the other Public Friends skillfully adapted ideas about citizenship and service to defend their participation in the church militant and its opposition to the policies and practices of the national and imperial governments. In so doing, they reinterpreted ideas of nation and the obligations of citizenship and demonstrated the potential for a small and scattered community such as theirs to survive—­even prosper—­amidst the political and cultural pressures of the Age of Revolution. Ultimately, Quaker men could not dislodge the citizen-­soldier as the ideal of both masculinity and citizenship, as they defended themselves against charges of cowardice by employing traditionally gendered definitions of courage and sacrifice. But as Friends instructed their children, formally and informally, in the tradition of the church militant, they nevertheless instilled in a new generation the identity of Christian soldiers and inspired them to wage new campaigns for peace and justice, reminding them that, as ever, “Zion represent[ed] the church militant upon earth.”100

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Walled Gardens: Friends’ Schools

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wen Biddle was an unlikely leader of an educational reform movement within the Society of Friends. Philadelphia Yearly Meeting had disowned him before the War of Independence had even begun for his unabashed support of the patriot cause. Undeterred and unrepentant, he formed the so-­called Free Quakers or Fighting Quakers, a rival religious organization for similarly disaffected and disowned Friends. He used this platform to conduct a bitter and public campaign against his former coreligionists for the duration of the war. And yet within only a few years of the peace between Great Britain and the United States, Biddle not only had demonstrated sufficient contrition to rejoin the Society, he had, in fact, launched a crusade to institute guarded (Quaker-­only) schooling for their children. With a mixture of humility and irony that must have escaped no one, Biddle expressed his concern that the rising generation of Quaker children would abandon Friends’ central tenets and fall away from the Society when they reached adulthood. “To watch over the human heart,” Biddle reminded his coreligionists, “is a circumstance of greater importance than mankind in general seems to understand.”1 Biddle formally crafted his pamphlet as a response to a similar petition from British author John Fothergill, political architect of the Ackworth School, a Quaker-­only boarding school in northern England founded in 1779. Yet at the same time, Biddle was also cognizant of his contribution to the conversation unfolding in the new United States about the proper approach to education for its citizens. One of the foremost contributors to that debate was Benjamin Rush, Biddle’s friend, wartime collaborator, and fellow founding member of the American Philosophical Society. In 1796, Rush penned his On the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic, an essay that encapsulated his ideas on the ideal system and form of education for the young 95

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citizens of a new nation-­state—­a system that would, Rush hoped, inspire each pupil “to subdue and forget his own heart.”2 Interestingly, the two authors agreed on most every matter concerning the mind, but disagreed profoundly on the more complicated matters of the heart. Both approved of education for girls, as they maintained that young women should be partners in the growth of a nation. Each believed that all children must be taught to revere industry and economy, trusting that education could provide a means of social mobility for the deserving poor. The authors also agreed that religion should be an important component of a liberal pedagogy, that the study and practice of benevolence ought to be part of the curriculum, and that a proper school would enforce a rigorous physical and moral discipline to ready its young people for future service to a nation. And both considered molding young minds to be an essential task for a fledgling nation and crucial to the project of creating a loyal and united citizenry. For, in Rush’s words, each man recognized that “in laying the foundations for nurseries of wise and good men,” a nation must “adapt our modes of teaching to the peculiar form of our government.”3 But precisely which nation captured the hearts of their students was where their ideas about education diverged. Biddle, the contrite and reformed Friend, correctly perceived that the primary goal of the educational system envisioned by Rush was to “render the mass of the people more homogeneous, and thereby fit them more easily for uniform and peaceable government.”4 While Biddle would have taken no issue with a peaceable government, he certainly feared the uniformity those in power sought to instill. He thus stressed the importance of preserving Friends’ distinctiveness in his pamphlet advocating guarded education: It is essential to the continuance of every society . . . that its first principles be often referred to. The principles of light and truth, which first separated our ancients from the world, early led George Fox into a sight of the necessity of a separation from the world in the education of succeeding generations.5

Here, Biddle reminded his readers of the need to preserve Quaker uniqueness, particularly in the face of those efforts by worldly governments to elide and erase them. By the late eighteenth century, most Friends had come to share Biddle’s emphasis on the necessity of guarded education. Quaker parents worried that their children would forgo their distinguishing dress, speech, and comportment if mixed with those of other sectarian backgrounds. Quaker

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children at mixed schools forswore the use of “thee” and “thou,” abandoned simplicity, disregarded silence, and even, to the horror of their parents, played war games. Adult Friends, remnants of an internal reformation and external campaign of persecution, worried that such sinful and worldly behavior portended the corruption of an entire generation. They also feared that the pressures of this new political landscape would cause their young members to switch allegiances: spurning the spiritual nation for which their elders had sacrificed so much for the ascendant geopolitical nation that had so badgered and beleaguered them. Biddle thus warned concerned parents to guard against any and all instances of mixing, particularly stoking their fears that the seemingly innocent relationships among Quaker and non-­Quaker schoolmates would lead to marriages, business partnerships, and political alliances forged with their compatriots rather than their coreligionists. And yet Friends’ fears were precisely Rush’s design. Rush intended students to be inculcated with “a regard to their country” so profound that a young man would learn to “forsake, and even forget them [his family] when the welfare of his country requires it.” Here, Rush’s thoughts captured well the opinions of his fellow patriots who recognized that the government of a nation-­state, unlike the monarch of an empire, required conformity and consensus and that true republican leaders could arise only from a well-­ educated populace. But as Rush expounded on his ideas about the ideal citizen, he also strongly condemned another system of education, one that Biddle must have recognized when reading the essay. Rush declared that students must “avoid neutrality in all questions that divide the state,” that they “must be taught to appeal only to the laws of the state,” and that each young man must acknowledge “this life ‘is not his own,’ when the safety of his country requires it.”6 Finally, Rush argued that He must be taught to love his fellow creatures in every part of the world, but he must cherish with a more intense and peculiar affection, the citizens of Pennsylvania and of the United States. . . . [W]e impose a task upon human nature, repugnant alike to reason, revelation and the ordinary dimensions of the human heart, when we require him to embrace, with equal affection, the whole family of mankind.

Rush could not more aptly have summarized the pedagogical foundation of Friends’ guarded institutions. Indeed, Quakers intended these schools not just to shield their children from the influences of the world, but also to instill a worldview that advocated neutrality, extolled divine

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law, championed nonviolence, and, most especially, espoused cosmopolitanism. In other words, a pedagogy and curriculum in direct opposition to those championed by Rush. Guarded schooling reinforced the tribalism and the universalism that so disturbed Rush, as educators encouraged young Friends to identify first and foremost with their coreligionists in every part of the world. It also encouraged the passivity and the defiance that Rush thought dangerous to a republican society, as teachers urged Quaker children to submit only to divine authority and to use this religious appeal to justify their noncompliance with the obligations of civil society. These parallel objectives, though seemingly in conflict, became increasingly important as Friends themselves began to splinter after the War of Independence over how to respond to the new political realities in the United States. Quakers disagreed as to how they should or if they even could continue to be “a people within a people” within the context of a nation-­state rather than an empire. Some counseled further withdrawal from worldly affairs, arguing that Friends needed to purify themselves from the corrupting forces of nationalism and patriotism. Worried by the increasing political, economic, and social encumbrances of republican citizenship, they counseled self-­isolation. Others, however, saw an opportunity to influence the new government and urged Society members to apply political pressure, albeit indirectly, to achieve their desired ends. Caught up in the idealistic strain of republicanism, they advocated that Friends join extrapolitical organizations that worked toward improving society. As this conflict simmered at the turn of the nineteenth century, Friends found compromise in the education of their youngest members. They employed the biblical metaphor of a “walled garden” to reconcile these two stratagems and to advance a cohesive proposal for guarded education.7 Ad­vocates thus described these schools as shielded and defended spaces, blockaded and protected from the rest of the world, while at the same time promising a liberal and cultured education that would cultivate the next generation’s compassion for humanity and esteem of philanthropic engagement. Friends’ schools were to be stationed in remote locations, far away from both the corrupting influence of the world and the watchful eye of the state. At the same time, however, these institutions were to practice a pedagogy that encouraged and trained students to become involved in benevolent organizations and reform movements. This commitment would require Friends to engage the world and confront apparatuses of state power, but only after Quaker youths “safely” reached the age of maturity. Both factions, therefore, trusted that these guarded institutions would carry forward their version of Zion and the Quaker church militant. They believed that

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this early intervention in the lives of their young members would ensure that even those Quaker children raised in a time of peace and burgeoning patriotism would continue to identify as citizens and soldiers in their holy nation. Unsurprisingly, Rush specifically opposed these walled gardens. He believed them to be inimical to the true “business” of education: “to make them [the students] men, citizens, and christians.”8 The fact that Biddle and his fellow coreligionists offered alternative definitions of citizenship and Christian manhood was clearly unacceptable. Indeed, Rush specifically expected that proper national schooling would “convert men into republican machines” who would “perform their parts properly in the great machine of the government of the state.” Friends’ walled gardens—­their best hope for preserving the holy nation of Zion—­would undermine the fundamental end of national schooling, to remind each young man that “he is public property.” For this reason, those in power characterized Friends’ schools as dangerous and even seditious during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In fledgling nation-­states like the United States, the government criticized, ostracized, and obstructed Quaker efforts at guarded education. In countries at war, the heightened attention to loyalty and service, particularly of young men, led to increasingly forceful efforts to shutter these schools. Critics maintained that guarded institutions placed Quaker children out of the reach of the state, encouraged them to identify with foreigners over their compatriots, and instilled within them competing definitions of citizenship. In short, Friends’ schools challenged the unity of the nation and the authority of the state. For governments struggling to achieve both, Quaker guarded institutions were a frustrating if not intolerable challenge. Society members fought doggedly to preserve these spaces, as they believed these “walled gardens” were the only way to sustain their faith and practice among the rising generation. But by the middle of the nineteenth century, these schools would lose their guarded nature. Efforts at compromise among Friends, forged in their design for Quaker schools in the United States, Great Britain, France, Prussia and even Russia, postponed for only one generation the political confrontation and eventual compromise with the state and thus a calamitous religious schism within the Society. The “walled gardens” could not prevent the encroachment of the world. Some graduates of these schools chose to embrace the increased interaction and went on to plant the seeds of important reform movements. Others chose to withdraw further behind their sectarian walls, moving their children and their guarded institutions further west in the hope that they could find so­ lace there. And yet Friends’ schools—­and the debate they engendered—­left

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an indelible mark on the pedagogy and curriculum implemented across the Atlantic World. Their emergence reveals much about the contest over defi­ nitions of identity and citizenship in the early nineteenth century, while their subsequent retreat lays bare the foreclosure of possibility as the nation-­ state grew in power.

Gardens Enclosed From the earliest days of the religious Society of Friends, the Quakers had demonstrated an interest in the education of all their members, particularly the youngest. They initiated a lively book trade in the hope that if all of their members read the same texts, they would remain observant of the same theology and the same discipline.9 Transatlantic ministers distributed these books widely, and specifically encouraged children in remote situations to fortify themselves with the tracts and diaries of Society members.10 While supportive of these efforts, elders in the Society believed that they needed to be more involved in child rearing and education. Many quarterly meetings therefore charged their members to visit every school managed or attended by Quaker children each month to certify that their children were receiving a proper education.11 These inspections led several prominent members of the Society, including founder George Fox, to author primers for children that could be used in school or to complement their learning at home.12 Still dissatisfied with overall efforts, Friends began to establish schools throughout the Atlantic World, including their fledgling colony in Barbados13 and perhaps the first Anglo-­American school in the colonies, the William Penn charter school in Pennsylvania.14 A primary goal for the early Quaker community, education acted to bind together distant members and instruct them in the traditions and theology of the Society. This initial burst of activity continued until the middle of the eighteenth century and then gradually subsided as Friends concentrated their efforts on a few flagship schools in Britain and Ireland.15 While Quaker historians have identified this period as a time of lapse and stagnation within the Society, it is clear that these schools acted to preserve a strict observance of Quaker tradition among a small group of Friends. Indeed, many of these children became adult leaders in the mid-­eighteenth century reform movement within the Society and made schooling a central component of their agenda. In 1760, London Yearly Meeting for Sufferings launched a committee to investigate the state of education within the Society. Its members counted at least twenty boarding schools exclusively for Friends in England, sixteen for boys and four for girls, with several more in Ireland.16 Still, the

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committee estimated that only 630 Quaker boys and girls attended these schools, far fewer than half the number of children who needed it.17 They also reported that teachers received inadequate pay and training and, as a result, students performed poorly and attended school longer than necessary. The committee recommended that the quarterly meetings take over responsibility for the schools and suggested the establishment of a school near London for children of all levels of learning. John Fothergill, an eminent physician and the brother of influential Public Friend Samuel Fothergill, responded to this report with an open letter encouraging his coreligionists to follow the advice of the committee. William Tuke, a prominent Quaker merchant, and David Barclay, a wealthy banker descended from and still associated with the Society, agreed. These three men launched a campaign to convince Friends to focus on the education of their youth. British Friends, inspired and persuaded by their influence, passion, and vast financial resources, soon acquiesced. The Society purchased an abandoned hospital in northern England and converted it into a boarding school for Quaker children. Named Ackworth, the school admitted its first class of scholars in 1779, the initial 300 attendees divided equally between boys and girls. Friends raised a significant endowment from among their membership, and these funds allowed the school to offer several scholarships to underprivileged Quaker children from the country and the city. This mix of students with varying backgrounds was important to Friends, as they intended the school to purify the Society by both removing the wealthy from the world and offering an opportunity for education to the poor.18 Friends widely touted the achievements of Ackworth, which generated renewed interest in education within the larger community of Quakers.19 Public Friends circulated news of these efforts and encouraged American Friends in particular to tap into this transatlantic exchange of information. Their efforts were successful, and by the late eighteenth century Rhode Island Friend Moses Brown had opened a correspondence with David Barclay in London and Anthony Benezet in Philadelphia about the importance of a guarded education within the Society.20 He hoped that “a permanent institution for a guarded education of a rising generation will be promotive of their usefulness in society and the honor of truth.”21 For Brown, Friends’ schools would serve to instruct their children and to enhance the reputation of the Society.22 Although these early efforts in New England were important, American Quakers focused the majority of their efforts and their capital in Pennsylvania. The reports that Public Friends brought back from Ackworth had inspired Philadelphian Friends Owen Biddle and

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George Churchman to renew their thirty-­year-­old calls for a similar institution in America. Churchman and his son initiated conversations with some of the major statesmen and reformers of the day to gather as much, as wide-­ranging, and as “enlightened” information as possible in structuring the curriculum of the school. Ironically, one of these authors was Benjamin Rush, who perhaps had not yet solidified his opposition to guarded education.23 Biddle then dispatched American Public Friends Rebecca Jones, John Pemberton, Nicholas Waln, and William Savery to Ackworth, instructing them to gather all useful details.24 Drawing heavily on their accounts, Biddle soon circulated his aforementioned pamphlet justifying the need for a similar instruction in the United States and outlining the details necessary to bring his scheme to fruition. Biddle used scriptural allusions to unite opposing factions of Friends: those who wanted to remove their children from the world responded to his call to separate from the world and identified with his reference to “the ancients” while those who aspired to engage the world identified with his suggestion that their schools would serve as “lights unto the world.”25 What Biddle failed to mention in his 1790 pamphlet, but what was almost certainly on the minds of many of his readers, was the fact that non-­Quaker students had labeled young Friends as Tories at “mixed” schools and harassed them constantly as a result.26 The suspicion and disdain with which the government (and likely the parents of non-­Quaker children) viewed Friends filtered down to non-­Quaker children. Biddle and others worried that this additional pressure would push these young Society members to adopt the habits and attitudes of outsiders and so felt the need for guarded schools even more urgently. Whatever their motivations, Friends responded eagerly and generously to Biddle’s clarion call. Within less than a decade, Pennsylvania Yearly Meeting had allocated the land, monies, and staff necessary to implement their plan. Twenty years after Ackworth’s founding, Westtown boarding school opened its doors in 1799.27 Soon following the establishment of Westtown, New York Friends founded Nine Partners boarding school. Tellingly, the efforts of the Quakers’ transatlantic ministry were once again indispensable. While Henry Hull was the only American minister consistently listed on the roll of donors, many British and Irish Public Friends raised and contributed significant amounts of money to the cause. In 1800, British minister and author Lindley Murray sent £350 from London, and that same year, ministers Martha Routh, Deborah Darby, and Rebecca Young raised more than £436 for the education of the poor at Nine Partners. In 1801, Routh sent another £150 and, in 1802, £30 more arrived in New York, “being a further testimony of

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the exertions of our Friend Martha Routh towards promoting the Institution.”28 Inspired by the examples of Westtown and Nine Partners, Friends in North Carolina also tried to organize a boarding school for southern Quaker children. They were successful in fundraising, raising $370.55 in one day and securing more than $1,500 in subscriptions, though the planning phase lasted significantly longer.29 After forming a committee to ensure that the land designated for the school was not legally owned by American Indians (or illegally obtained by its present inhabitants), Friends finally opened the doors to New Garden boarding school in 1831.30 By the mid-­nineteenth century, Friends had founded formal day schools and boarding schools in many areas of the United States and Europe. An Irish Friend ran a Quaker academy in Windom, Maine, from 1794 to 1847, and during the same time, Pennsylvania Public Friend David Sands traveled to Vassalboro, New Hampshire, to help the small and remote Quaker community there establish a boarding school. Similar institutions in other areas soon followed these initial efforts, such as Friends’ Academy in New Bedford, Massachusetts, in 1810;31 Fair Hill Boarding School in Maryland in 1819; Clinton Grove Academy in New Hampshire in 1834; a boarding school at Mt. Pleasant in Ohio in 1837; one in West Lake in Canada in 1841; and another in Richmond, Indiana, in 1847.32 This pattern held in Europe, too: as the Society expanded onto the continent, members brought with them a concern for education. Jean de Marsillac attempted to open a school for French youths during the Napoleonic Wars. The leader of the tiny meeting at Pyrmont in Prussia, Lewis Seebohm, ran a small school for local children. He and other local members also founded a day school to teach single women rudimentary reading and writing skills. British Friends funded Joseph Lancaster (who himself often claimed to be a Quaker) in developing a new, widely influential pedagogy. And when Czar Alexander invited a family of Friends to migrate to central Russia, he asked specifically for their assistance in restructuring the Russian education system.33 Friends intended their labor to instill in the next generation Quaker virtue and identification with the Society, but these efforts did not take place in a vacuum. Clearly, the interest in education in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was not confined to the Society.34 Quakers recognized that their schools were part of a broader movement aimed at preparing young people for what many agreed was a new political, economic, and cultural landscape. Indeed, scholars have long identified this moment as crucial in the development of national education systems. Classic works by Gellner and Anderson discussed in the introduction suggest that those in power recognized the potential of state-­led schools to bind together culture

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and politics. Standardized curriculums created the homogenous culture and uncontested allegiance that fueled nationalism and, in turn, industrialization. More recent work on the history of education in the United States and elsewhere has focused on the attempt to use national education to mold a unified political community out of a fractured populace. Many Americans shared Benjamin Rush’s concern for inculcating “republican virtue” in children and agreed that it was in the government’s interest to ensure a liberal course of education for its youngest citizens. Proponents across the United States believed fervently that “education . . . is the only means of attaining of what we have got & of acquiring more, of public leadership, liberty, and peace.”35 Noah Webster similarly argued “the only way to make good citizens and subjects, is to nourish them from infancy.”36 Others cast the situation in a slightly more dire light: “Our constitutions, of civil government are not yet firmly established; our national character is not yet formed; and it is an object of vast magnitude that systems of education should be adopted and pursued which . . . may implant in the minds of the American youth the principle of virtue and of liberty and inspire with justice and liberal ideas of government and with inviolable attachment to their own country.”37 Educational reformers made similar claims in revolutionary France, addressing the perceived need to train loyal citizens and soldiers. Even in czarist Russia, where Friends would eventually open their most far-­flung school, educators believed that schooling would “produce enlightened, loyal, and useful citizens.”38 Of course, as Rush himself noted, while most everyone agreed on the need for such an education, few could agree on the details of its implementation. But, persuaded that “a Christian cannot fail of being a republican,” a broad consensus emerged around the position that religion should provide an important foundation for schooling.39 As philosophers, politicians, and ministers all penned treatises recommending best practices for pedagogy and curriculum, they borrowed language and ideology from one another. The anxiety over the “moral socialization” of the country’s youth, it seemed, required the church and the state to act in concert.40 As a result, Daniel Walker Howe has argued, this overlay between religion and nation within the curriculum of schools was clear and profound.41 Many subscribed to the belief that an education grounded in both religion and nation, because of the values they shared in common, would result in such desirable outcomes as allegiance to the community, distrust of outsiders, deference to authority, veneration of leaders, and willingness to sacrifice oneself for the greater good.

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Yet, as several scholars have noted, this assumption was fraught with complications and contradictions. Exploring the often-­uneasy relationship between religion and nation, Jean Friedman asserted, “the introduction of wisdom, secular and biblical, into the discussion of early national education reveals the contested nature of moral formation in the first years of the nineteenth century.”42 The pedagogy practiced by Friends’ schools substantiates this claim, as it demonstrates that the role of religion in early American education was by no means standardized. Quakerism did not serve to create, unify, or solidify the kind of Christian nation that many of those in power envisioned or that many historians have since asserted. Far from a stabilizing or universalizing force, Friends’ religion questioned dominant models of morality and citizenship posited by non-­Quaker schools.43 In this way, a guarded education dislodged the notion that “patriotic virtue, responsible character, and democratic participation” were mutually constitutive or even that they necessarily coexisted in harmony.44 These “walled gardens,” and the pedagogy practiced at them, perpetuated the alternative definitions of citizenship and allegiance as well as the resistance to worldly law and authority espoused by the Quakers’ Zion tradition. Young Friends learned early to forge connections with their transatlantic counterparts, to laud a different set of heroes, and to resist any worldly law that conflicted with the Society’s doctrine. All of these were, of course, religious lessons, but not of the sort that Benjamin Rush and other reformers had in mind. Quaker doctrine undercut the nationalist educational project in these instances, as it sought to safeguard its holy nation from the encroachment of a geopolitical one. Quaker educators emphasized their segregation and distinctiveness in every aspect of their guarded institutions. On a visceral level, planners ensured that the (plain) buildings, accommodations, food, trappings, and clothing were as identical as possible at all of their schools and therefore identifiably different from all other, non-­Quaker institutions. Planners intended this design to reinforce internal and external perceptions of Friends as a people apart. They also hoped that it would strengthen the sense among even the youngest Society members that they were part of a larger, diasporic community united across political borders and ethnic boundaries. To achieve this outcome, teachers encouraged students to cultivate relationships with their transatlantic counterparts as another means of solidifying the Quaker’s holy nation of Zion. Children exchanged letters, periodicals, and sampler patterns and frequently recorded events that occurred at the other institutions. These efforts forged bonds among younger members of

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the Society and reinforced both the unity of Quaker children and their distinctiveness from their non-­Quaker neighbors. In 1799, for example, at least three pupils included “An elegy on the death of Samuel Bleckly aged 13 years who died of the small pox at Ackworth school 1781” in their memory books.45 Moved by a death of a young boy they had never met, these students felt so connected to him and his friends at Ackworth as to eulogize him in their private journals. They felt this loss acutely and memorialized him in a way they did not for their non-­Quaker neighbors. The students and staff at these Friends’ schools also maintained a close relationship with the transatlantic ministry that connected them.46 Young Westtown student Catherine Ridgeway, for example, copied into her school journal a letter from British minister Catherine Payton concerning the death of her fellow laborer Mary Piesley.47 Martha Barker reproduced an epistle exchange between Job Scott and Mary Leadbeater in her piece book,48 while Josiah Albertson included “Some expressions of David Sands” in his Reminisces.49 Quaker educators encouraged young Friends to read and record sermons, correspondence, and diary passages from these transatlantic ministers as a means of providing role models for the Society’s youngest members. In turn, British and American Public Friends recognized the importance of the reciprocal nature of the connections to their young people, and made a commitment to incorporate these schools into their itinerancy routes. Some even boarded at or near these institutions for extended periods of time, serving as living and concrete examples for the students. These ministers preached sermons, taught classes, and brought news of distant Friends to the students at each school. Josiah Albertson kept a running list of the traveling ministers who visited his school, which included Elias Hicks, Susannah Horne, Ann Jessop, and Richard Jordan.50 Noted minister Thomas Scattergood also lived at Westtown for quite a while.51 His presence evidently influenced many students, as sketches of him and sermons by him appeared in several of their copybooks.52 These ministers clearly recognized the value of including children in the culture of the transatlantic Quaker community, and these students participated eagerly. Young Friends were such an important priority to the leaders of the Society and both ministers and elders within the Society took such great an interest in educating these children in the customs and conduct of Zion, that one scholar remarked, “the direct experience of hearing from these travelers was, for many children, built on the indirect accumulation of assurance [from the traveling ministry] that they belonged to a society with wide influence and peaceful pretensions.”53 The presence of these ministers and their writings not only

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communicated the strength and unity of the Society but also furthered the children’s understanding of their place within the Quaker community and their distinction from the society at large.

Planting Seeds This emphasis on the unity and primacy of the transnational Quaker community undermined one of the most fundamental projects of national education: to create a homogenous community loyal to the leaders and citizens of the geopolitical nation. As Rush reminded his audience, citizens needed to be “fitted to each other by means of education before they can be made to produce regularity and unison in government.”54 Religion certainly had a role to play in this effort, acting both to cement the bonds between citizens and to imbue their patriotic devotion with religious overtones. Proponents in the United States in particular hoped that children would learn to love “the new country” of “happy people” who were confident in the knowledge that, as one nineteenth-­century schoolbook extolled, “here, on equal ground, with equal claims, they all unite to breathe a prayer to Him whose even hand has measured out their lot, and blessed them in their basket, and their store.”55 Again, religious and patriotic imagery worked together to inculcate children about the divine approbation of republican government. These texts also relied on the imagery and language of religious conversion stories to describe how outsiders could be incorporated into the closed community of the nation, reminding them that anyone who “determined in coming to the United States, the happy land, where . . . freemen could have the right to vote for the one he liked best” would be considered a “Christian patriot.”56 Those who chose to leave the fold, however, would be ostracized. Advocates suggested that any man who received a foreign education be labeled an “alien” and denied political, civil, or military office for as many years as he spent abroad.57 But Quakers did not see themselves as part of this community; rather, guarded institutions ensured that young Friends considered themselves to be connected primarily to other Society members instead of their compatriots. Indeed, their educational tracts encouraged their coreligionists in Great Britain to avoid attending or even interacting with those who frequented first-­day schools (or Sunday schools), as Quaker children needed to stay clear of “foreign alliances.”58 Public Friend John Woolman authored a children’s book that pleaded with young Friends to “sitteth alone.”59 Other Society treatises warned them away from attempting to find a middle ground with the outside world or “a pleasing point of compliance . . . in behaviour,

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dress, language . . . to escape the disagreeable sensations of false shame and the reflections of being stupid, mulish, and Quaker-­like.”60 The planners of these schools instilled a different identity and allegiance among the students inside of their walls, preventing them from mixing with other children and the nation as a result. This worldview also disrupted the myths of shared national origin and manifest destiny, perpetuated by a patriotic curriculum that extolled the legends of their country’s founding and the hagiographies of their national leaders. Indeed, when early American public schoolteachers began to develop textbooks in the early 1800s, their pedagogical objectives included “instruct[ing] students in the symbolic narrative of America, specifically its historical tale of redemption and transcendence.”61 Noah Webster argued that just such chronicles should form the backbone of a national education in his 1788 essay On the Education of Youth in America, going so far as to itemize an ideal course of study: “a selection of essays, respecting the settlement and geography of America; the history of the late revolution and of the most remarkable characters and events that distinguished it, and a compendium of the principles of the federal and provincial governments, should be the principal school book in the United States.” This curriculum, he believed, would “call home the minds of youth and fix them upon the interests of their own country, and . . . assist in forming attachments to it.”62 The history lessons regarding the Revolutionary War were, as one textbook put it, “the most interesting part of our history.” Authors quite clearly used these lessons to convey ideas about the strength and virtue of the nation, its leaders, and its citizenry. Students were invited to admire the noble spirit of your fathers. To their courage and fortitude, you, who now live and enjoy happiness, peace, and freedom, are indebted for these blessings. Let their example never be forgotten; and if your country should ever again be invaded by enemies, be sure to imitate the conduct of those who forgot every private interest and feeling in the ardent desire to protect their country.63

Children learned that ordinary men “animated by a love of their country, and roused by indignation against its oppressors, . . . left their quiet homes, bade adieu to their families, and, with a resolute purpose of securing their country’s rights, . . . flocked to the field of battle.”64 Authors of these schoolbooks heaped similar praise on the early leaders of the United States. Portraits of George Washington, regularly accompanied by depic-

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tions of Columbia or Justice, frequently graced the covers of textbooks.65 Inside pages often communicated the same message, describing Washington as wise, good, judicious, and, although sympathetic to the suffering of war, zealous and uncompromising in his efforts to protect his people.66 These schoolbooks perpetuated the legend of Washington laying down his arms, as “in obedience to the voice of the people, he returned his sword to its scabbard; for it was in obedience to the same respected voice that he drew it at the approach of war.”67 Ephemera that survive from Friends’ schools reveal a strikingly different curriculum and pedagogy. The lists of the books available at Quaker libraries reveal that they contained no copies of any patriotic writings. Whereas children at other institutions might have read the Declaration of Independence or a royal address from a king or queen, Quaker children studied the Society’s epistles and business proceedings. Teachers taught lessons using the latest tracts and epistles from overseas, as when Philadelphian Public Friend James Pemberton procured several copies of London Yearly Meeting’s letter to the children at Westtown for distribution.68 Such a library would have irritated Noah Webster, who lamented that a lack of “proper books” caused too many students to read “foreign and ancient” texts. Instead, he argued, “every child in America should be acquainted with his own country. . . . As soon as he opens his lips, he should rehearse the history of his own country; he should lisp the praise of liberty, and of those illustrious heroes and statesmen, who have wrought a revolution in her favor.”69 Extant library inventories at Friends’ schools suggest that none of these works were available to Quaker schoolchildren. They read only those texts written or cited by fellow Society members and avoided completely the modern essays penned by, referred to, or in defense of their compatriots. Nor did their schoolbooks contain chapters praising government leaders or soldiers. Sarah Grubb, the mistress at the Irish boarding school Ballitore, closely appraised the texts used in her classrooms. Appalled at what she believed to be a “martial spirit” evinced in the writings by fellow Quaker Lindley Murray, she felt moved enough to open a correspondence with him. His response to her allegation revealed his own attempts to remove such nationalistic and bellicose rhetoric from his widely used lessonbooks. “I should, indeed, be pained,” he wrote if I had administered encouragement to a disposition so opposite to the true spirit of the Gospel. But I know there are in the books, several pieces, which are expressly directed to reprobate war as well as to promote humanity, humility, and patience under injurious provocations. . . . I recollect

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that I have often, in pieces I adopted, expunged words and phrases, which were favourable to war, and what is called the glory of arms.

Their exchange was particularly revealing, given that it unfolded in the aftermath of the Irish Rebellion of 1798. Grubb was sympathetic to the cause of the rebels, but redoubled her commitment to nonviolence in the wake of the carnage wrought by the war. Her challenge to Murray, a celebrated British author, seemed an accusation that he had adopted too much of a nationalistic tone. She cautioned him to be more “chaste and guarded,” while he promised her that “to obtrude myself on the public, were solely the disinterested hopes of being useful to the rising generation, especially by cultivating the understanding of the heart and rendering knowledge subservient to piety and virtue.” Finding common ground at last, Grubb and Murray agreed on the importance of education, the integrity of “disinterested” authors, and the propriety of submitting only to religious authorities.70 Some lesson books used at Quaker schools reveal that many educators went beyond a passive, neutral stance to openly criticize government character and action. The New York Preceptor, for example, taught children the letter “D” with the phrase: “the Drum is an instrument of war, prompting to slaughter—­Men are commanded to love their enemies, not to kill them.”71 The same publisher, Samuel Wood, also printed a book that lambasted the pride and arrogance of the United States, with a subtle dig at its national symbol. The “E” was for the eagle: In vain, proud bird thy pinions do extend Check’d in thy flight, to earth thou must descend E’en so would mad ambition wildly tower Houndless his wish, but limited his power.72

While perhaps not a direct response to the imagery employed by The Juvenile Instructor (1803), it was at the very least a marked contrast to its portrayal of a mighty eagle: “a bird of great strength, exceedingly bold, and voracious in devouring his prey”73 as well as that on the cover of The Washington Primer, an eagle proudly perched atop a cactus with a snake in its mouth.74 Interestingly, Wood also used “L” to criticize Great Britain: The Lion ranges through the wood and makes the lesser beasts his food so tyrants on their subjects prey and rule with arbitrary sway.75

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It is possible that this stanza revealed that the author intended this critique of Britain to censure its “tyranny” over the colonies that led to the late War of Independence. I would argue, however, his condemnation of the lion and the eagle reveals his joint indictment of both the American and British governments in keeping with the Quaker traditions of a holy nation and a church militant. Texts such as these warned young Friends to avoid worldly entanglements with the arrogant eagle and the despotic lion and, instead, for the “weary traveller” to remain faithful “while journeying on the road . . . to our God.”76 Friends’ curriculum also commemorated a different set of luminaries in their school lessons. Rather than learn stories of George Washington or the “many battles that were fought and the many brave deeds that were done” by the patriots forces like in The Tales of Peter Parley about America,77 Quaker children such as Joshua Bailey recorded “An Account of the lives and behavior of Abraham and Levi Doan,” in his commonplace book.78 This story related the circumstances of the two Friends hanged by the Pennsylvania government for treason during the Revolution and praised their sacrifice on behalf of righteousness. The two men’s obedience to divine law and not to worldly authority was in accordance with Friends’ tradition and thus taught Quaker children how to be in the world. Similarly, Catharine Ridgeway included in her copybook an extract from Irish minister Sarah Harrison’s address to the King of England.79 Here, Harrison urged the King to listen to God and follow his conscience—­in other words, to change his behavior and alter his practices. These examples provided young Friends with a model of morality and citizenship that differed significantly from that taught in most other educational institutions, encouraging young people to question and even confront their governments. Indeed, Quaker educators encouraged their students to obey their leaders only if their worldly laws concurred with God’s divine laws. If the two conflicted, they told their students, they were required to break—­or at least not to comply with—­ the unjust law.80 All of these examples reveal a significant departure from the lessons contained within non-­Quaker textbooks, which instructed children that “the law has dominion over the man as long as he lives”81 and, in the famous phrase from the New England primer, commanded them to “fear God and honour the King.”82 Authors intended mainstream schoolbooks such as these to teach children, as Noah Webster envisioned, “submission to superiors and to laws.”83 Friends’ curriculum and pedagogy encouraged students instead to question authority and to practice noncompliance, both outcomes deemed undesirable by proponents of national education.

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The pedagogy practiced at Friends’ schools further differed from mainstream institutions in that it encouraged students to question even their own leaders. In another exchange with American Public Friend William Savery, Sarah Grubb informed him that her students scrutinized his sermons and disputed some of his conclusions. He praised this active engagement, writing that it don’t surprise me when they [Grubb’s students] criticize pretty freely upon what they hear in any of my Testimoneys—­it manifests at least that they are not like Stagnate waters, but are interested in the Doctrines they hear Delivered . . . I wish affectionately that the young people . . . may become so Established upon the Foundation which God hath lain in Zion that none of the Various winds of Doctrine they may hear may be suffered to lead them out of the plain & simple way of truth as nobly professed and liv’d in by our worthy ancestors.84

Savery, unlike Webster or Rush, welcomed the differences of opinions and the questioning of authority. Friends would need such searching minds as adults; it was important to Quaker elders and educators that young students have it modeled to them and encouraged in them. Quaker schools placed the Society’s children out of the reach of the homogenizing efforts of the state, encouraging them to identify with their transatlantic counterparts. The curriculum also instilled within young Friends competing definitions of citizenship and duty to those in power. In a fledgling nation like the United States, educators remained wary of these schools, but mostly tolerated their existence during peacetime. The governments of countries at war, however, harbored enough resentment and distrust against Friends and their schools to shutter their doors, as the guarded nature of Friends’ schools led some to see these institutions as suspicious and even seditious during wartime. In Prussia, for example, the emperor continually harassed the tiny Quaker community at Pyrmont and threatened to close its schools year after year. The few pupils in attendance were so traumatized by the harassment that they eventually disenrolled. In Russia, as one scholar describes, the fear of revolution caused “educational authorities [to see] the school system primarily as a means for inculcating obedience and Christian pietism” and worked to “return to old-­fashioned ‘Russian’ patri­ otic and religious values.”85 The local community resisted the efforts of the tiny Friends’ community, and Czar Alexander, the Quakers’ former ally, abandoned them in the face of severe political pressure. Nowhere, however,

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were Friends’ efforts opposed with greater zeal than in France amidst the turmoil and paranoia that accompanied the French Revolution. In 1793, Jean de Marsillac contacted a few prominent British Public Friends in an attempt to secure their financial and political assistance in establishing a school and college for children orphaned by the ongoing wars in Europe. With their help, he purchased an orphanage in Chambord, and recruited 150 children to enroll in the institution. The school was to be under the jurisdiction of the yearly meeting at Ackworth, and everyone involved hoped this relationship would unite all Quaker children with their orphaned brothers and sisters from this war-­ torn country. After raising significant money in Britain, Marsillac attempted to negotiate terms with the French government, asking that all Friends—­and all of the young adults attending the school—­be exempted from military duty and wartime taxes. He offered to pay an annual fee to the local government in Chambord on the condition that it not be used to finance the war effort or the Catholic Church. Although he argued that the school would “advance the sentiment of fraternity” and that it was in the “national interest to encourage [the efforts of] such disinterested and generous men,” the French government remained suspicious of his motives.86 Marsillac persisted, promising the authorities that the institution would attract Friends from England, Ireland, Holland, Germany, and even the United States and that their visits would encourage the “free exchange of ideas” by men who were “well adapted to a republican style.”87 The revolutionaries remained unmoved; they distrusted the influence of foreigners and remained wary of Friends’ principles. They lauded Quaker tenets in theory but could not abide them in practice—­let alone within their borders or in the midst of such violent strife. Unfortunately for Marsillac, he could convince neither politicians nor local non-­Quaker citizens of his innocent intentions. He received a letter from the authorities declaring that the people within the district of Vendome were “taking alarm at the dangerous doctrine of Friends”88 and their increasing celebrity.89 They also claimed that the principles of Friends were “out of harmony” with the French nation and that their dangerous lifestyles “would be difficult to hold in check.”90 The government was convinced that Quakers would cause children to turn away from the state and to reject their stations in life as field laborers.91 The locals resented the appeal of Friends’ tenets and fretted that their principles would upset the delicate political and socioeconomic balance in their community. And everyone involved suspected Marsillac’s foreign (British) support and connections.

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Though Marsillac continued in his efforts to convince and appease the French authorities, they could not reach an agreement, and Friends eventually abandoned the project. His failure illustrated just what a threat Friends’ schools represented to outsiders and political officials. Each of his claims were, to them, indictments of guarded education: Quaker schools taught children to value connections among members of the Society above all others as they withdrew further from the rest of the world. This identification encouraged Friends to remain loyal to their coreligionists rather than to their compatriots. Moreover, Friends’ texts directed Quaker students to follow God’s law even if it conflicted with the ordinances of the worldly governments under whose jurisdiction they lived. As authoritarian or newly established officials, such as those in Prussia, France, and Russia, struggled to establish a semblance of authority and stability, Friends’ refusal to acknowledge their supremacy was a threat to their legitimacy. Thus, the Quakers’ Zion tradition unsettled the tentative accord among citizens within the newly formed French nation while their church militant opposed the efforts to raise boys in the citizen-­soldier tradition. The French state, like their Prussian and Russian counterparts, would not tolerate these disruptions. As these fledgling governments tried to unite their citizens behind the ideology of nationhood and to gain their support for a volunteer army, Friends’ loyalty to their coreligionists and noncompliance with civil authority undermined the legitimacy of these fragile governments. Those in power correctly perceived that Friends’ schools would have served as a breeding ground for resistance in which a new generation of children would learn to emulate such treasonous behavior. As a result, these governments ordered Quaker schools to be closed. These battle lines were exceptionally clear during warfare and revolutions but became much murkier during peacetime. The Society’s position on nonviolence was unambiguous, but there was no explicit doctrine or discipline to guide Friends’ relationship to the state during peacetime. As a result, devout Friends attempted to prevent mixing and backsliding among young members by harkening back to the clarifying and rousing language of Zion and the church militant. Perhaps the most poignant example of this call was the “Address from a Young Woman in England” that several boys and girls at Westtown copied into their memory books: O! Could I bring you up in Zion’s ways, Methinks it would delight my latter days. We want your help, young Men and Women too; Methinks you say, alas what can we do;

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Come forth to Battle in your Maker’s cause In vindication of his holy Laws. . . . . How many sprightly Youth in this our day Have left the Flock, took wings, and gone away: Like broken Bows they start and twist aside Spending their time in Vanity and pride. . . . No wounds nor Blows for Christ is your Physician He’ll be your Battle-­axe your Sword and Shield If unto him you due Obedience yield Cloathed with his armour you’ll be made complete And Foes subdued shall Fall beneath your Feet. . . . Instead of joining with the nation’s ways The nations will unite with us in praise Like Doves unto their windows they will run And own in them a mighty work begun.92

This address was emblematic of the importance of guarded institutions in maintaining the distinctiveness and devoutness of Quaker children. As empires clashed and nations cohered, Friends used their guarded institutions as a means to shield younger members from the chaos of war and the lure of patriotism. Here, their guarded education ensured that youth would still be raised in “Zion’s ways” and would remain in the “flock.” Adult members of the Society clearly expected that these students would then join the church militant and carry on the struggles of the current generation. In this way, these “walled gardens” continued the Quaker resistance to integration and submission into the nineteenth century. A second poem, written by Joseph Rickman to his counterparts at Ackworth, bears out this claim. Addressing his lines to “the little lambs in Ackworth’s fold,” the author employs similar imagery to caution these students against worldly entanglements. He warns them to “close their doctrine to [the] rebellious state” and to remain “confin’d” within the “sphere of truth” and to “dwell within the fold of peace and love!” He employed biblical references to the city of Shiloh, to Eli, and to Samuel as a subtle critique of the corrupt governments that engulfed and persecuted Friends. Finally, Rickman describes young Friends as “tender plants” who were “watered” through “grace” and who will grow “from buds of Piety to fruits of Peace” after the “blooming season” of their schooling. At the same time, however, Rickman advised his young audience of a divine “mission” that awaited them to “win the people to obey [god’s] laws / the laws of peace, benevolence, and love.” Their deeds, he assured them,

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would be celebrated by “human tongue or angel’s” as all who witnessed their work would recognize “the heavenly blessings which are center’d there [at Westtown].”93 This description of a divine calling to engage the world revealed an interesting and noteworthy shift in how the current generation of young Friends defined the battles they waged on behalf of God. From within the confines of their “walled gardens,” they learned that God still charged them, as inheritors of the Zion tradition, to be examples for others and lead the nations toward righteousness and salvation. But, as these two poems reveal, the “mighty work” they performed and the “mission” God assigned them now referred to the potential of Quaker children to inspire change in the world around them.

Bearing fruit The pedagogy and curriculum at Friends’ schools had shifted to address the new political and cultural landscape of the postrevolutionary Atlantic World. In this altered climate, the millennialist and perfectionist strains of Quaker theology, and these poems, reflect Friends’ adjustment to new political realities. No longer defined by a struggle for their very survival, some Friends turned their attention toward influencing these new societies. This subset desired that these schools enact a pedagogy and a curriculum that advocated social reform. Their support for these “walled gardens” hinged on a vision of education that cultivated a generation of children who would grow up to lead benevolent organizations and reform movements. They intended for Quaker children to learn that philanthropy was their privilege as well as their responsibility and to pursue it with vigor and determination. Thus, as these children copied these poems into their memory books, they learned how to be “in the world but not of the world” as well as to how to be lights to a dark world. In this way, Friends’ education promulgated not only a new standard of citizenship in a holy nation, but also began to promote a new archetypal citizen within the worldly nation. All Quakers rejected the calls to military service and to automatic compliance with civil laws, refusing to become the “republican machines” envisioned by Benjamin Rush and other proponents of national education, but some Friends did agree that they had an obligation to work for the common good in ways permitted by their faith. As is discussed in the next chapter, David Brion Davis and Christopher Brown have argued that Friends accrued this “moral capital” as a means of atoning for their (pacifistic) sins during the late war. While that may have been the case for some Friends who maintained closer personal and business

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relationships with outsiders, the ministers, educators, and reformers who adhered to the Zion tradition understood their efforts not as a means of contributing to the national advantage but rather as a way of improving the collective, of being a good citizen of the world. They saw this act not as atonement but as a moral duty, and they taught their young people that the ideal of citizenship in this new political climate was to be the standard bearer for truth—­to be, in essence, an antagonist to power and a protagonist of change. The educators at guarded institutions nurtured this impulse within Quaker children. Their course of study seamlessly wove ideas of justice, equality, and freedom into their lessons on spelling, penmanship, arithmetic, and geography. These efforts challenged the governments under which they lived in two ways, each perhaps somewhat subtler than their rejection of the patriotic agenda of national schooling. First, the universalizing motivations of Friends defied geopolitical boundaries. Quaker children did not confine their concerns to their disadvantaged compatriots, as they did not believe that their countrymen and women were any more deserving of their care than those distant or distinct from them. Their work on behalf of benevolent organizations was not intended to reinforce national boundaries or project national power. Instead, it was meant to ameliorate divisions that kept people apart or disempowered. Second, the reform agenda adopted at these institutions focused on antislavery activism in particular, and welcomed the active participation of girls and women. As many scholars have demonstrated, the definition and ideology of citizenship in the nineteenth century rested on the exclusion of women and people of color. Friends’ undermined these conventions through their education, challenging the foundations of political and economic privilege as well as the justifications for authority espoused by those in power. Traditional non-­Quaker schools promoted those conventional ideologies of race, class, and gender that justified a closed political community and a nationalist political agenda. There, students were schooled in a worldview that rationalized the actions of their governments and the distribution of power and wealth among its citizenry. Mainstream students, for example, learned to celebrate the arrival of Europeans as the advent of civilization in North America. To validate the dislocation of and war against American Indians, their schoolbooks taught them “the Indians were very ignorant; they could not read or write; their houses were very small and inconvenient. They had no such fire rooms in them as our houses have, nor had they any chimneys or fireplaces. The Indians had no chairs to sit in, nor tables to eat from. They had no books to read and had no churches or

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meeting houses.”94 Conspicuously, the definition of civilization deployed in this depiction not only necessitated literacy, consumerism, the nuclear family, religion, and democracy but also implied these traits and trappings were inextricably linked. These examples also underscored that American Indians were not be trusted, as they “were generally unfriendly to the white people and would often kill them if they could” but that “they are all dead or gone far over the mountains.”95 These textbooks repeated similar narratives about the difference between the “civilized” and “uncivilized” world to defend the wealth and power differential among the world’s continents. Students read about Europeans who “possess more wealth, power, learning, and science than all the countries of the earth united.”96 They then contrasted that depiction with Asians who were “gross [&] lazy,” “ignorant,” “fond only of their good cheer and their pleasures, and extremely jealous of their wives and cruel to their slaves”97 and South Americans who “boil and eat” their prisoners.98 Unsurprisingly, these texts ascribed the basest character and most primitive attributes to Africans who were “treacherous and cruel,” “indolent,” “hostile, and “wretched” and who “enslave[d] Christians.”99 Another text expounded on the equivocation between idolatry and barbarism, explaining that African peoples “have always been idolatrous worshippers of fire, stars, and planets, [&] some travelers affirm that they feed upon human flesh.”100 Here, racist ideology infused geography lessons, serving to justify imperialism, slavery, and the slave trade to small children. Moreover, what was not included in their lessons revealed as much as what was. The most popular textbooks avoided any discussion of political economy, wage labor, or class division. The Common School Manual, for example, reproduced an extended dialogue between a mother and daughter regarding household management. The discussion included each stage of the production of sugar without mentioning slavery.101 Similarly, the daughter reached this conclusion about cultivating cotton: “Mamma, I have been thinking that the labour of picking and cleaning cotton must be a slow and tasteless employment, and that it must require the time of a great many women.”102 Again, the conversation erased the presence of enslaved peoples while simultaneously suggesting how unfit white women were for this work. In these ways, the curriculum at non-­Quaker schools perpetuated existing hierarchies. Textbooks denigrated American Indians, rendering them unfit for land ownership or political participation. They vilified Asians, South Americans, and Africans, warranting imperialism, warfare, and the Atlantic slave trade. And they purposefully erased the existence of enslaved

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peoples, silencing and marginalizing them in an attempt to perpetuate the unfree labor system and the political apparatus that supported it. In stark contrast, young Friends learned to analyze and question the systems and structures that perpetuated these kinds of inequalities in the world at large as well as in their backyard (and, it should be noted, within the Society of Friends itself). Friends’ curriculum disputed the ideological foundations behind these textbooks and the ways in which the emerging national education system attempted to rationalize or even naturalize the present distribution of political, economic, and cultural capital within society at large. Quaker teachers also instructed students about their responsibilities to perform good works in the world.103 In this way, Friends sought to integrate a classical education with instructions for students learning how to interact with other people and to effect change. Thus, when practicing penmanship, every Ackworth student in Joseph Sam’s and John Gott’s classes copied this phrase over and over: “cultivate universal benevolence towards mankind.”104 Joseph Donbavand had his class fill an entire book with the adages “understanding is better than riches and honor” and “censure not the unheard.”105 And in William Sturge’s class, students wrote “Kingdoms are best maintained by peace,” “Omission of good is a commission of evil,” “A just education truly forms the man,” “Benevolence is praised more than practiced,” and finally, “Generously contribute to charitable institutions.”106 The copybooks left by early Westtown students also illustrate this concern for the “mighty work” of philanthropy as well as a knowledge of and an interest in contemporary reform movements. Josiah Albertson’s piece book, for example, was filled with clippings supporting pacifism, temperance, and abolition. In his first weeks of school, he recorded in his copybook a sermon of Elias Hicks on the impropriety of war and the need to cultivate the virtue of loving one another.107 Albertson also included an open letter “To the Inhabitants of America” that described a day of reckoning for children who failed to obey their parents, soldiers who fought in the American Revolution, or any person who could not control his or her intake of alcohol.108 Other students, when asked to write about world events, penned essays about the impact of Pacificus (Noah Worcester’s pen name) and the progress of his movement for universal peace.109 These students learned philanthropy and reform alongside of spelling and penmanship. Quaker curriculum also diverged markedly from those mainstream textbooks that avoided any discussion of slavery. Instead, students in every Quaker school devoted significant attention and space in their copybooks to the abolitionist cause. Albertson, along with several of his classmates, copied “The Old Slave’s Prayer”110 in his notebook, along with another untitled

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poem that lamented the living conditions of much of the black community in America. The poem was clearly an effort by the children to empathize with African slaves, as they all included the stanza: How sad their condition, on life he was torn from Tomorrow the white man in vain Shall prowdly account me his slave My shackles I plunge in the main And rush to the realms of the brave!111

Students read widely about the antislavery crusade and included in their exercise books pieces reflecting a variety of facts and viewpoints. One student copied a “letter from Mary Perth, a black woman in Freetown Sierra Leone in Africa, to her Friend in Scotland.”112 Many of the staff at Quaker schools shared these abolitionist sentiments and became increasingly involved with antislavery efforts on both individual and collective levels. For example, an early superintendent, Enoch Lewis, was an officer in the Philadelphia Free Produce Association and had earned a reputation among the local black community for his willingness to help those in distress.113 Westtown tradition maintains that his house was a stop on the Underground Railroad, further involving the school in his activism.114 Antislavery sentiments were similarly important at Nine Partners in New York. James Mott Sr., its superintendent, was an ardent abolitionist who never used sugar, nor dressed in linen, and refused to use any paper with cotton content. On many occasions, he invited the well-­known and well-­respected minister Elias Hicks to speak to the students about the movement to end slavery and encouraged even the youngest Quaker children to read about the evil institution. He also used Noah Worcester’s textbook, The Friend of Youth, in his classes for quite a while and spoke openly about his passion for the universal peace movement and the ways in which he saw the goals of these two movements intersecting with one another. 115 Instructors also incorporated abolitionism into their daily lessons and discussed with their students the strategies used by the antislavery movement. The students demonstrated their acumen regarding the subject in a brief but fascinating document published for a public audience in 1818. In it, a group of young boys discussed “what gave rise to the long, unwearied, and at long last successful exertions of Thomas Clarkson in the abolition of the slave trade,” demonstrating a thorough knowledge of Clarkson’s labors as well as those of the British abolitionist movement in general. Yet this exercise was not intended to force students to memorize dates and events

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or to revere a man and his crusade. Rather, the teachers wanted the students to understand what skills and characteristics were necessary to accomplish such a goal. Thus, when the instructor asked his class “what do we learn from the example of Thomas Clarkson?,” the students replied, “That zeal and perseverance in a right cause seldom fail of success: ‘that no virtuous effort is ultimately lost,’ that great good frequently arises from small beginnings; and that the faithfulness of individuals to manifested duty, is a means that Providence often uses to effect his gracious designs.”116 In other words, the education these Quaker students had received from their time in their “walled gardens” had taught them that they would need to demonstrate exceptional dedication, courage, and patience when performing their good works in the world. As one scholar has noted, the “pattern of life for Friends and for their schools” was therefore “the groundwork of empirical, active service.”117 Quaker educators clearly advocated for abolitionism as an important part of their curriculum. Their insistence on an end to the institution of slavery, and the suggestions by some of racial equality, challenged the ways in which citizenship and freedom were inextricably linked to whiteness. This period was too early for female students to engage with the issues later advanced by the mid-­nineteenth-­century woman’s rights movement, but Friends’ schools laid a foundation for the critique of the connections among sex and citizenship, power, and freedom. To be sure, some scholars have tended to exaggerate their claims of gendered egalitarianism within the Society of Friends. Female Friends were by no means immune to contemporary gender norms, and these ideologies often influenced the means by which they understood and expressed their authority within the Society. Male and female Friends alike lived their daily lives in accordance with prevailing ideologies of sex and gender and often used gendered language to describe their relationship with and work on behalf of God.118 Nevertheless, women Friends, particularly female ministers, exercised a great deal of authority and experienced a considerable amount of freedom within Quaker society and as a result of its customs. Quaker tradition mandated that most all committees be composed of equal numbers of men and women, although the tasks assigned to each sex often followed gendered assumptions.119 This prominent role of women, albeit following a gendered division of labor, was also present at Quaker schools. Women purchased all of the supplies for the kitchens, hired the household laborers, decorated (sparsely, of course) the dormitories, and designed the dress codes for the students. While these tasks drew on women’s assumed expertise in domestic matters, they

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also required them to create budgets, negotiate contracts, make significant purchases, and supervise construction. They performed much of this work indirectly, however, choosing to relay their decisions to male Friends to maintain the appearance of gendered propriety to outsiders. Nevertheless, as these women dictated the sizes of beds and kitchen furniture or the going rate for laundry service and food staples, they participated in important business decisions. While certainly other non-­Quaker women performed many of these same tasks within their families and even their small family businesses, Friends’ schools were among the first charitable organizations that offered opportunities for more women to participate in these economic assessments and on an even larger scale. Some women attempted to use these gendered expectations to assume even greater responsibilities at these schools. They drew on ideas of women as caregivers and healers to establish a committee to supervise the health and diet of students at the boarding schools120 and to raise money to open and operate an infirmary.121 Their status as Mothers in Israel (Quaker women could never be proper Republican mothers) afforded them the opportunity to oversee the girls and boys (whereas the male superintendent did not oversee the girls)122 and to serve on the committees that procured books for the school’s library.123 This latter assignment was particularly noteworthy, as demonstrated by Hannah Barnard’s influence on the Nine Partners’ library committee. A Public Friend from New York, Barnard was later disowned from the Society for her radical views. Yet during her tenure at Nine Partners, the bookshelves were filled with reform-­minded volumes, such as Pricilla Wakefield’s Mental Improvements and Thomas Clarkson’s An Essay on Slavery (works that greatly influenced the young Lucretia Coffin Mott among others).124 In this too, Friends’ schools provided a marked contrast to mainstream institutions. Reformers like Rush did support girls’ education, advocating that young women “should not only be instructed in the usual branches of female education, but they should be taught the principles of liberty and government; and the obligations of patriotism should be inculcated upon them.” Of course, steeped in the ideology of Republican motherhood, Rush believed the purpose of female education was not an end to itself but rather a means of assuring the proper rearing of boys. “The opinions and conduct of men are often regulated by the women,” Rush wrote, “and their approbation is frequently the principal reward of the hero’s dangers, and the patriot’s toils. Besides, the first impressions upon the minds of children are generally derived from the women. Of how much consequence, therefore, is it in a republic, that they should think justly upon the great subjects of liberty and

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government!”125 In her powerful analysis of female education in the nineteenth century, Mary Kelley explains the compromise suggested here by Rush: “a woman’s right to advanced schooling,” she wrote, was “contingent upon her fulfillment of gendered social and political obligations.”126 Contemporary textbooks bear out the “gender-­ inflected” nature of edu­cation that Kelley describes, as the themes of Republican motherhood spilled across their pages.127 The Common School Manual reminded readers: “As Columbia, expects all of her sons to be brave, so she presumes all her daughters to be virtuous.”128 It reinforced this message in a later chapter, informing students: “Things that are strong by nature, are made masculine, while those that are lovely, that give forth or contain, are feminine.”129 A section on the natural world distilled this point even further, imparting the knowledge that “only male birds have voices.”130 No evidence survives to suggest that the pedagogy or curriculum at Quaker schools included this stark inflection of gendered ideology, although contemporary gender norms most certainly influenced Quaker education. Female students received fewer years of language training than did their male peers, and they were expected to devote much of their extracurricular time to sewing and needlepoint. Rebecca Jones, for example, was a Public Friend and a schoolteacher who believed in a broad curriculum for her female pupils. The gendered nature of their education became clear, however, in her letter to Ann Swett. “How comes on my little girls?” she asked. “Have they learned to spin and knit and do they improve in other branches of learning?”131 Here, “other branches of learning” literally become an afterthought to her query about the girls’ progress in learning domestic affairs. Schools themselves reflected these gendered divisions, as the buildings were completely segregated by sex, and boys and girls never (overtly) interacted with each other. Superintendents assigned chores based on gendered assumptions, as girls helped in the kitchen and the laundry and boys helped to chop wood and care for the grounds.132 Finally, male teachers earned £100 a year and were allowed use of a separate house on the school property if they were married. The schools paid female teachers only £30, and nearly all these women were single.133 At the same time, however, it is important to recognize that Quaker educators purposefully incorporated their more unconventional attitude toward both sex and gender norms into the curriculum and pedagogy of their guarded institutions. Young female students came into contact with many influential female Public Friends, as these women served on many of the school’s committees and visited the institutions frequently. As the students listened to them describe the distant places they had visited, the girls’ worlds—­and their ideas about gender roles—­expanded. Perhaps this was the

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reason that several girls recorded in their commonplace books newspaper reports of women fighting with the Spanish and Portuguese armies.134 These clippings seem out of character with Friends’ tenet of pacifism (and in fact stand in marked contrast to the passages penned by Quaker boys about the evils of soldiering), but they perhaps suggest that these girls celebrated examples of women’s participation and gender equality.135 The experiences of these young Quaker women also supports Kelley’s claim that young women’s energy was channeled into voluntary associations, as “civil society was constructed as the feminine other of the masculine state.”136 Quaker educators encouraged female students to support philanthropic societies, raising money and awareness for different charity organizations. Emmor Kimber informed Noah Worcester that each of his students at his all-­girls school had read each issue of Worcester’s Friend of Peace and that they had decided collectively to reserve $10 of their tuition money to donate to the Massachusetts Peace Society.137 These young women also founded many extracurricular clubs to address issues of reform and often included reports on the efforts of their foreign counterparts in their bulletins. They incorporated these interests into their everyday activities, exchanging samplers and sampler patterns that included scriptural quotes and references supporting pacifism and abolition. This tradition began early on when the female students at Ackworth presented Public Friend Rebecca Jones with a sampler stitched with a quotation from her close friend and the much admired transatlantic minister John Woolman.138 Here, these British children used this gift both as a means to connect with their foreign visitor and as a means to continue abolitionist work in Woolman’s memory. Many shared his commitment to philanthropy and wanted to do even more to advance these reform movements. Thus, in her 1802 piece book, Rebecca Smith pasted an article from the Philadelphia Sunday Dispatch entitled “What Can We Do?” that detailed the ways that even young girls could help the poor.139 These experiences and lessons likely instilled a sense of confidence and self-­worth in female students that would serve them well as they joined and led charitable organizations and reform movements later in life. Perhaps even more important, their education also acquainted these young women with a different model of female citizenship.140 The pedagogy of these guarded institutions encouraged all Quaker boys and girls to question contemporary definitions of citizenship; however, by becoming acquainted with, admiring, identifying with, and finally emulating female Public Friends, these girls and boys disputed gendered conventions of citizenship as well. Thus, young Quaker women did not just aspire to become

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informed, active, and engaged participants in the nation of Zion but in the larger geopolitical communities in which they lived. Moreover, young boys learned to welcome and respect the contributions of women. The early training in strategies of organization and fundraising, coupled with a basic introduction to progressive causes, allowed a generation of young women and men to assume important roles in many nineteenth-­century progressive movements. As such, they offered a distinctive model of citizenship, different justifications for their dynamic involvement, and distinguishing qualifications for their incisive contributions. The lessons they learned at school were certainly at least one factor that eventually inspired many of them to reconsider traditional gender proscriptions and begin to agitate for women’s rights. Indeed, while many historians have noted the disproportionate participation of male and female members of the Society of Friends in the reform movements of the mid-­nineteenth century, no scholar has yet explored fully the ways in which the pedagogy practiced at these schools encouraged a generation of Quaker children to join reform movements.141 As Mary Kelley observed, though these students had to promise to be “humble” and “unassuming” in justifying their quest for an education, their course of study “licensed the movement of post-­Revolutionary and antebellum women into civil society.”142 In teaching their students to obey God before worldly leaders and emphasizing their divine call to serve the world, Quaker educators inspired countless young Friends to dedicate themselves to the causes they believed would improve the world around them. The pedagogy practiced at these guarded Quaker schools encouraged even the youngest Friends to support reform movements and instilled within them an ethos that would prompt them to join and even lead these same organizations later in their lives. What’s more, this model of female citizenship—­more complete and active than even Benjamin Rush had envisioned—­also laid the groundwork for the transatlantic friendships that would become so vital to the success of the women’s movement of the nineteenth century. These connections quite literally broadened the worlds of these young girls, a lesson they would call on as adult reformers. The mission of these “walled gardens” was therefore to cultivate within their students an interest in social change and an ability to contribute to and lead reform movements. This process was demonstrated by an extract from a letter that an Ackworth student copied from his friend at a non-­ Quaker school. “The boys go to [Ackworth] and continue there learning justice,” he wrote, “and they say that they come as much for the purpose of learning this, as boys with us come to learn Literature.” He then praised the

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integrity and tolerance taught at Ackworth, asserting that “the influence of what is learnt in youth operates powerfully through manhood.”143 Another visitor to Ackworth shared a similar observation. “All was peace and obedience,” he wrote, “and I could not help earnestly wishing the world exactly like it.”144 This atmosphere of peace and this sense of universal justice, as well as the hope that the world would come to adopt them, came not just by interaction with elders in the world at large, but through community of peers during youth. In this way, these schools served as examples of the principles of primitive and pure Christianity to a fallen world. Their graduates left the enclosures to go out into the world and effect the change they had learned about in their classes. Noah Worcester concurred. He maintained a penchant for Friends and their traditions and argued repeatedly that Quakers’ example of education was superior to other models. He praised their progressive pedagogy above all else, asserting that “the principles of their teachers are diffused through their societies, impressed on the minds of old and young; and an aversion to war and violence is excited, which becomes habitual, and has a governing influence on their hearts, their passions, and their lives.”145 For Worcester, as for many other important nineteenth-­century reformers, Friends’ schools served as an archetype of enlightened education. They urged others to adopt the Quakers’ program, firm in their belief that this system of education would bring about a significant transformation in society. Thus, Worcester responded approvingly when Public Friend James Mott wrote to his ally: “I consider . . . education one of the most probable means of effecting a refor­ mation in the world.”146 For Mott, Worcester, and others, Friends’ liberal pedagogy was an essential component in achieving their goals of reform and improvement in nineteenth-­century society.

Creeping Vines These ambitions, however, may have unwittingly lay the groundwork for the Friends’ schism and the loss of the guarded nature of their institutions. Those Quakers who had focused more on the efforts at engagement, as opposed to the focus on withdrawal, pushed forward in their attempts to influence the world beyond the borders of their religious society. In New York, for example, Friends founded the Free School Society in 1805. Its founders, John Murray Jr. and Thomas Franklin, wanted their coreligionists to establish schools for non-­Quakers. They initiated an exchange between American and British educators (drawing on the correspondence and visitation networks already established between the guarded institutions on each

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continent) and launched a campaign to establish a set curriculum for public schools in the state. They advocated the Lancastrian method and, as for the curriculum, encouraged a “great emphasis placed on simplicity, sobriety, practicality, and frugality.”147 They also suggested a ban on corporeal punishment and music lessons. Of course, Friends recognized that they remained remarkably unpopular with their compatriots and the governments under which they lived. In a preview of future tactics discussed in the next chapter, they thus made a conscious effort to obscure their involvement. Quaker members of the Free School Society, such as Divie Bethune, hid their authorship of key texts and concealed their religious affiliation during public advocacy.148 But as they worked to influence the pedagogy and curriculum of these nondenominational schools, much of their own distinctiveness and separateness was distilled or even lost in the process. They forged political alliances with outsiders, made compromises to advance their agendas, and mediated their language in an attempt to persuade. Put another way, they left behind the walled gardens and formally entered the realm of domestic politics.149 New York Friends were no exception. The number of Friends’ private schools began to drop in the mid-­nineteenth century at the same time as there was a significant increase of work on behalf of public education by Society members.150 They tended to focus their efforts on the poor and children of color, at first starting separate schools for them and then eventually enrolling them in Quaker boarding schools. School superintendents announced a reduced tuition in the 1830s to make it easier for poor non-­ Friends to attend their institutions, thus dismantling the walls that had separated the Society’s young members from the rest of the world for more than half a century.151 And as Friends’ schools officially terminated their policies concerning guarded educations, school discipline changed as well. Overseers did not expect non-­Quaker children to follow the same rigid strictures concerning dress and speech, although Friends certainly hoped that their curriculum would expose these young people to ways of thinking and behaving that they had likely not experienced beforehand. As Friends continued to reach out to their poor neighbors and the people of color in their communities, their efforts served as models for many reformers active in the public education systems. Several New England Friends maintained a correspondence with Horace Mann, and others tentatively worked alongside politicians charged with overseeing the planning of school curriculums. Indeed, just among the graduates of Westtown, 69 male and 181 female students went on to teach at these new public schools.152 And Friends embraced public education in other, more direct ways as well.

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In the town of Lynn, Massachusetts, government officials designated one of the school districts as a Quaker district and allowed Friends to use public funds to maintain their school. This particular form of cooperation and coexistence was rare, although there was more interaction between Quaker-­ run and state-­run schools as more states moved toward a system of public education.153 One historian has asserted that in North Carolina, “early Quaker schools in [the southern] quarter served as a stimulus for the final establishment of public schools.”154 A similar transition happened in New York. A group of women Friends had founded several religiously unaffiliated schools to educate poor children. The Public School Society eventually took over the care of these schools, and then John Griscom, a Friend and public school advocate, managed the transition of control to the New York public school system.155 Other Quaker historians have reached similar conclusions about the state’s educational system in Virginia and Maryland,156 Iowa,157 and Indiana.158 Friends sold off much of the school’s infrastructure, and many teachers went on to teach in state schools. Even many of the buildings were given over to local governments. Several factors contributed to this transition. To begin, the increased availability and quality of public schools made the state’s educational system a viable and attractive option for many Friends. Furthermore, Quakers had championed the cause of universal education, and many Friends believed passionately in the necessity, the relevance, and the power of public schooling. Finally, as the costs associated with Quaker schools increased and enrollment decreased with the rise of common schools, several of these institutions were no longer financially viable.159 For all of these reasons, guarded education lapsed in the nineteenth century, as Friends’ schools “gradually became public schools and the control went from the hands of the Quakers to the public school committee.”160 This subtle shift appeared both appropriate and seamless to Friends involved in the Free School Society in New York. Their work on behalf of public schooling was merely an extension of their earlier efforts to establish Quaker schools. Moreover, the coalitions they formed with other nondenominational sects moved forward the process of disestablishment and offered an opportunity for Friends to expose other children to their beliefs and practices through a more liberal curriculum and pedagogy. Finally, the fruits of their walled gardens could influence the outside world. But in so doing, particularly on the crucial issue of education, these Friends ceded the claims to independence and sovereignty that had buttressed their Zion tradition. As one scholar adeptly noted: “The Quaker, who earlier had championed

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parental rights in education, now conceded the ‘unquestioned right of the state’ to require that each child must be taught the primary branches of common school studies.”161 For Friends to acknowledge “the unquestioned right of the state” was, in fact, a remarkable shift in their theological and political identities. The ceding of their “walled gardens” signaled the end to the definition of the Zion tradition that had guided the Society for more than a half century. Many scholars, most notably Michael Kammen, have identified the 1820s as a clear and important moment in the shaping of the national tra­ dition.162 It is not surprising, then, that the American branch of the Society experienced its great schism during this decade—­a schism that resulted largely from a disagreement over how to respond to precisely this development. Friends diverged in thinking about how they should counter the growing power of nationalism and the encroachment of the state. Many members hoped that a focus on guarded schooling would keep these issues indefinitely at bay. While these institutions served the important function of molding a generation of powerful and important Friends, they did not prevent the appeal of patriotism or the intrusion of the state from influencing their charges. As these young Friends matured into adults, particularly those who later would identify as Hicksites, they used the lessons they learned at school in their lives as political and social reformers in the United States and Britain. This new vision of Zion led them to engage the world directly. Surrendering their claims to sovereignty, they hoped that they could reform civil society by joining it. Wasn’t this, after all, what they had been trained to do? In his plan for Westtown, Biddle himself had hoped that those people who became involved in the schools as students, teachers, or community leaders would continue to donate their time, energy, and money to other reform movements: It is likely that the example afforded at this school would be followed by others; hence, its influence on the manners and conduct of youth might extend to remote seminaries: whereby Friends would be instrumental in promoting the happiness and improvements of many young people, who might otherwise remain in a less cultivated and less happy state; nor could such an institution properly conducted, fail of adding a reputation to the Society, and perhaps have a tendency to diffuse the principles of Light and Truth which we profess; by awakening a spirit of inquiry after them, amongst other people.163

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Friends’ schools had indeed succeeded in “shining their light before men.” Quaker teachers and students preserved and even advanced the Society’s gospels of peace and tolerance and their curriculum had spread a distinctive model of citizenship throughout the eighteenth-­and nineteenth-­century Atlantic World. As this generation of students matured into adulthood and enlisted in the church militant, they drew on the lessons they learned inside of their “walled gardens” to join and lead countless philanthropic organizations. Through their efforts, with their resources, and by their example, Friends from every corner of their holy nation of Zion would contribute greatly to the reform movements that transformed many of the structures and systems they had studied with such passion at school. The hearts that had so concerned Rush and Biddle were fully grown, and these adults now set out to change the world.

pa r t i i i

Concession, 1793–1826

chapter four

The Still, Small Voice: Quaker Activism

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s Friends gathered for the opening session of London Yearly Meeting in 1804, they reflected on the demoralizing events of the past year. Great Britain had broken the peace of Amiens and once again declared war on Napoleonic France. Mourning the return of blood-­letting, they assembled in the meeting for worship to pray for their coreligionists on the European continent before adjourning to the meeting for business to consider how they should respond politically to the recommencement of war. The violence was, unhappily, not a new problem, but British Friends had never confronted the possibility of a foreign invasion. Indeed, even though the meeting asserted that “no people have a deeper sense of the calamity which war entails on mankind,” British Quakers, unlike their counterparts in America, Ireland, and France, had not experienced war firsthand in more than a century. Male members had further managed to avoid the issue of conscription, as Great Britain relied mostly on mercenary forces to fight its enemies. Friends worried that the recommencement of hostilities and the looming threat of invasion meant that they could no longer escape the escalating cost of war or the increasing accusations of sedition. Their British compatriots, angry at Friends’ importunate protest of the war, had renewed their allegations of disloyalty. The burgeoning nationalism that accompanied the war eliminated many of the protections the shield of empire had provided Society members. Critics charged that Quakers would continue to “murmur against their rulers in the state and to despise the government under which the providence of God has placed them” and had begun to agitate for distraint and imprisonment for the most outspoken among them.1 Desperate to avoid a confrontation, British Friends used their yearly address to express their gratitude for “the lenity shown us by government, and the readiness of magistrates to afford us all legal relief under suffering.” 133

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But as those in attendance debated how to respond to the resumption of war and the renewed threats of persecution, the fraught nature of their political situation once again became clear. Friends labored to reconcile their peaceable principles with their compatriots’ clamor for war, a struggle made manifest by the careful parsing in the epistle issued by the yearly meeting. Acknowledging that it was “an awful thing to stand forth to the nation as the advocates of inviolable peace,” meeting elders nonetheless counseled fortitude. They reminded fellow Quakers of their duty to “refuse an active compliance with warlike measures,” believing it was their role as chosen people to “fulfil [sic] the evangelical promise, and cease to learn war any more.” These instructions echoed past epistles, so much so that the clerk of the meeting advised members to read past communications to buttress their faith. This recommendation, however, belied the changing nature of the relationship between British Quakers and the government under which they lived. Whereas previous epistles had warned members to “dwell alone and not mix with the surrounding nations”2 and to avoid “the revolutions in States and Kingdoms . . . matters, which are unsuitable for the peaceable followers of the Prince of Peace; who declared that his kingdom was not of this world,”3 the 1804 dispatch evinced a markedly different tone. The seemingly endless warfare of the previous decades had shifted the Friends’ perspective, and the yearly address sought to assuage the suspicions of those skeptical about Quaker loyalties. It thus counseled coreligionists to adopt a more conciliatory attitude toward those in power and to find ways to serve worldly authorities in good faith. “We can serve our country in no way more availingly, nor more acceptably to him who holds its prosperity at his disposal,” its authors reminded their fellow Quakers, “than by contributing, all that in us lies, to increase the number of meek, humble, and self-­denying christians.” Here, British Friends attempted to find an intersection between the interests of the divine and those of the state. This effort in and of itself made plain both the changing political landscape and the subsequent transformation of Friends’ relationship to it. Quakers no longer thought of themselves as wholly outside of the nation or as a purely oppositional force. Even their previous strategies of neutrality and passive noncompliance seemed no longer viable options. The pressures to conform to a homogenous body politic, to observe exclusionary definitions of citizenship, and to submit to the growing power of the government were all too strong. As a result, Friends had begun to see their existence as complementary to the apparatus of the

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state—­perhaps still not fully integrated into the world and its government, but at least as integral to it. Those Society members gathered at the 1804 yearly meeting manifested this shift as they searched for a point of intersection between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Britain. They arrived at charity. Describing charitable impulses as the “opposite disposition” to war, they argued that charity flowed “from the same source, from which naturally springs, not only our testimony against war, but an unblemished conduct towards our government and our countrymen.”4 In this way, charitable deeds afforded them an opportunity to attend to both “obedience to the law of Christ” and “that stream of love to the brotherhood” of their compatriots. Friends, torn between the tenets of their religion and the obligations to a state perpetually at war, labored to find a common ground that did not force them to compromise their principles. They were optimistic that charity would provide this space, reminding their audience that it was the action in which Christians could “hopeth all things” and thus determined to allow God’s “still small voice” to speak through their philanthropy.5 Across the Atlantic, American Quakers had been striking a similar note of compromise and concession. The United States was not engaged in full-­scale war for the moment, but Friends recognized their increasingly untenable position in the new republic. Their attempts to remain neutral during the last war had failed, and their efforts to keep their distance from the new government were faltering. Many members thus urged their fellow Society members to join with their compatriots in peaceful efforts to improve society. In 1803, New York Meeting for Suffering published its To the Citizens of the United States. Deploying rhetoric that foreshadowed the newfound inclusivity of their British counterparts, they addressed the “fellow citizens” of “our country.” They too displayed deference to those in power, pledging to join with the “leaders of the people . . . to interpose in discounting and suppressing vice and immorality, with every species of oppression.”6 And they intended benevolence and reform to be their intervention in and contribution to civil society, as they believed they were called to be “examples of the believers in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity.”7 In so doing, they prefigured the efforts of their British coreligionists to allay the resentment and suspicion harbored by their compatriots and to earn the trust and cooperation of their government. The charitable impulses of both American and British Friends were thus, at least in some measure, an acknowledgment of the growing power of the state in the early nineteenth century. Heeding the sway of patriotism

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and yielding to the force of nationalism, they slowly reapproached the nation. In styling their philanthropy as an overlapping obligation of sacred and profane citizenship, they accepted for the first time that they had commitments to both. And as they sought to find common ground with their compatriots, they also recognized that they shared a mutual fate. Finally, they conceded the authority of worldly governments when lobbying politicians to pass legislation that advanced their reform agenda—­a striking reversal from prior decades when Friends insisted that divine law superseded civil law and that they were therefore exempt from it. Taken together, these concessions undermined the claims to sovereignty and independence that Society members had asserted during wartime. After more than a half century of warfare, American and British Friends had accepted their station as part of the geopolitical nation. At the same time, however, Friends on both sides of the Atlantic engaged and confronted their governments on a set of issues broader and more contentious than at any time over the last half century. Prior to the American Revolution, British Quakers in particular had confined most of their public appeals to matters directly concerning war and peace, while their American counterparts had operated with a considerably limited view of the appropriate scope of government even when they dominated colonial legislatures. Individual members of local meetings may have worked on behalf of other charitable causes, but the Society as a whole did not. The new political landscape in the postrevolutionary Atlantic changed this orientation, as American and then British Friends reconstituted their membership and their mission. The antislavery crusade would be the first entrée into the formal political sphere for many Quakers, highlighting the ways that Friends’ understanding of their identity and their role in society had dramatically changed. This expansion of the Society’s charitable work, combined with at least a partial acquiescence to state power, evinced a remarkable shift in political and theological perspective. As several Quaker historians have noted, members of the Society came to understand themselves as a “holy remnant” following the American Revolution.8 Here, the book of Isaiah continued to shape their identity as a community, as Friends believed themselves analogous to the ancient Israelites who had survived the Assyrian invasion and to whom God promised salvation. These scriptural verses proved particularly important to Friends, as God pledged to protect “my people who live in Zion” and to judge harshly their corrupt rulers at a future day of reckoning, warning: “Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue

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oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights, and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people.”9 Revealingly, the aforementioned 1804 epistle by London Yearly Meeting referenced these same biblical passages to inspire its audience to join in British Friends’ charitable efforts. They reminded their audience that good works would hasten a time when “the wolf and the lamb shall feed together,” a hope shared by the 1803 New York Yearly Meeting epistle, which expressed trust that social reform would usher in a more perfect world in which “swords would be beat into ploughshares.”10 These allusions, particularly when invoked in the justification of charity, reinforced Quakers’ fervent belief that God called them to seek justice and enact mercy above and against the oppressive and corrupt government that ruled them after the defeat of their holy nation. Their identity as a “holy remnant” was there­ fore an outgrowth of their millennialist theology, as God had uniquely tasked them with making a more perfect world through their good works and would reward them for their resistance to those earthly governments that defied the divine desire for justice. This new religious identity reflected the changing political identity of Friends in the late eighteenth century. Indeed, these scriptural verses seemed apposite to those Society members searching for meaning in the ascendency of the state and for comfort in the dwindling of their own power and independence. Quakers still believed in a God who had “removed the boundaries of nations,” but, after five decades of sustained war for independence and empire, recognized that the time for God to regather the scattered faithful was not at hand. Until that day, it was their duty as a holy remnant to “prepare the way for the people” and to “raise a banner for the nations” so that “the nations will see your righteousness.” They remained a people apart even in loss, but their task was now to shine a mirror to those in power and to lead their compatriots by example. This chapter begins by exploring the Society’s embrace of philanthropy in the years following the American Revolution, arguing that this turn allowed Friends to muster and mobilize their members after the renting of their holy nation in the wake of independence. In calling their coreligionists to charity, the reformers used this new crusade to bind their community. They redefined the persecution and injustice against which they struggled to safeguard their group cohesion as well as to sustain the same sense of urgency that had moved Friends to a peace witness during the war. Their sense of mission also acted to preserve the Friends’ holy nation amidst a new political landscape, retaining their identity as “chosen people” despite

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conceding that “the government under which they lived” had, in fact, become “their government.” In this way, they did not abandon the language and ideology of Zion but subsumed it to the language and ideology of nationalism. This is not to say that Friends found consensus with their compatriots or reached an accord with those in power. The core tenets of Quakerism did not change as its members moved into the nineteenth century. But as Friends pursued their reform agenda within the legislative and ideological boundaries of a nation-­state, they quickly realized the necessity of involving outsiders in their mission. Disliked and mistrusted by those in power, Quaker activists recruited other men and women deemed acceptable by the establishment to serve as the public face of their movements. Society members downplayed their involvement and control, focusing their efforts instead on building the infrastructure of the benevolent organizations in which they participated. Their contributions become clear when we recognize the remarkable connections across national borders that existed between reformers. This chapter details how Friends served as political, cultural, and economic “brokers” in nineteenth-­century reform movements, drawing on their vast transatlantic networks to foster key relationships across political boundaries. This interconnectedness reveals the resilience of the Quakers’ Zion tradition, as itinerant ministers in particular labored to maintain their transatlantic connections following independence. Worldly governments remained suspicious of these ties, as they undercut the sovereignty of national borders and laws. The Zion tradition also persisted in that Friends continued to believe that they spoke for God on earth and thus pursued this reform agenda with the same missionary zeal they brought to building and maintaining their holy nation. Society members understood their task was to perfect a fallen world, and directed their charitable impulses toward advocating peace, abolitionism, progressive education, and the rights of women, the poor, and indigenous peoples. Their perception of divine sanction led Friends to impugn the corruption and hypocrisy of those powerful people who proved impediments to their reform agenda. Their constant haranguing vexed the political and merchant classes, and yet this chapter also suggests that Friends’ critique struck an even deeper chord. Each of these reform causes they championed undermined the pathways of political and economic power in the early nineteenth century. To advocate for these causes was not just a challenge to the privilege of the ruling class but to the entire system of governance. As such, Friends’ charitable endeavors did not advance the agenda of the state. Instead, this activism perpetuated their antagonistic relationship to those in

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power by criticizing the extant systems and structures of inequality. Their charity may have earned Society members the respect and cooperation of some of their peers, but their strident critique of power did not earn the same from their government. Of course, Quaker transnationalism was always as much a lived reality as it was a prophetic vision for the future. Inspired by the universalism of the Zion tradition, Friends espoused a cosmopolitanism that infused their activism and inspired their fellow reformers. Indeed, as Society members inducted fellow reformers into their transnational network, they played a crucial role in inaugurating what Benjamin Rush would term an “empire of humanity.” This “empire” described not just a physical community but also a prevailing ideology among its members. Adherents rejected the particular in favor of the universal, and infused their cosmopolitan sensibility with a commitment to altruism. This chapter concludes by arguing that, in this way, the Zion tradition left its mark on these reformers and their movements. The organizations in which Friends participated embraced a political logic that questioned both geopolitical borders and the hegemony of the state, demonstrating once again the ways in which the transnational orientation of Friends continued to animate their allies and provoke their critics. In all of these ways, the Zion tradition continued to shape Quaker charitable contributions. Understandably, this religious impulse remains outside the scope of most political histories of eighteenth-­and nineteenth-­century reform movements. It is, however, an important influence in the persistently contentious relationship between Friends, their governments, and their compatriots. A more complex story about Quaker philanthropy in this postindependence period also helps to illuminate the incomplete consolidation of power by the state in the wake of a half century of warfare. Friends acknowledged the sovereignty of the state by the end of the eighteenth century, but the benevolent organizations and reform movements they joined and led remained extrastate spaces well into the nineteenth century. The transatlantic connections fostered by philanthropists suggested the continued permeability of geopolitical boundaries while their strident critiques of governmental inaction (or action) disrupted the homogeneity, consensus, and submission those in power sought of the citizenry.

A People Zealous of Good Works London Yearly Meeting opened its 1804 address with a familiar scriptural verse, urging the audience to recognize the providential nature of this

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historic moment and reminding them that they were “a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people: that ye should show forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” The intent of this allusion had changed, however, as rather than counseling withdrawal and segregation as in sermons past, the authors purposefully evoked British Public Friend Samuel Fothergill’s clarion call from almost a half century past. In one of his famous Eleven Sermons, he too described Friends as “a people united to [Christ], all dear to one another, a royal priesthood, a holy nation” before deviating from the biblical verse to add that Quakers were also “a peculiar people zealous of good works.”11 Almost fifty years prior, Fothergill intended this last clause both to differentiate Friends from other Protestant sects and to redirect their energies away from formal governance and toward philanthropy.12 “Remember,” he urged his audience, “upon you must shortly devolve a cause, greater than the cause of empires or of Kingdoms, or the general state of mankind; that you are to act for God upon the earth, to shew forth his praise.”13 In light of this important and grave responsibility, he pleaded with Friends to ask themselves continually, “What have I to do with the welfare of another?” He lamented that some members of the Society had forgotten the importance of helping others and argued “this hath greatly obstructed . . . the progress of our Sion.”14 Friends heeded his call. Quakers had long been associated with charity toward one another, of course, but their efforts began to reach outward in the mid-­to-­late eighteenth century. In examining the beginnings of this metamorphosis, Sydney James has argued that this shift was a result of Friends’ withdrawal from formal politics after the Seven Years’ War, while Jack Marietta has suggested that it also stemmed in part from the efforts of midcentury activists to reform the Society.15 As Fothergill’s sermon makes clear, both of these factors contributed to the upsurge in Friends’ philanthropy. His sermon also highlights, however, the continuing influence of the Zion tradition and the importance of the Quakers’ holy nation in directing these efforts. It is telling that one of the Friends’ first systematized attempts at charity in the American colonies was the Friendly Association, an organization led by Israel Pemberton to provide assistance to native peoples in the Pennsylvania backcountry, and the efforts coordinated by Anthony Benezet to aid the Acadian refugees in Philadelphia.16 Both of these endeavors reached beyond the borders of the Society to provide relief for other displaced, marginalized, and, in the case of the Acadians, stateless peoples. In the mid-­to-­late eighteenth century, war claimed the attention and resources of Society members and directed much of their charitable energies

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toward the relief of its collateral damage. In some areas, particularly in Great Britain and in New England, the war and its consequences divided and dispirited Friends. As one scholar wrote of the Society in York, “Quakerism by the 1780s had degenerated into a state of internalized apathy. Much of its original verve and vigour had disappeared.”17 Those Friends who remained after the war’s end began to see philanthropy as a way to reinvigorate the Society and to unite its membership behind an organizing principle and goal. They also understood it as a way to maintain their political influence and to resist the disempowerment and marginalization they incurred as a result of their opposition to the late war. As a result, those members who remained after the War of Independence began to embrace a more comprehensive set of reform causes and to build coalitions that reached beyond the borders of their Society. It is during this period of their history that Quakers earned a reputation for their overwhelming philanthropic efforts, as charity became another way not only to knit together their far-­flung community but also to preserve the fervor and commitment of the wartime years. Historians have long noted the explosion of Quaker activism following the American Revolution. Several scholars, most notably David Brion Davis and Christopher Brown, maintain that Quakers’ interest in benevolent organizations was a way of smoothing over conflicts with those in power and regaining the approbation of their compatriots. Davis, in fact, expanded on Sydney James’s thesis, arguing that it was precisely their efforts on behalf of social reform that bolstered within Friends the sense not only of being “a people among people” but actually caused them to feel “a part of the sovereign people.”18 The praise earned by British Friends for their early efforts on behalf of the antislavery cause propelled them forward, Brown argued, as it was a way for them to secure the trust and esteem of the government. For these authors, then, the American Revolution was the defining event for Friends, inspiring and impelling them to engage their compatriots and their governments in a conversation about social reform. At the same time, scholars who trace the multifaceted relationship between governments and reform organizations during this period disagree as to whether philanthropy actually served the interests of the state. Hugh Cunningham argues that “both at a civic and national level, charity lent, or was intended to lend, legitimacy to what were, in a revolutionary age, often fragile structures of power.”19 This statement would support the claim that Friends sought to repair the wartime damage to their Society through participation in those charitable endeavors that would strengthen state power. A few chapters later, however, Joanna Innes reminds us in her essay that those in power remained wary of reform movements. “In

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an era when the triumph of liberalism was by no means complete,” she contends, “states’ willingness to tolerate truly autonomous organizations was uneven and variable. . . . Free-­floating associations of citizens active in the public sphere had the potential to unsettle most late eighteenth-­and early nineteenth-­century regimes.”20 According to Innes, newly elected or established authorities worried that these groups could accrue too much visibility and power and that they would use this influence and their substantial networks of resources and supporters to challenge those in power. Reform societies, in other words, could be interpreted as subversive and even seditious—­a fact of which Friends were all too aware.21 Although not their main focus, this body of literature serves to highlight the complex nature of Friends’ engagement with their government amidst a fluid and even volatile political landscape in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Quakers attempted to negotiate a new political identity, certainly in the wake of and in reaction to independence, but more as a means of responding to the rising power of the state, the increasing sway of nationalism, and changing ideas about citizenship. These new political realities caused the intrasocietal conflict identified by Brown (a conflict that would eventually result in a series of schisms among the American Friends) that would push Quakers on both sides of the Atlantic toward a more active engagement with their governments and their compatriots. In part, this shift mirrored similar attempts by other reformers and thus represented larger changes in politics and society. As Robert Gross notes, the charitable impulse [among individuals] was being directed toward a more systematic institution-­centered approach to long-­term problems emerging from the new social order—­organized philanthropy . . . came to be equated less with the considerate feelings and charitable acts of individuals than with the actions of voluntary societies and other institutions through which citizens proceeded to shape public policy and the welfare of their more complex communities.22

This history of Quaker benevolence after the American Revolution bears out this claim. Individual Friends certainly expressed concern for a broad and diverse range of matters. A few even became known for their eloquent and liberal support of efforts to alleviate poverty, encourage temperance, reach equitable agreements with indigenous peoples, or provide a religious education to the disadvantaged. But for the most part, these efforts remained specific to the individual Friend, as early Quakers “emphasized the workings of individual conscience, rather than specific political proscriptions.”23

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Indeed, until the American Revolution, the only organized altruism within the Society included distributing relief to needy members of their religious community. In the years following the American Revolution, however, Friends began to reject their former insularity and join voluntary societies in large numbers. They also reoriented their advocacy, as Gross claimed, adopting a broader and more complex understanding of community as well as embracing a new role as political lobbyists. Early efforts at reform, particularly antislavery, reflect this transformation. Quakers’ attention to the issue began as a religious concern and remained confined to the Society. Pairs of Friends, usually recognized ministers, visited other members who owned or traded in enslaved peoples. Intending to purify their religious community of this worldly and corrupting influence, they labored with these individuals until the slave owners or dealers, literally, saw the light or left the Society. This campaign was nearly complete by the time of the Revolution, at which point some Friends began to envision the more ambitious goal of extending their antislavery efforts to the world outside of the Society. Quakers thus began to pen and publish tracts, similar to their appeals during wartime, addressed to elected officials or to the general public. They also waited on members of Congress and Parliament, merchants, and ministers of other religious sects. Their efforts on behalf of antislavery evinced the recognition that long-­term problems required institutional solutions and that the goal of these institutions was to influence legislation. These early efforts, however, netted little traction or success. Friends had taken the lead among white antislavery activists, but their labors failed to cohere into a larger, broader movement. In trying to understand why, historians have correctly focused on the peculiar nature of Quakers’ relationship with their governments and their compatriots. As Christopher Brown perceptively argues, “the distinctive qualities that helped make Friends pioneers in the antislavery movement—­their tradition of principled witness, their separation from church and state, their marginal place in British society—­handicapped their campaign.” Kirsten Sword concurs, highlighting the “political liabilities attendant on Quakers’ marginal status in most of the British Empire.” “To push antislavery onto the imperial stage and to create a genuine mass movement,” she argues, “they would have to persuade Britons and the colonists that opposition to slavery was [more than] . . . the delusional agenda of a marginal and overzealous religious sect.”24 Friends were all too aware of these facts, recognizing from the outset that their poor reputation would be a hindrance to their efforts. For Brown, these obstacles resulted mainly from their “distance from polite society.”25

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And, to be sure, many outsiders did continue to think of Quaker habits as off-­putting and of their doctrine as either old fashioned or sacrilegious, depending on their religious inclinations. But more important, people of all political stripes harbored misgivings about Friends’ loyalty to the government. Society members remained tainted by their opposition to war, and, as the 1804 screed by the Anglican Vicar William Richardson demonstrated, their pacifism was to be a sin neither their governments nor their compatriots seemed ready to forgive. Such misgivings complicated Friends’ tentative steps to move beyond the borders of their Society, as the resentment harbored by their neighbors thwarted their efforts to persuade others to join their cause. Moreover, the suspicion with which those in power still treated them further thwarted their attempts to transmute their religious impulses into broader political movements. Those in power were already only tepidly supportive of independent benevolent associations and were thus not prepared to accept an organization run by a group of known agitators with a history of questionable loyalty.26 Quaker activists acknowledged from the beginning that their participation in these movements would provide only more fodder for worry and slander, and so they began to forge important working relationships with outsiders in the late eighteenth century. They hoped that alliances with popular and influential leaders, such as Benjamin Franklin in the United States, William Wilberforce in Britain, or Jacques Pierre Brissot in France, would eliminate the reservations still held by their compatriots and their governments.

The Power of Combination For many Society members, such alliances not only were new but also went against the sectarian tribalism that had defined their religious community since its inception. Yet Friends quickly recognized the political capital to be gained through these working relationships, and they proved eager to establish coalitions with outsiders. They readily sought out any among their compatriots who shared their inclination toward reform, remarkably willing to find common ground with even those who held strikingly different political and religious beliefs. As one Quaker activist wrote, it is not essential that men should have the same speculative views to enable them to harmonize, or that they should pursue precisely the same plan to benefit mankind, if they can but recognize in each other the same benevolent feeling. . . . I am unable to see why the sincere under all these

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views should not be considered the arms, legs, &ct &ct of universal improvement and it grieves me to see them indifferent to (much more to see them enraged against) each other. I hope it will not always be so.27

Of course, Friends were not unique in this regard. As one non-­Quaker reformer wrote, “our experience in these days, have shown us, that almost every enlightened purpose may be effected, by the power of combination.”28 But for members of the Society, notorious for their severity and insularity, to form such coalitions was quite noteworthy indeed and illustrated a different political philosophy, identity, and plan emerging among its membership after the Revolution. Several scholars have credited this “power of combination” with the burgeoning success of Friends’ reform causes in the late eighteenth century.29 Significantly, however, Friends’ strategy went beyond forming partnerships with outsiders. Many members believed that the resentment toward them was so overpowering that even the presence of esteemed colleagues could not whitewash their presence. Quaker activists therefore made a concerted and coordinated effort to downplay and even erase their presence in these organizations. This decision may have been due in part to their Christian meekness and humility, but the motivating and decisive factor was more a profound anxiety that their poor reputation would tarnish the very causes they so cherished. Quakers thus purposefully faded into the background, content to provide infrastructural support rather than public leadership. In a clear example of such efforts, Pennsylvania Friend Robert Vaux wrote to Massachusetts native Noah Worcester, the leader of the American peace movement, to assure him that Friends would support the cause of peace in every capacity—­but not publicly. Far from being reticent, Vaux was only thinking strategically. Quakers, he argued, were too polarizing and could adversely affect the reception of Worcester’s work.30 Vaux worried that after Friends’ well-­known protests against the Revolution and the War of 1812, an open connection with them could damage the fledgling movement. He thus suggested a compromise in which Society members would contribute all possible resources with as little possible detection: to give, as it were, their gifts in secret.31 Vaux was not alone in his diagnosis of the situation for Friends or in his response to it. In a telling aside, one historian has noted, “all their [Friends’] efforts . . . had been so quietly managed as to pass almost unnoticed.”32 This characterization captured the purpose and intentionality with which Quakers assumed supporting positions within these larger reform movements. Friends, though by no means secretive, nevertheless took steps to ensure

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that their antislavery efforts would not be foregrounded. British Quakers, for example, asked Granville Sharp to lead the committee established by their own yearly meeting. And though they were among the first white people to advocate abolition, they encouraged Thomas Clarkson, the Rev. Ramsey, and, later, William Wilberforce to become the spokespeople for the movement. In the United States, Pennsylvania Friends invited Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush to be the leaders and thus public faces of their abolition society. In another deliberate attempt to obscure their participation, Quakers often wrote unsigned editorials and pamphlets. Editorials supporting a number of social reform causes, for example, might be signed simply “A Friend,” deliberately playing on the double entendre of that handle. Audiences doubtless knew that these unnamed authors were members of the Society; in several other cases, however, Friends went to even greater lengths to conceal their involvement. Scholars have identified William Dillwyn and Samuel Allinson (a British and an American Friend, respectively) as the unnamed coauthors of the introduction to abolitionist Sharp’s An Essay on Slavery.33 Here, these two Quaker ministers sacrificed civic recognition (and scrutiny) by remaining anonymous. Kirsten Sword maintains that such efforts were typical, as Friends frequently disguised their authorship to project an appearance of multifaith organization and to avoid tainting antislavery with the stigma of Quakerism.34 This strategy allowed these activists to avoid becoming the public faces of their respective reform movements, as they firmly believed that a direct, singular, and public association with the Friends might adversely affect the cause. Instead, they purposefully assumed a secondary status, preferring to form the backbone of organizations instead of taking the helm. Despite these ancillary roles, Society members were a, if not the, driving force within many eighteenth-­and nineteenth-­century benevolent organizations and social reform movements. Certainly, scholars have long recognized their importance to these organizations, compiling important and helpful lists of key activists on both sides of the Atlantic and computing the percentages of Friends within these organizations. Their findings substantiate the claims of many nineteenth-­century reformers that Friends (especially Quaker women) were overrepresented in many social justice movements.35 And yet, the Society provided more than just sweat equity. Drawing in particular on the recent turn in the historiography toward transatlantic ties among reformers, historians are now beginning to recognize the ways in which the leaders of key reform movements drew on Friends’ transatlantic networks of ministers and members to further their causes.36

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This work is crucial to understanding the ways that many social reform movements were so thoroughly transatlantic that scholars have suggested a model of “rooted cosmopolitan[ism]” for understanding these late eighteenth-­century activists.37 Quaker ministers are critical in this recovery work, as the broad and penetrating nature of their communications grid aided in the important process of “transnational diffusion”: the dissemination of antislavery thought and action across geopolitical borders. Here, network theorists offer particularly useful frameworks for illuminating the ways in which the transnational connections that formed the very foundation of the Zion tradition were the essential component in allowing Friends to position themselves as political and cultural “brokers” for reformers in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Specifically, Quaker activists used “direct ties” (network, structural, and relational connections) to recruit and incorporate disparate participants (“adopters”) into a larger, preexisting web created and maintained by their itinerant ministry for more than a century. Correspondence among yearly meetings also served as preestablished “modes of communication” that facilitated contact between far-­ flung activists, connections strengthened by the travels of Public Friends. Many scholars of later, more structured reform movements in the midnineteenth century have only hypothesized as to how these stronger, broader, and more formalized networks were generated. As a result, definitions of their origins, composition, and diffusion, as well as a clear understanding of all their moving parts, remain rather nebulous. Thus, in Margaret McFadden’s study of the nineteenth-­century suffrage movement, Golden Cables of Sympathy, she could only postulate “the existence of a pre-­organizational matrix or network of international experiences and relationships which then served as the basis upon which an autonomous movement . . . could later develop in the Atlantic community.”38 Indeed, scholars have begun only recently to take seriously the importance of transatlantic friendships among these key reformers, and yet these avenues of transatlantic communication were clearly essential in establishing, promoting, and achieving the goals of several eighteenth-­and nineteenth-­century reform movements.39 A cursory analysis of Friends’ contributions suggests the importance of these connections to the success of antislavery and other eighteenth-­and nineteenth-­ century social movements. As the Society expanded its borders to include other likeminded reformers, it interwove these new recruits into a preexisting web of correspondents, travelers, authors, and lobbyists. This web was the backbone of the Quaker holy nation, the formal and informal means by which Friends administrated their community: exchanging information, conducting business, adjudicating disputes, and dispensing assistance.

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Moreover, the last half century of warfare and persecution meant that members already were mobilized and the community integrated. Public Friends in particular labored to keep their coreligionists involved and inspired. These reformers, therefore, were joining a movement already in progress, an extensive and effective organization in which all of the legwork had already been completed. The transnational networks forged and maintained by the Society of Friends and its itinerant ministry proved indispensable to outsiders, as such infrastructure allowed activists to cull resources, services, and ideas from an array of well-­connected and well-­appointed people. Most outsiders did not recognize or appreciate the full range of these networks, as they considered the inner workings of the Society, like most of Quaker belief and practice, to be hopelessly eccentric and complex . They quickly realized the utility of their association with the Friends, however, as they benefited enormously from the systems of transmission Quakers had created. British Public Friend William Allen attempted to explain the extent of this transatlantic Quaker grid in a letter to Noah Worcester: We proceed in this way—­we endeavor to get persons who will act as correspondents in the different parts of Great Britain. To these persons we send the tracts as they are published. . . . If the correspondent likes the tract, he has only to ask whether three or four of his Friends [the capital “F” here referred intentionally and explicitly to members of the Society] will contribute a few shillings each & when that is done he writes to London for 100—­this means a wide circulation is ensured at little or no expense to the committee.40

Worcester, desperate to reach and attract a wider audience for his peace movement, reported himself stunned by the scope and efficiency of this organization. He praised “their intimate connections . . . and method of intercourse,” and advised other reformers to draw on Friends’ resources if possible, as “they have it in their power to afford abundant aid in any case which meets their approbation.”41 Thomas Clarkson experienced similar feelings of shock and gratitude after his very first meeting with Public Friend William Dillwyn, a founding member of the Committee to Seek the Abolition of the Slave Trade and the Gradual Emancipation of Slaves. In the process of explaining the Society’s infrastructure, Dillwyn informed a dumbfounded Clarkson that Friends had more than 50,000 adherents in England and that they communicated through an established network of 150 correspondents. They now used this

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Fig. 4.1. Thomas Clarkson, The History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-­Trade by the British Parliament (1808). Image courtesy of QSCHC. Here, Clarkson uses the metaphor of smaller tributaries flowing into a larger river both to trace the evolution of the movement and to argue for its irreversibility.

system of contacts, he affirmed, to garner support for antislavery. Clarkson would later remark that he had relied almost entirely on this network of Friends to build his broader movement, famously placing Quakers at the headwaters of his antislavery river (see fig. 4.1).42 As these examples demonstrate, Friends’ most significant contribution to the early stages of these fledgling movements was their impressive host of contacts and the ways in which they employed these connections to bring together disparate and distant activists. Friends used the relationships

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forged through their itinerant ministry to introduce fellow reformers to influential allies outside of the Society and outside of their home countries. For example, Quakers greatly aided Noah Worcester in his efforts to reach an international audience. He enjoyed strong although perhaps unlikely support from a dedicated correspondent in Pyrmont in Prussia. It is unclear as to whether this follower was a Friend, but either way, Quakers had facilitated the connection. William Allen translated Worcester’s Solemn Review into French and German, and both James Pemberton and Sarah Harrison distributed peace pamphlets on their respective journeys through war-­torn Prussia.43 In these ways, Public Friends in particular mobilized the personnel and infrastructure of their holy nation to serve the needs of these reformers and to amplify their impact. The woman’s movement was not organized sufficiently in the early nineteenth century to take advantage of the network of Quaker contacts and hosts, though it was clear that individual female reformers also ben­ efited from the reputation and connections of the Friends early on.44 The most infamous example of just such a woman was undoubtedly the notorious Dorothy Ripley, the “Universal Friend” who crossed the Atlantic eight times on her quest to, among other things, free the slaves, educate the poor, eliminate the death penalty, “edify” American Indians, promote the rights of women, and ensure world peace.45 Philadelphia and Virginia Friends used their contacts to set up a meeting between Ripley and the current US president, Thomas Jefferson, as well as with the leaders of several American Indian nations. Ripley relied heavily on Friends’ hospitality and financial contributions, though admittedly, many Friends intended much of this money simply to make her go away. She was not technically a Quaker, a fact that both greatly pained Friends and that they took great pains to broadcast, although many people continued to receive Ripley as though she were a member of the Society. She was granted a platform to speak in New York City and was welcomed into the Seneca nation principally because of her (assumed) identity as a Friend. More to the point, she performed her identity as a Quaker not only through speech and dress but also through her interest in reform. Though Friends rejected her as a member of their Society, Ripley continued to follow their traditions as she pursued her interest in philanthropy. In this way, Ripley’s status as a quasi-­Friend helped her to establish contact with key people, procure necessary funds, and justify her involvement in charitable causes and organizations. The clearest and best-­known instance of Friends’ roles as transnational “brokers” was their sponsorship of Thomas Clarkson and the antislavery

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crusade. During a trip to France, Clarkson made contact with Brissot de Warville, an early French abolitionist who had formed the Société des Amis des Noirs.46 This simply dressed and plain-­spoken man fashioned himself after the Quaker example, a people whom he not only emulated but defended in print.47 Once he discovered Clarkson’s connection to the Society, he immediately agreed to translate works for the British abolition society and to write a preface to the translation endorsing their work.48 Years later, Clarkson also opened a correspondence with King Henry of Haiti through the efforts of French émigré and Quaker minister Stephen Grellet. When discussing their mutual respect for members of the Society, Clarkson told King Henry, “wherever you see a Quaker, you see a friend to the distressed.”49 Indeed, Clarkson praised Quakers so thoroughly and repeatedly that Grellet wrote to an acquaintance in Philadelphia, “I find it difficult to impress on the minds of this people [Haitians], that all persons, who from virtuous or philanthropic sentiments, advocate the cause of humanity are not of our society, for they have an idea that every good man is a Quaker and that none but good men are Quakers.”50 Clarkson’s famed meeting with Czar Alexander of Russia was similarly made possible by his Quaker connections. The Czar was intrigued by the Society of Friends and paid a surprise visit to one of their London meetings while traveling through England on his way to the Paris peace conference in 1815.51 Clarkson, capitalizing on the Czar’s interest in the Friends, sent him a volume of his own writings bound with those of William Allen, Thomas Wilkinson, and Stephen Grellet (all transatlantic Public Friends). When the Czar recognized the three names of his hosts while in London, he agreed to meet with Clarkson. The two men formed an immediate and close bond as a result of their shared affinity for, identification with, and imitation of the Friends. For his part, Wilberforce approved of this budding relationship, disclosing to a close friend that Clarkson “would be regarded as half Quaker, and may do eccentric things with less offence than you or I could.”52 The Czar (along with many others) regarded Clarkson as an ally precisely because of his status as a quasi-­Friend, and as such, Wilberforce believed that Clarkson could accomplish more for the movement among these admirers of Friends than any other influential member of their abolition society. Worcester, Ripley, and Clarkson were perhaps rare in the extent to which they embraced the Friends and, in turn, the degree to which they were incorporated into the very fabric of the Society. And yet, whether or not other outsiders understood all of the mechanisms by which the Society functioned, it is clear that many benefited considerably from their working

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relationships with its membership. Beginning in the late eighteenth century, reformers wrote to, lodged among, published with, and borrowed money from Friends. They used their political connections, drew on their financial assistance, studied their writings, and relied on the frequent travel of their ministry to expand the reach of their fledgling causes. In this way, Quakers were far from a marginalized people, preaching to the fringes of society. They had kept alive their Zion tradition by repurposing the infrastructure of their holy nation. Using their itinerant ministry to facilitate contacts among likeminded individuals, Friends culled together a scattered and marginalized minority through facilitating contacts and augmented the impact of these vulnerable movements. They served to inspire, unite, enable, and direct an activist community, allowing the Society to wield an influence far beyond its small numbers. Acting as “brokers” for these movements, Friends used their direct transnational ties and their extensive communication networks to encourage others to adopt their political ideology and thus advance their reform agenda. Quaker activists thus became savvy political actors through their involvement with these philanthropic causes, informed about worldly politics and intent on changing the systems and structures that perpetuated inequality and injustice.

Holy Remnants That the linchpins in these movements were almost always recognized Public Friends was no coincidence. The Quaker itinerant ministry had built an impressive network of patrons, correspondents, and travelers. But perhaps even more important, they also retained the transnational vision of the Zion tradition and the missionary zeal necessary to sustain and propagate it. The political landscape that these Friends confronted after the American Revolution may have necessitated a pursuit of legislative solutions, a tactic that required them to act within the borders of the nation-­state, but these minister-­activists did not abandon the transnational vision that defined their Zion tradition or the corresponding critique of nationalism that marked their religious and political identity. Indeed, the fact that most of the fulcrums in these networks were also acknowledged ministers underscores the fact that despite Friends’ decision to reapproach their governments and their compatriots, the transnational vision of the Society was not lost. In fact, the same Quakers who printed Clarkson’s treatises, funded Worcester’s peace societies, and hosted Ripley during her travels also continued to fill their epistles and sermons with condemnations of worldly corruptions and prophetic warnings about earthly divisions. Their willingness

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to work with outsiders, in other words, did not negate their strident critique of the very system they sought to influence and in which they intended to participate. As “holy remnants,” they foresaw a time when geopolitical borders would be rendered meaningless, earthly leaders humbled, and the perfectionism they sought through their activism achieved. In this way, the transnationalism of Friends provided more than structural support to these benevolent organizations. Their critique of patriotism, their willingness to confront government officials, and their cosmopolitan vision for the future marked the reform movements in which they participated. Friends continued to interact with their compatriots and their political leaders with skepticism and even antipathy. This distrust revealed a persistent unease with regard to the concessions and appeasement advocated by some reformers. Friends clearly recognized the sway of patriotism, as well as how it could expedite the attainment of legislative solutions, but this acknowledgment did not mean that they internalized patriotic rhetoric. Nor did it mean that they accepted the means by which those in power gained, projected, and maintained their control. Rather, Quakers continued to argue that these worldly corruptions caused violence and inequality. At times, their critiques were strident and their advocacy forceful. In the United States, Friends began a campaign to reform the new militia laws to secure the right to conscientious objection. In Britain, they petitioned for an exemption from ecclesiastical taxes and wartime levies and protested the military’s policies of impressment. Many Quaker ministers also worked alongside African American leaders across the Atlantic World and preached sermons to enslaved people that were at times so controversial that they were often closely observed and even outlawed and jailed by southern and Caribbean authorities and slave owners. At other times, however, their critique was subtler, as when Friends sought to draw attention to the inequality among citizens and urge the government to pursue more ameliorative policies. Such measures could sidestep conflict with those in power, as they sought either to expand already existing channels or to find extrastate spaces where they could exert influence without becoming directly involved in the apparatus of government. They tried to arbitrate land disputes between white colonists and American Indians and to serve as interpreters and advocates at treaty signings.53 Even though many of their members were influential and wealthy merchants, Friends persuaded people to stop shipping, buying, and using West Indian sugar and cotton. They established schools outside the purview of the nation-­state, offered free education to the “worthy” poor, and authored primers that advocated “universal benevolence,” instilling an ethos of reform within their pupils.54 They raised

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money for poor relief, orphans, widows, and veterans, and investigated and worked to reform hospitals, mental institutions,55 prisons56—­even the working conditions of miners and chimney sweeps.57 It must have seemed to those both inside and outside of the Society that there was no issue that Friends would not address. In keeping with their understanding of their role as “holy remnants,” Quaker activists used these campaigns to position themselves as a conscience or compass for the rest of the nation, urging their compatriots to reconsider who, exactly, constituted “the nation” and what kind of government they had built. Consider the preamble to the 1793 constitution of the New Jersey Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, founded and supported mainly by Friends: When we consider the principles which animated our forefathers to fly from tyranny and persecution, and seek an asylum in this then inhospitable though now favored land: when we contemplate our situation as citizens of a free and enlightened government, in full profession of the inestimable blessings of Civil and Religious Liberty . . . when we reflect that we are beings of one nature, acknowledging one common parent; we conceive it to be our duty to consult and promote the happiness of our fellow men, however diversified by colour, rank, or religion. It is our boast, that we live under a government founded on principles of justice and reason, wherein, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are recognized as the universal rights of men; and whilst we are anxious to preserve these rights to ourselves and transmit them inviolate to our posterity, we abhor that inconsistent, illiberal, and interested policy, which withhold those rights from an unfortunate and degraded class of our fellow creatures.58

The Quaker influence on this document was pronounced. The patriotic framing clearly foreshadowed the compromise advocated by the 1803 New York Yearly Meeting and the 1804 London Yearly Meeting. And yet at the same time, the reference to the persecution of their forebears, the pairing of civil and religious liberty, the language of universality, and the insistence on equal application of the nation’s founding principles are all in keeping with Quaker strategy and rhetoric. Even while working within the ideological and legislative framework of the nation, they advanced a critique of patriot­ ism and nationalism, inviting their audience to consider the exclusionary definitions of citizenship and the uneven application of rights and justice.

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More often, Friends’ censure was even more public and forceful than these subtle critiques, as when they directly and sometimes belligerently confronted the elite on matters of existing legislative policy and economic practice. Friends connected these issues to their own critique of worldliness, arguing, “When we contrast these excellent fruits, with those which are produced by the spirit of this world, is it not eminently observable, that they must originate from an opposite source? . . . These things . . . are obviously contrary to the humble, meek, forgiving spirit of our divine leader and pattern.”59 The New Jersey Society for the Promotion of the Abolition of Slavery drew similar connections, writing, “Rank and titles are adventitious things, and instead of designating rank or virtue, are frequently the baubles of imbecility, or the sparkling decorations of meretricious pageantry. Power too, as often unjustly acquired, [provides] no evidence of right.”60 In these examples, Friends used their religious identity and ideology to support their reform platforms, to criticize those in power, and to demand new methods of governance and new limits on the accrual of wealth. Such protests demonstrated the persistent tradition among Friends of publicly chastising government officials, as when a Friend in Virginia printed an open letter to George Washington condemning his lack of action on behalf of abolition. The author charged him with hypocrisy, querying whether he would support a rebellion by enslaved peoples that patterned itself after the American Revolution. He predicted that future generations would condemn the former president for purposefully “keep[ing] the governed in ignorance.” He widely publicized the fact that Washington had returned the letter “without a syllable in reply,” implying that the general could not tolerate “the plain and salutary language of truth.”61 Public Friend William Clark circulated his own letter targeting American political leaders. Asking, “what is a country without morals,” he pronounced his “disgust” with those in power for occupying “offices they cannot fill with honor to themselves or their country.” He suggested impeachment and predicted ruin, cautioning legislators to remember that “the Eyes of thousands are upon you.” To that end, he reminded his audience, “let us not trust too confidently in the security of our situation” but to keep in mind that they owed obedience to their worldly magistrates only so far “as it can be done consistently with morality and religion.”62 Baltimore Yearly Meeting added its collective voice to this chorus, issuing a similar challenge to (and denunciation of) Thomas Jefferson. Unlike the previous two targets, Jefferson did respond formally, writing that he “sincerely pray[ed] with you, my friends, that all the members of the human

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family, may, in the time prescribed by the Father of us all, find themselves securely established in the enjoyments of life, liberty, and happiness,” but Friends were not “easy” to let the matter rest and immediately appended a rebuttal to his rebuttal.63 This confrontational style of politicking would continue well into the nineteenth century. The New Jersey Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery appointed observers to watch the proceedings of the legislature and provide an account of their activities. The report was not positive, as the authors wrote: “We cannot but lament, that at this period of time, just after the close of the enlightened eighteenth century, the state of New Jersey in the centre of the American Confederacy, so celebrated throughout the Earth for liberty and independence, should countenance within its own bosom, the most passable violation of those boasted equal rights.”64 And Thomas Wistar, a Quaker minister and an (unpaid) Indian commissioner who fought for the rights of Native Americans, wrote to Friend Joseph Scattergood: “We are enjoined not to speak evil of dignitaries, but I fear that injunction was almost forgotten when I heard the chairman of the Senate Committee taking this ground for not ratifying the Cattaraugus treaty. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but if thou hast a spiritual six-­shooter, now let go every barrel of it.”65 In these examples, Friends’ commitment to reform causes tweaked patriotic assumptions, challenged the current practice of their governments, and confronted the power and hegemony of their political leaders. These tactics, emblematic of the Quakers’ Zion tradition, were carried over from their peace witness and now deployed by Society members in their philanthropic endeavors. Accordingly, those in power likewise relied on their own tried and true methods, agitating against Friends’ reform causes in much the same way as they did their antiwar work. When members of the Society focused their energies on the state legislature of North Carolina, one anonymous legislator complained bitterly about their “long pompous petitions,” warning that the “diabolical scheme of theirs [was] greatly injurious to the liberties and independency of this state.”66 He swore that much to “the terror of good people,” Friends were plotting secretly “under the cloak of religion” (a charge that so animated him, he repeated it twice). He accused them of “persist[ing] in their favorite unlawful schemes” and acting “daringly in open defiance of the laws of the state.” There was no room for their presence in the body politic, he insisted, claiming that they would “make such confusion endeavoring to rule, that an honest Citizen will scarcely be able to live in this part of the state.” In peace as in war, it seemed, Friends were cast as dangerous and unpatriotic and as a menace to their compatriots and their government.

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The petition that so angered him has not survived, but judging from his response, it likely challenged the government of North Carolina to enact policies that mirrored the lofty rhetoric of freedom and equality it propounded. Quaker antislavery remonstrations were noteworthy for the ways in which they attempted to draw particular attention to the hypocrisy of fighting for freedom while continuing the injustice and oppression of slavery. In so doing, Friends attempted to undercut these leaders’ claims to “Enlightened,” democratic, and just rules as well as to underscore that these authorities did not act for God or in a way that would merit divine approbation. Washington may have ignored their pleas and their denunciations, but revealingly, Jefferson and this anonymous legislator from North Carolina cared enough to engage these Friends and prevent what they considered to be a misappropriation of the rhetoric and intent of both the Revolution and the Bible. These examples illustrate Friends’ success in maintaining a public critique of these worldly leaders and thus keeping alive the important debates regarding the meaning and practice of liberty and democracy. As Society members attempted to demonstrate the insincerity of these leaders’ free-­thinking rhetoric and to dispute their claims to God’s sanction of their policies, they persisted in their efforts to redefine the role of government and the obligations of citizenship. Those in power warned that Quaker reformers and their allies envisioned an entirely new society, and authorities cautioned that, as in the French example, a new world order would accompany this new and “Enlightened” civilization. Of course, Friends would have never advocated anything as drastic or as violent as revolution, but their critics were correct that they were dissatisfied and disillusioned with the current political landscape. Their critique of patriotism and nationalism and their condemnation of worldly officials demonstrated the endurance of the Quakers’ Zion tradition even amidst their dedication to domestic reform. They retained a cosmopolitan vision for the world, rooted in biblical prophesy, that shaped their contributions to these movements. These sentiments percolated through reform movements in ways at once subtle and profound. Some network theorists argue that “emulation” is a both a precondition for and a consequence of transnational diffusion, thus demonstrating the importance of indirect ties (cultural linkages) among participants in a network. This “construction of sameness” is an important stage in transnational diffusion, as discernible cultural similarities create a perception of shared political circumstances. This perception of uniformity facilitates the dissemination of ideas and practices, encouraging local individuals to identify with international movements.67 In this regard,

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the ideological framework of Zion was as important as its infrastructure in uniting activists across national borders and in promulgating a definition of philanthropy anchored in cosmopolitanism. The clear effort by Society members to incorporate likeminded reformers into their networks signified their attempts to end their self-­isolation and to expand their political reach by enlarging their borders. Importantly, some of these reformers began to adopt some of the ideological underpinnings of Friends’ theology. Clarkson came to understand himself as “nine parts out of ten of their way of thinking,” trusting that he “was not [Quaker] in Name but I hoped in Spirit [for] . . . the more I had known them, the more I had loved them.”68 Clarkson, of course, was not alone. Worcester, Ripley, and Clarkson purposefully emulated Quakers both to reap the advantages of association and to reflect a similitude rooted in shared cosmopolitan identities and philosophies. Some admirers went even farther, as both Brissot and Czar Alexander claimed to have actually become Friends. In this way, Samuel Fothergill was prescient when he promised his audience that their charitable works would result in “the progress of Sion.”69 Friends’ theology, defeated by war, seemed to be gaining ground through philanthropy. Many of their critics seemed to have shared this perception, troubled that alliances between Friends and non-­Friends were enabling the spread of Quaker principles. One Methodist author urged his audience to remember the fickle and tribalistic nature of the Society, twice repeating: “Quakers have assumed the name friends to distinguish themselves from other denominations, whereas they are not friends to any, except their own order.” He then complained, “all the Quakers are deceived in their opinions of them­selves. Yea, as much as the Pharisees of old, for like them, they verily think they are doing God’s service.” This comparison, once again linking the Friends to the Hebrews, also revealed his worry about Quakers’ growing influence on contemporary political society. If Friends were Pharisees, his fellow Methodists were Sadducees, implying a fundamental disagreement as to the degree to which adherents should assimilate to dominant culture. Thus, he complained bitterly that Quakers “accounted [Methodists] as heathen men and publicans.” In his mind, Society members, like the Pharisees, were too rigid in their refusal to adapt to national culture, too insistent on a strict interpretation of scripture, and too robust in their understanding of how religion should govern one’s political activities.70 Cast in this light, his warning that Friends “are not friends to any” assumes a deeper meaning. It seems likely the author was increasingly leery of the relationships many of his coreligionists had forged with Friends through the antislavery cause and worried they might adopt Quakers’ religious and political positions on

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other matters. He thus specifically warned his readers away from the Society’s call to reject partisanship and patriotism in favor of a more universal understanding of the church. Like the Sadducees before him, he was loyal to his government and his wealthy peers, and rejected any attempts at forging a holy nation to compete with a worldly one. These concerns, while perhaps disproportionate, were not entirely un­ justified. As the authors of several important studies have demonstrated, the ways in which late eighteenth-­century activists understood their place in the world was remarkably transnational. Reformers like Benjamin Rush “believed themselves to be part of an international union of the ‘common friends of mankind throughout the entire world’ ”71 and considered their ac­ tions as pivotal contributions to the project of “extending the empire of humanity” and “diffus[ing] the beams of benevolence across the ocean.”72 These claims proposed an important connection between transnationalism and philanthropy, one perhaps best expressed by Thomas Paine, who famously wrote: “My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.”73 It is certainly an overstatement to identify the origin of this cosmopolitan sensibility with the Society of Friends, as Enlightenment philosophy and evangelical revivalism also strongly influenced many of these reformers. Yet surely, as the next chapter demonstrates, Quakers played a significant role in encouraging and circulating an ethos of transnationalism among their “friends.” And yet the Society’s version of transnationalism differed markedly from that of Rush or even Paine. These men saw themselves primarily as patriots: their friendships, business interests, and philanthropic causes may have extended across the ocean, but their allegiances did not. For them, patriotism was a virtue, and one that supplanted if not superseded their cosmopolitan sensibilities. Quakers, on the other hand, adhered to a transnational philosophy that was resolutely antinational. Their Zion tradition was predicated on a future in which nations and empires would fall away and the violence and corruption of worldly government would be replaced with the peace and purity of divine rule. Patriotism was at best a means to an end; at worst it was a sin to be avoided. In either case, it was not a virtue to be extolled or emulated. Friends lauded the universalism of God’s love and patterned their belief and practice after the all-­encompassing reach of the divine. In turn, they continued to reject the bounded and insular nature of nationalism. Increasingly, so did their allies. It is difficult, of course, to determine how formative Quakers were in shaping this orientation among their allies, but as those close to the Friends began to adopt aspects of their cosmopolitan

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ideal, the similarities in their logic and language multiplied. Brissot famously called himself “the Quaker.”74 Thomas Clarkson demonstrated the strongest parallels, maintaining in his Portraiture of Quakerism that Friends were correct in asserting that “according to the doctrines of the New Testament, no geographical boundaries fix the limits of love and enmity between man and man but the whole human race.”75 Another close associate of Friends, Noah Worcester, hoped “that by the concurrence of the friends of peace in all nations, and by the gradual illumination of the Christian world, a pacific spirit may be communicated to governments.”76 He too believed that the work toward peace would be an ecumenical struggle, urging his audience to recognize that “in different states and nations and nearly at the same time, God has been calling the attention of Christians to this subject.”77 And he certainly shared Friends’ hope that this universalism would result in a more just world, writing that “a cooperation in different countries is joyfully anticipated, in this great work of promoting peace on earth and goodwill among men.”78 Moreover, Friends’ allies evinced more than just a conviction in the rather standard cosmopolitan principle of universality. They joined Quakers in the firm belief that nations were temporal and therefore temporary, that their leaders were not sovereign, and that a merciful and yet insistent deity would punish those who ignored the causes of peace and justice. Thus, Worcester reminded his audience, “It is not to be expected, that nations will exist, as such, in a future world.”79 Famed Pennsylvanian humanitarian Benjamin Rush perhaps echoed this belief when he confessed his hope—­inspired by the ministry of British minister Samuel Fothergill for an “empire of humanity.”80 In these ways, their admirers used their praise of Friends to envision rational and benevolent religion and to suggest a path to human (and national) perfection in the same way that their detractors used their criticisms of Quakers to delineate definitions of citizenship and to define proper expressions of patriotism. And yet, in a sign of things to come, Friends themselves began to worry about the overlap between Quakers and their worldly allies. Such partnerships had been fruitful, but Quakers were becoming increasingly concerned that these close associations would erase the distinctiveness of the Society. Take, for example, the 1809 epistle sent by Baltimore Yearly Meeting to all of the quarterly and monthly meetings under its care. The authors recognized the desire among their coreligionists to join in the abolitionist cause. This reform work, they admitted, was divinely inspired and gave good cause for their compatriots to “behold you as a ‘City set on a hill’ conspicuous for

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your good works . . . [and] ‘work of righteousness.’ ”81 On the other hand, those in attendance at the yearly meeting worried that Friends were becoming too comfortable with worldly politics and too familiar with those outside of their own Society. They thus referred their members to a 1666 letter written by early Quaker luminary Stephen Crisp. The authors believed that it would help their fellow Quakers understand the “convulsions and overturnings which have in latter times taken place among the nations of the earth” and appreciate that such strife was all part of a larger divine plan. They thus quoted at length, as have I, from Crisp’s address: Secretly [God] shall raise up a continual fretting anguish among [divine] enemies—­so that being vexed and tormented inwardly, they shall seek to make each other miserable, and delight therein for a little season; . . . in this state shall men fret themselves for a season, and shall not be able to see the hand that turns against them; but shall turn to fight against one thing, and another thing, and a third thing; . . . and the nations shall be as waters, in which a tempest, a swift whirlwind is entered—­and even as waves swell up to the dissolution one of another, and breaking one of another; so shall the swellings of the people be.82

During these tumultuous times, the faithful were expected to remain apart, to remove themselves from the worldly strife, and to focus on the unity and peace that could be found in God. The epistle warned that “the flock shall be cut off from the fold” during this period, a scriptural passage frequently invoked by Friends to account for their scattered community forced to live under corrupt worldly leaders. The author thus reminded their fellow Quakers, “when you see divisions, and parties, and rendings in the bowels of nations . . . stand single to the Truth of God in which neither war, rent, nor division is.” If they could remain steadfast during this ordeal, the prophetic vision foretold of a world without nations and promised reward to those who remained faithful: But oh Friends! . . . [as] the Truth is but one, and many are made partakers of its spirit; so the world is but one, and many are partakers of the spirit of it . . . but they who are single to the Truth, . . . it will be well with them, and having a true sense of the power working in themselves, they cannot but have unity and fellowship with the works of it in the earth, and will not at all murmur against what is, nor wish, nor will what is not to be; these will be at rest till the indignation passeth over, and these

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having no design to carry on, nor no party to promote in the earth, cannot possibly be defeated nor disappointed in their undertakings.

Here, Friends believed that God desired them to maintain unity among their membership, particularly amidst the worldly strife that was to come. If they did so, nations would eventually fall away, and the more perfect reign of God would begin.

Voices Raised The very foundation of the Society’s familial, religious, economic, and political networks were explicitly and tenaciously transatlantic. These relationships formed the core of Quaker identity and connected Friends in ways more intimate, more profound, and more indissoluble than their friends and admirers Rush, Clarkson, or Brissot. While Friends may have agreed to find common ground with their compatriots and to work within the legislative structure of their governments for the purposes of advancing their reform agenda, they did not abandon their critique of nationalism. Their cosmopolitan vision surpassed the practical concessions required to move their reform agenda through the legislative process and, in fact, continued to challenge the ideological framework of nationalism and the increasing monopolization of power by the state. Friends’ unceasing critique of the exclusive definitions of citizenship and the profane nature of worldly empires cost them dearly. One by one, their allies distanced themselves from and even abandoned their Quaker collaborators. The reform movements, now well integrated and well funded (due in no small part to the Society’s efforts), became gradually more frustrated by Friends’ refusal to embrace the patriotic and, in the case of antislavery in the nineteenth-­century United States, jingoistic platforms of their agenda. Benevolent organizations increasingly perceived their interests as enmeshed with those of the state and believed their causes as a way to accrue “moral capital” in a volatile political landscape. They thus rejected Quakers’ cosmopolitan vision, deeming it misplaced in a world of nations and empires. As the nineteenth century waxed, reform movements and their leaders became increasingly parochial. Recovering the important contributions of Friends to the early stages of these reform movements recasts the relationship among religion, politics, and culture in the late eighteenth century. From the beginnings of the Society, the foundation of Friends’ philanthropy was first and foremost a

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religious one. Fothergill and other citizens of the Quakers’ holy nation had always used their service as a means to praise God, validate their faith, and improve the world around them in anticipation of the eventual return of Christ. But the Society adopted a broader and more public reform agenda following the American Revolution, a strategy that acknowledged a profoundly altered political landscape. By the time London Yearly Meeting convened in 1804, the governments of Great Britain and the United States had consolidated their power following a half century of warfare, and their critics had reignited the ignominious debate about Quaker allegiances. Those in attendance hoped that charity would provide a space for Friends to continue to follow divine precept while also serving the interests of their government and quelling the concern of their compatriots. Public Friends in particular saw their philanthropic mission as a means of reconciling their tattered (and scattered) religious community. The Zion tradition thus continued to inspire and impel Quakers to action. As a “holy remnant,” they believed their job was to fight the injustice tolerated or even imposed by their corrupted leaders. According to scripture, the chiliastic vision of peace and perfection could be achieved only once the world was ridded of these sins. Patriotism and nationalism were paramount among these transgressions, and Friends persisted in their forceful critique of both. In so doing, Quakers promulgated a cosmopolitan vision that thoroughly rejected geopolitical boundaries and divisions. This universalism inspired many of those with whom they labored in reform movements. But as the state grew in power and patriotic rhetoric proved a more adept inspiration for their compatriots than universalism, their allies gradually turned away from their Quaker partners. As chapter 5 explains more clearly, their fellow reformers abandoned Friends’ transnationalism as the cosmopolitanism of the late eighteenth century gave way to the hypernationalism of the nineteenth. The “empire of humanity” broke apart, it seemed, and Friends themselves became engulfed in an intrasocietal civil war. In those critical early years, however, Friends managed to reconfigure their Zion tradition in a way that would profoundly impact the political landscape in the decades bridging the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Their focus on philanthropy cohered their scattered community, worn by ceaseless war, and motivated them to reengage their governments. This mission repurposed and reinvigorated their itinerant ministry, a feat that would amplify the efforts of lone reformers all over the Atlantic World. Their activism also served to spread the Quaker “gospel,” as it were, introducing a cosmopolitan vision to countless people—­one that uniquely combined a

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commitment to good works with the strident critique of nationalism central to their Zion tradition. At the turn of the nineteenth century, it still seemed to Friends as though their earnest concern for the universal family of mankind might win the day. Thus, the 1804 London Yearly Meeting concluded: “Farewell. Be perfect; be of good comfort; be of one mind; live in peace: and the god of love and peace shall be with you.”83 The Friends’ holy nation ­was going to continue fighting.

chapter five

The Whole World My Country: A Cosmopolitan Society

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ike many a French traveler before and after him, Jacques Pierre Brissot was charmed by his 1788 journey through the United States. He believed that France could learn much from the fledgling American government, and openly advocated that his native country reform its own political system in light of the grand democratic experiment unfolding across the ocean. This agenda, laid out in his three-­volume tome Nouveau Voyage dans les États-­ Unis de l’Amérique Septentrionale (1789), only further enflamed his opponents during the roiling debates that exploded into violence that same year. And yet this work was not Brissot’s first foray into the eighteenth-­century fusion of travel writing and political pamphleteering, nor was it even his first attempt to use his account of the United States to spur others to action. Only a few years beforehand, he had published Examen Critique des Voyages dans l’Amerique Septentrionale de M. le Marquis de Chastellux (1786), principally using this more succinct work, as the subtitle implied, to defend those maligned by the Marquis de Chastellux: “the Quakers, the Negroes, the people, and mankind.” Brissot was incensed by Chastellux’s description of Friends, characterizing it as “poisonous,” and set out to refute his errors point by painstaking point.1 He argued that the Quakers were perhaps the only people in the world who possessed “good sense, sound judgment, good hearts, and honest souls.”2 They were also hardworking, rational, broadminded, and charitable. He rebutted Chastellux’s accusations that Friends had remained indifferent to the cause of liberty and the suffering of their compatriots during the American Revolution, arguing that members of the Society were true “men of feeling” and provided the sincerest example of sympathy for which one could hope. “All Quakers are his friends, his brethren,” he reminded his audience. 165

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He rejoices in their joy, he weeps for their misfortunes, he supports them in their distress; his friendship extends to the whole human race, it is his family, and he delights in doing good to all its members. May such principles spread and be imitated and practiced by all.3

Here, it becomes clear that Brissot understood Friends to be the very embodiment of the enlightened, cosmopolitan sensibility he so cherished, and he implored his audience to recognize them as authentic “citizens of the world.” He continued to build his case, arguing that “if Quakerism were universal, all mankind would form but one loving and harmonious family.”4 Only the Society of Friends, Brissot believed, could lead the world toward the integrated and peaceful future he envisioned. And yet an awkward, niggling detail complicated the debate between Brissot and Chastellux: at the time of publication, there were no Friends in France. For better or worse, this small fact hardly dampened his enthusiasm for the sect. It did, however, weaken his case. He thus publicly implored his famed correspondent Jean de Crèvecœur, author of Lettres d’un Cultivateur Américain and friend-­of-­the-­Friends, to join him in his defense of the Society. Crèvecœur demurred, but Brissot’s heated language caused the Italian writer Phillip Mazzei to join the fray. To Brissot’s horror, Mazzei confirmed Chastellux’s depiction of the Quakers in his Recherches Historiques et Politiques sur les Etats-­Unis de l’Amerique Septentrionale (1788). The increasingly splenetic dispute then spilled over into the newspapers, as countless editorialists filled the pages of Mercure National, La Bouche de Fer, La Feuille Villageoise, Le Patriote Francais, and other periodicals with their opinions of Friends. The French printing press, it seemed, was rolling out as many pamphlets debating the merits of Quakerism as it was the merits of monarchy.5 At first glance, the Society of Friends may seem an odd point of contention among these authors. The Society maintained an almost infinitesimally small membership in France, and certainly exerted no significant influence in the French economy or government. Given the stakes of French politics in the late 1780s, it seems incredible that so much ink was spilled dissecting a small religious sect whose few and far-­flung members most of the authors had never even met. But Friends loomed large in the French imaginary. French authors had commented almost obsessively on the Quakers since the origins of the sect in the seventeenth century. In the beginning, most joined with their British counterparts in declaring Friends dangerous and seditious. The Catholic hierarchy in particular reacted strongly against the Quakers’ austere Protestantism (not to mention their abolition of the

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priesthood). But Voltaire’s Lettres Philosophiques (1734) radically changed this perception when he introduced his audience to the archetypal “good Quaker”: a simple, honest, rational, and charitable Christian whom Voltaire popularized to critique the excesses and hypocrisy of French society and the hierarchy and superstition of the Catholic Church. By the 1780s, this image had profoundly influenced a generation of writers. The Quakers, and their home, Philadelphia, had become nothing short of utopic ideals. Verdant, and peaceful, Pennsylvania represented a new possibility: a just state watched over by tolerant and benevolent legislators and filled with an informed and engaged citizenry. French writers touted the home of William Penn as the idyllic republic, governed collectively, peacefully, and rationally, a place where national, religious, and linguistic differences mattered little. Friends, in turn, were cast as ideal citizens: hardworking, judicious, broadminded, and charitable. The Society itself, with its lack of religious ceremonies, was considered the epitome of reason and rationality and its members were all thought to be advocates of science, philosophy, and the arts. In short, Quakers had become the personification of the Enlightenment, the quintessence of the cosmopolitan sensibility revered by its proponents. The Society was considered living proof that such a world could exist, and a host of French philosophes rested their hopes for the future with the diffusion of Friends’ principles. Brissot’s first volume exhibited this emotional and intellectual investment in the Quakers. He, like so many other writers of his time, was besotted with the ideals of the Society of Friends. Or, perhaps more accurately, he was attracted to what he believed to be the ideals of Quakerism. The distance (and dissonance) between these two positions—­the actual faith and practice of Friends and what others perceived and portrayed them to be—­ was often dramatic. Nevertheless, Brissot insisted that the Society represented a new, enlightened, and cosmopolitan model of politics for the new, enlightened, and cosmopolitan world ushered in by the American Revolution. In this way, the rise and proliferation of the “good Quaker” registered the early appeal of and appeals to cosmopolitanism among Enlightenment philosophes. Friends’ espousal of transnationalism had initially gained currency among this enthusiastic cadre of supporters who, in turn, propagated their ideas far and wide. From the 1750s through the 1780s, these philo­ sophes hailed Friends as “citizens of the world” and praised them as true cosmopolites. The decline of the “good Quaker,” however, was also a harbinger of change. The French Revolution inaugurated yet another new world for many of these writers, as the violence of the Terror and the decades of war

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that followed destroyed the dreams of peace Quakers had embodied. As war spread across the European continent, Friends’ pacifism seemed a quaint reminder of a world that no longer existed. The strident nationalism that engulfed Europe during this period annihilated the cosmopolitan vision the Quakers represented. Their former supporters suddenly rejected Friends’ broadmindedness, instead celebrating the parochial virtues of patriotism and declaring country to be a higher, or at least a more urgent, calling than humanity. Joining their governments in condemning the “dangerous” and “traitorous” foundations of Quakerism, they now bolstered their own claims to allegiance and patriotism by turning their backs on the Friends. The particular triumphed over the universal, as violence underscored geopolitical boundaries and the closed fraternity of the nation displaced the worldwide family of Christendom. In the process, Friends became not only passé but, in fact, an anathema to this brave new world. Scholars have marked the French Revolution and the continental wars that followed as catalysts in the rising tide of European nationalism and the fading hopes of Enlightenment cosmopolitanism. The Society of Friends, or, more precisely, discussions about the Society of Friends, serves as an important bellwether in this transition. Indeed, in the same way that philosophes used their writings on Quakerism as proxies to debate the merits of cosmopolitanism and nationalism, an analysis of how these authors dramatically changed their minds about Friends in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries serves for contemporary historians as a means of unpacking this crucial historical moment. This chapter, therefore, explores the profound and abrupt transformation in attitudes toward Quakers by their champions-­turned-­critics to mark (and question) the foreclosure of the cosmopolitan possibilities Friends represented at the turn of the nineteenth century. In so doing, it traces the unsuccessful attempts by writers in both France and England to reconcile their former cosmopolitan hopes with the fierce nationalism they adopted during nearly twenty-­five years of war. At the same time, it suggests that a small group of the Quakers’ most committed allies kept alive their model of transnational community and religious sovereignty. This chapter is less concerned with “real” members of the Society of Friends than previous chapters. Instead, it seeks to understand what possibilities the Quakers represented to their allies and to their enemies. In keeping with my argument about the importance of Friends’ holy nation, it seems clear that philosophes’ admiration for and identification with the Society was rooted primarily in their perception of Friends as belonging to no country but somehow still able to cohere a coherent community. Here,

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Quaker claims to be citizens of Zion, a nation composed of far-­flung citizens voluntarily united by similar worldviews, resonated with reformers and revolutionaries, writers and thinkers. As Thomas Schlereth described in his classic study The Cosmopolitan Ideal in Enlightenment Thought, these men and women “came to realize that, although they belonged to a variety of countries, they were also a nation unto themselves” and that as members of that nation, they were “citizens of the world united in an effort . . . to promote ‘all useful Knowledge of Benefit to Mankind in General.’ ”6 Cosmopolites all, he continued, they “wished to be distinguished by a readiness to borrow from other lands or civilizations . . . [to be] eclectic in [their] philosophical and scientific outlook, synergistic in [their] religious perspective, and international in [their] economic and political thought.”7 Moreover, as Dena Goodman asserts, the men and women involved in this Republic of Letters “did not always see the need for an external form of governance.”8 These cosmopolitan men and women yearned to be “citizens of the world,” and thus championed the Society, which they believed had transcended the borders and divisions of nations and had eliminated the need for worldly governments through their renowned morality, as the very incarnation this ethos. This cosmopolitan worldview is perhaps most commonly associated with the writings of German philosopher Immanuel Kant, especially his 1795 essay Perpetual Peace. Pauline Kleingold has characterized his defini­ tion of true cosmopolitans as those who “regard all peoples of the earth as just so many branches of a single family and the universe as a state in which they are citizens.”9 Of course, Western and especially Christian biases colored these claims to the universal, but cosmopolites did dream in earnest of a world without the divisions of nationalism and imperialism and the violence associated with maintaining (or suppressing) these differences.10 Cosmopolitan philosophers imagined that peace, or at least a cessation of war, would follow an acknowledgment of a universal morality and the recognition of an interdependent world. Many imagined a world government or, at the very least, an international peacekeeping force.11 Once again, the pacifist Friends served as a model for these designs. Long recognized as peace proponents, their champions hoped that they might now become peacemakers. After all, eighteenth-­century Quakers continued to distribute William Penn’s 1693 work “An Essay toward the Present and Future Peace of Europe” (his subtitle, “by the Establishment of an European Dyet, Parliament, or Estates,” seemed even to prefigure some of Kant’s own proposals). And once again, their supporters pointed toward the example of Pennsylvania and the so-­called hundred-­year peace between Friends and

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American Indians. If the rest of society could only adopt the worldview and temperament of this Society, their admirers contended, the world would move toward a more perfect and more permanent peace. The violence of the 1790s, however, shattered their best hopes for an end to war. Moreover, the rising tide of nationalism that was both a cause and a consequence of these conflicts outstripped the spread of cosmopolitanism. Those not inspired by the patriotic calls of the war’s proponents were soon convinced by the punitive laws passed by governments at war. The case was not as stark in Britain as in France, but there too, the government called on British subjects to contribute to the war effort. As David Bell explained, the war converted nationalism from a passive to an active stance, as action replaced mere expression.12 This transformation laid bare the fundamental incompatibility of cosmopolitanism and nationalism, forcing Friends and their increasingly vacillating allies to declare their allegiances publicly. As patriotism waxed and cosmopolitanism waned, their former supporters abandoned the Friends. A “citizen of the world” suddenly seemed threatening to those who believed that “the world” was attacking “their home (country).” In his discussion of later interpretations of the cosmopolite, John Bryant marks a transition between eighteenth-­and nineteenth-­ century renderings of this character. Instead of being at home everywhere, later versions of the cosmopolitan traveler is one who is at home nowhere, or rather, a stranger everywhere.13 This literary figure “acquired a dubious character representing questionable values. . . . [W]hat passed in the eighteenth century as a benevolent, cosmopolitan tolerance of all creeds became in the nineteenth century a suspicious lacking of any creed whatsoever.”14 In a world in which everyone “belonged” to a nation and subscribed to the (civil) religion of nationalism, the refusal to identify with one country—­ and, more important, to be under the auspices of one state—­cast “citizens of the world” in a newly unfavorable light. Universalism undermined the very borders defended and won in the late wars, and their “rational religion” might question the ceremonies and trappings of patriotism as it had the church. Moreover, the knowledge of distant places and peoples gained through travel meant that one might feel sympathy for, even an affinity or preference for, those outside of the national fraternity. These sentiments could complicate the exclusive and parochial philanthropy approved by the state, as charity was for citizens, defined as those who had sacrificed to defend the nation and who shared in its plans for the future. The holy nation of Zion thus no longer made sense in a world of belligerent geopolitical nations and compulsory patriotism—­a world with clearly delineated borders and citizen-­soldiers ready, willing, and able to defend

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the nation and the state with violence. Friends’ supporters, some disappointed by the war, others disappointed by them, melted away. The image of the “good Quaker” disappeared along with the Enlightenment aspiration toward “citizens of the world”; the universalist ideals of the philosophes dashed alongside of their hopes for perpetual peace.

Genuine Quakers The record of the “real” Society of Friends in France stands in marked contrast to the saga of the “good Quaker.” There is some suggestion of cross-­ fertilization between French Quietism and Quakerism in the seventeenth century, though much of it stems from attempts to discredit Madame Guyon and others involved in the religious movement.15 Two tiny “home-­grown” weekly meetings for worship in France—­one in Nantes, the other in Lyon—­ had emerged alongside the late-­ eighteenth-­ century conversation about political and religious reform and Parisian Jean de Marsillac, discussed in chapter 3, converted to Quakerism around the same time. Though small, these enclaves exponentially multiplied the Quaker presence in the country, as the only other Friends in France were William Rotch and his fellow whaling families (the French referred to them as the “Nantucketois”). London Yearly Meeting formally took these meetings under its care, dispensing epistles, funds, and, importantly, itinerant ministers. Beginning in the 1770s and 1780s, several Public Friends began to incorporate France into their itinerancy routes, while others began to use Bordeaux as their port of arrival and departure for transatlantic crossings to the United States. These ministers were part of a broader effort by the Society to make inroads in mainland Europe, although the various yearly meetings did sometimes worry, as in the cases of Patience Brayton and Hannah Barnard, that the desire to augment their routes resulted not from divine obedience but from more personal and even political motivations. For the most part, the European continent was not all that religiously or politically fertile for Quaker ministers (Friends attempted to distribute religious, pacifist, educational, and abolitionist tracts during their travels). Ann Moore was harassed and harangued during her (unplanned) trek through Spain.16 Sarah Tuke, Mary Dudley, and George and Sarah Dillwyn remarked during their 1788 journey that Friends were “despised among the worldly-­ minded” in Amsterdam.17 One British Quaker complained that everywhere he went, he was accused of being a “Painite and a republican.”18 And of course, Sarah Harrison and her fellow travelers were held in Prussia as accused spies.19 Only the French received Public Friends warmly—­a recent

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and striking development, directly connected to the emergence of the “good Quaker” among French philosophes. Suddenly, Friends were not the infidels they were in Spain, the charlatans they were in the Netherlands, or the in­ filtrators they were in Prussia. Instead, the French esteemed the Quaker as one who was noble and honest; embraced simplicity and hard work; averred luxury; avoided corruption; promulgated tolerance, liberality, and benefi­ cence; and valued philosophy and reason. Friends had become the epitome and the incarnation of the Enlightenment. They had also, quite unexpectedly, become phenomenally popular. William Savery captured the new French enthusiasm for all things Quaker in a letter to his wife. He revealed that “the French have excited our curiousity [sic] as much as we have theirs,” and confessed himself as taken with Paris as the Parisians were with his traveling companions.20 The dramatic change in French attitudes toward Quakers (and vice versa) evidenced in this letter paved the way for a generation of Public Friends to extend their ministry into France. Of course, “real” Friends differed considerably from the image of the “good Quaker” celebrated by these Enlightenment thinkers. Yet they too were influenced by the ideals of cosmopolitanism and, in turn, had much to contribute to the debates between the poles of patriotism and cosmopolitanism. Much of Friends’ cosmopolitanism was infused with the ecumenicalism and evangelicalism that marked the theology of several Christian sects at the turn of the nineteenth century. George Dillwyn, an itinerant minister who resided in both Britain and the United States at different points in his life, expressed it best: Religious societies are like the nations of the Earth, which, though distinguished from each other by their peculiar forms of government, customs, and language, are all enlightened by the same sun: and it must be pleasing to every benevolent mind to believe that, however great the difficulty may be of maintaining an intercourse with each other; . . . individual sincerity of intention, and faithfulness to the degree of light received, is everywhere noticed with merciful complacency by the common father of all.21

He explicated further, using a Tower of Babel–­like parable of three Europeans who met one day and, with no one man able to speak the language of another, become frustrated at their inability to communicate. Finally, one man pointed at a biblical passage, and they were all able to understand each other, as scripture was a universal language.22 In these two passages, Dillwyn asserted his belief that all religious societies (of course, it is likely

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he only meant all Christian societies) were cut from the same cloth. They shared the same theological foundations, and if all of the traditions and trappings of sectarian divides could be stripped away, each Christian would profess the same catechisms. Depending on one’s standpoint, Dillwyn’s avowal seemed either entirely inconsistent with Friends’ century-­ long condemnations of High-­ Church Anglicanism or entirely consistent with their century-­long quest for legitimacy in the eyes of their religious critics. Either way, many other Quakers shared his broadmindedness. Friends embraced the catholic ideal of universalism, believing that religion transcended all the boundaries of this world. William Savery delivered a sermon in which he instructed his audience, “when we talk of men as of different nations, we shall find that they all agree, if they are men really seeking after the truth, and after that foundation which will bear them out when they come to put off mortality.”23 Here again, Savery asserted that a common creed was the foundation of all societies and thus made all peoples the same in the eyes of God. Irish Friend James Neal took this message to heart, chiding his correspondent for criticizing other religious sects: Paul preached and told the Scholars at Athens that God had made of one blood all the Familys [sic] of the Earth & Said he is not far from every one of us for in him we live and move and have Our being . . . may we acquaint ourselves with God & be at peace with him & with one another the world over.24

An “aged minister” evinced a similar sentiment, affirming that “he was glad to see all such who loved and served God, whether from Asia, Africa, or America.”25 And when the Society published an open letter to Christians on the European continent, they appealed to this sense of commonality: “When thus introducing ourselves to the notice of our Continental neighbours, we feel that we need not offer any apology, considering them as our brethren, as the children of one universal Parent, as fellow-­professors of a belief in the one and the same merciful Saviour.”26 In all of these examples, Friends testified to a unity forged through religious confession. And yet the Quakers’ belief that all people formed one family was not contingent on religious affiliation. Indeed, Friends’ broadmindedness exceeded similar ecumenical declarations of other Christian sects, as they insisted that all peoples—­regardless of religious belief—­were not only of one blood, but deserving of dignity and respect. Thus, Samuel Emlen composed a letter to John Pemberton after traveling extensively through the

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Caribbean and Europe, writing: “‘Who maketh thee to differ from another?’ are humbling queries often suggested to my mind.”27 His friend and shipmate William Rotch felt similarly: “When I am favoured to feel a little of the covering of that universal love which reaches over sea and land to the whole human race,” he wrote, “I feel a willingness to contribute my mite in any manner, to nations kindred, tongues, and people, the whole world over, for the promotion of the cause of righteousness in the earth.”28 William Savery shared his hope that “men might once more embrace one another as brethren, and enjoy the glorious liberty of children of one common family.”29 London Yearly Meeting expressed similar thoughts when reminding its audience on the European continent that “our heavenly Father has made of one blood all nations of men that dwell upon the face of the earth. . . . And although the kindreds of the earth are divided into distinct communities and nations, we are all bound one unto another by the ties of love, of brotherly kindness, and compassion.”30 To underscore this point, Friends often declared that they had no home. Savery declared in another sermon that he loved Africa as much as he loved the wilderness of America and as much as “this island” (Britain).31 Job Scott echoed a similar sentiment when he lay on his deathbed, thousands of miles from home, informing those who had gathered that “it mattered little what part of the world he died in.”32 And Stephen Grellet, himself a product of the French Enlightenment, famously declared his motto: “The world’s my home, my brother every man.”33 The sentiments of these Public Friends were undoubtedly influenced by their itinerancy, but they nevertheless reflected the feelings of many Society members. As citizens of Zion, it mattered not where one lived, but what one believed. In this way, Friends’ cosmopolitan ideals went beyond a simple and guileless embrace of the world. Their universalist sentiments were part and parcel of their theological and political definition of community, not to mention the very foundation for their challenge to geopolitical borders and the sovereignty of worldly legislators. By the late eighteenth century, Quakers had come to believe that the world was governed by a “voice of reason and justice, the voice of humanity and religion”—­expressing in this Epistle an almost Kantian faith in a transcendent morality.34 Divine law, like divine love, was the same everywhere. Thus, far from ignoring the ongoing debates among cosmopolites about the proper role, if any, of nationalism and sovereignty, Friends used this logic to address the issue forthrightly. “We are taught, both by holy scriptures and by the experience of the ages,” they wrote, “to believe that the Righteous Judge of the whole earth chastiseth nations for their sins, as well as individuals.”35 They insisted that God was

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the only, the true sovereign and that divine law, not unlike Kant’s transcendental principle, existed on a higher plane than any government legislation. Whereas those in power held that Friends’ espousals of altruism, reason, and universalism were dangerous and seditious, a growing number of people marveled at Quakers’ embrace of commitment not only to one another but to humanity itself. Clearly, the “moral capital” Friends had accrued through their philanthropy had begun to pay dividends, as admirers praised Society members for their commitment to Enlightenment ideals and hailed Quaker theology as evidence of the potential for all people to unite behind a humanitarian ethos. The Society, in short, was becoming a model of cosmopolitan possibility. And yet these idealized and distorted depictions of Quakers made manifest a conflation, or at least a slippage, between secular and sacred visions of cosmopolitanism. As other authors have noted, proponents of the Enlightenment believed that the figure of the (secular) cosmopolite “confederate[d] all humanity,” meaning that such a person could understand and signify all peoples and therefore could bring together all people.36 Cosmopolites therefore represented the possibility of a world marked by openness, acceptance, and beneficence, a world in which the differences that both nation-­states and religious sects embodied, delineated, and defended would be rendered meaningless. But sacred versions of universalism, such as those espoused by the Friends, differed in important ways from the political cosmopolite. As literary scholar John Bryant explained: If the traditional European citizen of the world looked forward to an age of political and cultural harmony achieved first through tolerance among, and then the eventual dissolution of, all nation states, the more saintly cosmopolitans respected all creeds, preached against sectarianism, and prepared for the “second coming.” For these cosmopolites, tolerance for religious diversity replaces the traditionalist’s broader love of cultural diversity, and the anticipation of a New Jerusalem with its institution of divine government parallels the traditional cosmopolitan goal of world government. . . . In short, the religious cosmopolite is a citizen of this world preparing for citizenship in a world to come.37

In their quest to use Quakers as models for a cosmopolitan future here on earth, many of their admirers discounted or even overlooked the profound religiosity that inspired the universalism of the Society. Chiliast theology infused Friends’ conceptualization of their holy nation as well as their disregard for worldly borders and legislators, and although these authors

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described Quakerism as a rational religion, such a claim would have made many Friends shudder. Thus, the Enlightenment philosophes who praised Friends for their perceived cosmopolitan ethos employed an archetype of Quakerism (rather than members’ genuine faith and practice). This figure, rather than any actual members of the Society of Friends, served as “living proof” to support the religious and political causes they championed. Quakers thus joined larger debates about the proper organization of society, function of government, and role of the church in absentia. They also unwittingly served as pieces of evidence in ongoing philosophic discussions, as philosophes channeled the perceived noble and simple character of Friends into their debates about human nature. Their supporters even appropriated the incessant travel of Public Friends, using their ministry to champion the importance of travel, arguing that familiarity with the different parts and peoples of the world was one of the most important foundations of cosmopolitanism.38 In the process, these writers invented their own version of the Society Friends to exemplify their hope, or even yearning, for a more cosmopolitan world in which people “rejected local or national affiliations in favor of the larger good, . . . [and] valued human capacities for rational thought and benevolent action.”39 “Real” Friends, of course, could never live up to these ideals (to say nothing of the fact that many of them would never have wanted to), but, for the time being, the idealized Quaker gained more currency than the actual ones.

Good Quakers By the time Brissot penned his first defense of the Society, the French reading public was thoroughly familiar and thoroughly enamored with the infamous Quakers. Seventeenth-­century French travel writers had begun traveling to England to witness the spectacle of Quakerism almost immediately after the founding of the sect, enthusiastically seeking out members in response to their audience’s curiosity about the notoriously peculiar sect.40 At the outset, the prevailing opinion of Friends in France was decidedly negative. As in England and the American colonies, French critics tended to associate the Society with sedition, a charge amplified by the perceived threat that Quakerism posed to Catholicism. One particularly vocal detractor claimed to have knowledge that Friends planned one day to become “masters of the world” and charged that their “inner light” was merely code for a deistic and atheistic agenda.41

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The transformation in French attitudes toward the Society can be directly and exclusively attributed to the writings of Voltaire. He famously claimed to have attended meetings for worship with a Quaker acquaintance during his time in England and may even have learned English from a Quaker tutor. Voltaire discussed the Society repeatedly and at length in his Lettres Philosophiques, declaring Friends “an exceptional people” and expounding on Quakers’ rejection of priests, luxury, deference, and militarism.42 “O tyrants of the earth!,” he bemoaned. “What have you gained by your bloodthirstiness? Think on William Penn, tremble, and weep!”43 Edith Philips argues that Voltaire’s interest in and enthusiasm for the Friends resulted from a political paradox that fascinated him: the Quaker “had accomplished the miracle. He lived in the modern world, he carried on commerce, he had founded a great ‘republic,’ but his manner of living was that of natural man and his religion a sort of primitive Christianity, or rather of Deism modified by Christian ideals.”44 Another historian, however, argues that Voltaire felt a more personal connection to Quakerism, believing that the Enlightenment and the inner light were “ultimately parallel concepts . . . both forces whereby the individual and his activities are brought more fully into harmony with the divine purpose for good.”45 Either way, Voltaire, like those before him, clearly used the Society as a proxy for larger debates about religion, culture, and politics. He was the first to praise Friends so openly and so unabashedly as well as the first to hold them up as a people to be emulated rather than condemned. Of course, in Voltaire’s writings, the Quaker became more an archetypal literary symbol than a real person. As Bernard Vincent notes in his study of transatlantic republicanism, Voltaire “found in the Quaker community what he projected into it, a dreamed-­up example of what he himself advocated for France.”46 This dissonance between “real” Friends and those that Voltaire described in his writings was unmistakable. Famously, when the philosopher actually met with Quaker Claude Gay, he was infuriated that Gay would not remove his hat and quickly tired of the Friend’s dull conversation.47 But while he may have been displeased with living, breathing members of the Society, Voltaire remained committed to the ideal Friends he had crafted for his audience, thus forever changing French perceptions of Quakers. He catapulted the “good Quaker” to the forefront of eighteenth-­century debates about philosophy, religion, and politics—­so much so that at least one author has argued that, in Voltaire’s hands, “the good Quaker takes his place beside the noble savage and the Chinese sage as one of the major mythological creations of the Enlightenment.”48

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Voltaire’s account of the Society was soon crystallized in the pages of the Encylcopedie. The entry, authored by Louis de Jaucort and appearing in volume 13 (1765), acknowledged its debt to Voltaire. Unsurprisingly, the account thoroughly embraced the “good Quaker” image. Jaucort began by reminding his audience that the moniker “Quaker” itself was an insult to the proud Friends, as it was “an odious nickname given by some to a peaceful sect whose religious doctrine was time and again mocked and whose morality eventually forced respect.” He then praised George Fox for his un­ swerving commitment to morality and mutual charity, insisting that Cromwell was “forced to fear and respect” the Society during the English Civil War. He also continued in the tradition of celebrating Philadelphia and its founder William Penn for observing such “wise laws” that none “has ever been changed.” But Jaucort saved his most lavish praise for this personal and revealing passage: I cannot help declaring that in my opinion they are a great people, full of virtue, industriousness, intelligence, and wisdom. They are the people driven by the most comprehensive principle of benevolence who ever appeared on the face of the earth. Their charity extends to the whole human race and they deny to no one the divine mercy of the gods. They publicly acknowledge that everyone is entitled to freedom. . . . They very well could be the only Christian sect whose members constantly act according to their principles. . . . [Quakerism] is the most reasonable system and the most perfect ever imagined.49

The authors the Encylcopedie thus cemented the image of the “good Quaker,” first introduced by Voltaire only decades prior. J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur carried forward both this interpretation of the Friends and their utility as a political tool. Like his correspondent and collaborator Brissot, Crèvecœur devoted significant space to discussing the Society of Friends in his Lettres d’un Cultivateur Américain. Surely, this attention was due at least in part because he knew his audience well. The French public eagerly consumed any and all reports of Quakers, and Crèvecœur catered to their even more enthusiastic obsession with all things American.50 The length of his descriptions and the lavishness of his praise also, however, resulted from his personal and philosophical connections to the Friends. As Christopher Iannini argues in his article, Crèvecœur was “an itinerant man” who “treated identities and allegiances as provisional strategies designed to ensure his continued mobility and prosperity.”51 He viewed

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himself as a “citizen of the world,” believing (in his own words) that he was partaking in “a secret communion among good men throughout the world; a mental affinity, connecting them by a similitude of sentiments.”52 This characterization of Crèvecœur, particularly combined with his own self-­ portrait, suggests that the cosmopolitan Crèvecœur praised the itinerant nature of Friends’ religion. He celebrated their correspondence networks, likening the interconnectedness of the Society to the “republic of letters” in which he fancied himself a participant.53 Finally, he identified with and admired the ways in which Quakers related to one another, to their compatriots, and to their God, and he firmly believed that others should emulate this way of being in the world. Crèvecœur clearly wanted his audience to glean political lessons from his descriptions. In the tradition of French travel authors, he praised Philadelphia as a model city and Pennsylvania as an exemplar of an ideal republic. But he was also one of the first to shine the spotlight on Nantucket as a peaceful and idyllic island where European colonists formed friendships with indigenous peoples, where slavery did not exist, and where each resident appreciated and, in fact, enforced the values of hard work, independence, simplicity, and tolerance. Crèvecœur described the island as an almost timeless utopia, wishing that “the citizens of Nantucket [will] dwell long here in uninterrupted peace, undisturbed either by the waves of the surrounding element, or the political commotions which sometimes agitate our continent.”54 Nantucket became a place as close to the state of nature as one could find at the turn of the nineteenth century, or so he told his audience. Crèvecœur’s idealization of the Friends continued, as he entered the philosophical debate about human nature by suggesting that they alone had not been corrupted by society. He deployed instructive parables to elaborate on this theme, using the story of “a remarkable instance of selfishness displayed in a very small bird” he had witnessed while in Pennsylvania. He posed the query: “Where did this little bird learn that spirit of injustice? It was not endowed with what we term reason!” He concluded: Here then is a proof that both those gifts border very near on one another; for we see the perfection of the one mixing with the errors of the other! The peaceable swallow like the passive Quaker, meekly sat at a small distance and never offered the least resistance; but no sooner was the plunder carried away, than the injured bird went to work with unabated ardour, and in a few days the depredations were repaired.55

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Crèvecœur cast these observations about the Society as insights into human nature because, according to him, Philadelphia was a grand social and political experiment. “Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men,” he wrote, “whose labours and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world.”56 He took great pains to convince his readers that “I have not bestowed undeserved praises, in my former letters on this celebrated government; and that either nature or the climate seems to be more favourable here to the arts and sciences, than to any other American province.”57 Whether or not these observations were made in good faith—­ let alone accurate—­his rapt French audience was certainly convinced. In this way, he, like the other French philosophes who wrote about Quakers, used descriptions of his encounters with Friends to advance an argument regarding the “the very beginnings and out-­lines of human society, which can be traced no where now but in this part of the world.” And, like many of his contemporaries, he discovered that “misguided religion, tyranny, and absurd laws, everywhere depress and afflict mankind.”58 Clearly, Crèvecœur, as Voltaire had before him, used Quakers to critique the opulence of Catholicism—­a corruption that he maintained had debased “true” religion. He thus praised the simplicity of Friends’ meetinghouses, places “devoid of any ornament whatever.” He noted that “neither pulpit nor desk, fount nor altar, tabernacle nor organ, were there to be seen,” a minimalist approach that he believed lent itself to a deeper and more intense experience of religion. He celebrated the “profound silence” that engulfed meetings for worship, declaring that quiet reflection was broken only by “moral [and] useful discourse” delivered “without theological parade or the ostentation of learning.”59 As with most of the writing about Friends, Crèvecœur’s veneration of their religious customs transitioned seamlessly into a commentary on current political systems. Thus, after pausing to remark on “how simple their precepts, how unadorned their religious system” (in direct contrast, he remarked, to adherents of the “more pompous religions, [who] pass through a variety of sacraments, subscribe to complicated creeds, and enjoy the benefits of a church establishment”), he observed that Friends “lived under the mildest government” and were “guided by the mildest doctrine.” He confessed to his audience that his time among the Quakers convinced him that “an happier system could not have been devised for the use of mankind” and rejoiced in this example of governance through the “common consent.”60 Like his fellow Enlightenment philosophes, Crèvecœur also believed that religious divisions should and would fall away in the cosmopolitan

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future he hoped for, declaring, “the Americans [will] become as to religion, what they are as to country, allied to all. In them the name of Englishman, Frenchman, and European is lost, and in like manner, the strict modes of Christianity as practised in Europe are lost also.”61 He acknowledged that “the Quakers are the only people who retain a fondness for their own mode of worship,” but insisted that it was “better to contemplate under these humble roofs, the rudiments of future wealth and population, than to behold the accumulated bundles of litigious papers in the office of a lawyer. . . . Here an European, fatigued with luxury, riches, and pleasures, may find a sweet relaxation in a series of interesting scenes, as affecting as they are new.”62 In this regard, too, Nantucket became instructive. He drew attention to the peaceful coexistence between the island’s Quakers and their Presbyterian neighbors. Their good relations exemplified the ecumenicalism that Crèvecœur lauded, and he took great pains to convince his audience that these two sects live in perfect peace and harmony with each other; those ancient times of religious discords are now gone (I hope never to return) when each thought it meritorious, not only to damn the other, which would have been nothing, but to persecute and murther one another, for the glory of that Being, who requires no more of us, than that we should love one another and live!63

Indeed, the author felt so strongly about the potential lessons to be gleaned from this harmony that he returned again to the subject only paragraphs later: “As fellow Christians, obeying the same legislator,” he wrote, “they love and mutually assist each other in all their wants; as fellow labourers they unite with cordiality, and without the least rancour in all their temporal schemes.”64 At the same time, however, Crèvecœur was not immune to the shifting political winds. He began to temper his praise of Friends in subsequent versions of his work, foreshadowing Brissot’s change of heart in his later writings. In a preview of things to come, Crèvecœur assured his audience that he valued patriotism above all else, declaring that every “American ought therefore to love this country much better than that wherein either he or his forefathers were born. . . . The American is a new man, who acts upon new principles; he must therefore entertain new ideas, and form new opinions.”65 He also pronounced the United States a nation deserving of divine favor, predicting that “present Americans [are] the seed of future nations, which will replenish this boundless continent”66 and that “the foundation

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of thy civil polity must lead thee in a few years to a degree of population and power which Europe little thinks of!”67 Even William Penn became a credit to Britain, although Crèvecœur did at least insist that he did “more honour to the English nation than those of many of their kings.”68 His later letters moved on, politically and geographically, as Crèvecœur’s dwindling interest in Quakers mirrored that of his audience. But in the halcyon heyday of the 1780s, Crèvecœur’s optimistic and idealistic account of Friends was received eagerly by a transatlantic audience enthralled with his descriptions of Quakerism and captivated by his sketches of Nantucket and Pennsylvania. Many in his audience, increasingly enamored with the Society of Friends and eager to partake in a dialogue that spanned national borders and connected political allies, waded into the debates. Benjamin Franklin was, as in so many things, a pioneer in this regard. He profited considerably from his relationship to the Friends—­ indeed, he even encouraged the mistaken idea that he was a Friend to circulate around France—­and thus did nothing to dissuade the French from their adulation of them (or him).69 Yet others—­even some of their former enemies—­also rushed to join the conversation. In a series of letters exchanged with John Adams, Thomas Jefferson celebrated Quakers’ ability to judge by “common sense and common morality” and believed that they could show society a way to “follow the oracle of conscience.”70 Benjamin Rush concurred, maintaining that they were among the most reasonable people he knew, “tinctur[ing] everything with simplicity, industry, and republicanism.”71 For each of these men, Quakerism was a means of combining a dedication to a pure republic and to a purified, rational religion. Of course, Friends themselves were so opposed to deism that William Savery delivered an entire sermon on its dangers, but the perceptions of outsiders (supporters and critics) was that the Society stripped away “superstition” along with the ceremonies and trappings of religion. Thomas Paine, busy penning his rebuttal to Edmund Burke (himself educated at a Quaker school) while traveling through France in 1790, was eager to join these conversations. Paine, of course, was born a Quaker—­a fact he sometimes obscured, other times publicized. He famously had attacked them in an appendix to Common Sense, lambasting their refusal to support the patriot cause. He then painted them as passé and obsolete, describing them as “antiquated virgins . . . mistaking [their] wrinkles for dimples” in The Crisis.72 He argued to his French audience that Friends’ peaceable tenets betrayed their supposed commitment to liberty and equality and that true friends of liberty should thus turn their backs on Friends. And yet Paine was thwarted in these attempts by his own earlier criticisms of the

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Quakers. Previously, he had condemned them as hypocrites who proceeded “with the word ‘peace, peace,’ continually on their lips” but who nevertheless professed allegiance to a government “never better pleased than when at war!”73 Now he had to shift his criticism, insisting to his French audience that Friends would never support their just cause because they were too stubbornly committed to peace.74 Paine clearly overestimated his own power of persuasion and underes­ timated the French love of the Friends, as his readers remained unconvinced by his attacks and stubbornly attached to the Society. Montesquieu called William Penn “un veritable Lycurgue,” Rousseau initiated a correspondence with the nearest Friend he could find, Abbè Coyer celebrated them in his writings, and Chamfort began to use members of the Society as stock characters to represent nobility, simplicity, humility, and virtue in his plays. Mirabeau, Condorcet, the Rolands, the Keralois (father and daughter), and la Rochefoucauld-­Liancort all endorsed the Society, and many offered to finance Jean de Marsillac’s failed Chambord school discussed in chapter 3.75 French authors described Quaker women as more beautiful for their simplicity (Crèvecœur insisted that female Friends could be “very handsome” even when “upward of forty”76), and Abbè Raynal praised Philadelphia so enthusiastically that the French came to celebrate that city as an ideal republic—­a belief that became “almost a religious faith” unto itself.77 Indeed, the French reading public was so enamored with Quakerism that the newspaper La Feuille Villageoise made the following prediction: “If the universe were to become Quaker, we should have no more need of magistrates, or soldiers, or priests.”78 The theophilanthropists based their new deistic religion on the Society of Friends, arguing that their worship of nature and the supreme being was the foundation for a new universal religion based on reason.79 In short, French philosophes had embraced the idea (or, put more directly, their idea) of the Society, using it as a stand-­in for political arguments in favor of governmental reform, philosophical debates about the essential goodness of human beings, and contests to rationalize religion. This unqualified celebration of Friends persisted until the eve of the French Revolution. But as the political winds shifted and the writers attempted to incite a different set of reactions and loyalties in their audience, some writers began to push back against this romanticized image of Quakers. Chastellux and Mazzei—­whose portrayals of Friends had so angered Brissot—­maligned them for being too Jesuitical, a clear signal that the tide was changing. The Society, once celebrated as the polar opposite of Catholicism and even an antidote to it, now stood accused of being equally as archaic, superstitious, and conservative. Both of these authors further insisted

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that the actual members of the Society with whom they had interacted hardly lived up to the ideal Friends imagined by the French public. To drive home their point, they asserted that the famed Anthony Benezet (himself a French émigré to Philadelphia) was more the exception than the rule. The reading public, they ruefully informed their audience, had been deceived. For his part, Brissot himself seemed caught between two worlds, increasingly unable to reconcile the cosmopolitan hopes he expressed through his admiration for the Society of Friends with the patriotic dreams he now shared with his comrades-­in-­arms. His response to Chastellux already had begun to illustrate this transition in his political ideology, as Friends came to represent for his audience a rather odd and increasingly incompatible assemblage of suppositions. Thus, Brissot promised his readers: If the progress of George Fox and William Penn had been checked by ridicule, what a misfortune would it have been for mankind! The American Indian would still be massacred; the Negroes would still be slaves; the principles of equality and their consequence, democracy, would not have been so well known, and the American Revolution would not have been effected.80

These ardent declarations must have perplexed at least some in Brissot’s audience. Even allowing for the clearly hyperbolic statement that Friends were somehow responsible for the “principles of equality and their consequence, democracy,” and even putting aside the very strange claims that “the Indian would still be massacred” and “the Negroes would still be slaves” (as neither practice, of course, had ended in the United States, and only the latter had very recently ended in Pennsylvania), the reader must still have been left to wonder how, exactly, Quakers “effected” the Revolution. Their detractors had blamed them for actively opposing independence and harming the war effort. Friends, in turn, had only ever insisted on their neutrality and noninvolvement. Some of their most loyal defenders made the relatively feeble argument that Quakers offered support in what small ways they could, but no one had ever attempted to claim that they were crucial to its success. Brissot, undeterred by such details, pushed forward with his argument. He was determined to defend the essential “goodness” of the Society and refused to allow the growing number of its detractors to tarnish this image. Hence, he immediately and publicly rebuked Chastellux’s condemnation of Friends’ apathy and inaction during the Revolution. And yet, since Chastellux was using this criticism as a means of indicting those who failed

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to support political reforms in France, Brissot found himself backed into a corner: he needed to defend the Society against this charge while also remaining aligned with the reformers in France. He decided to hedge his bets. “The Quakers,” he began, “far from being indifferent, are among the first to comfort and assist the unfortunate.”81 He honored their valiance on the battlefield, claiming that they offered succor to the wounded with complete disregard for their own lives. Then, he abruptly changed tactics, acknowledging that they abstained from the violence but praising their decision: “If this mass of national enormities [last one hundred years of warfare] is what you call public good,” he insisted, “it is not only a virtue not to stain our hands with it; it is a duty to avoid it.”82 Apparently, Friends were heroic for joining the battle while simultaneously courageous for eschewing it.

Bad Quakers The brisk sales of A Critical Examination would seem to suggest that at least some of the Society’s supporters remained as steadfastly loyal, if also as exasperatingly irresolute, as Brissot. But where Chastellux and Mazzei could not succeed in their revisionist accounts of Friends, the realities of war did. The French Revolution and the conflicts that followed marked the beginning of the end of French captivation with the Friends. Patriotism, not universalism, became the celebrated ideal, and a call to arms replaced any inclination toward peace. As a result, the ardor for Quakerism among the French faded. Chateaubriand confessed his disappointment in Philadelphia. Abbès Fauchet and Gregoire reversed their opinion, now insisting that “the training of the Roman church was strong in them and unity, if it were only to be national unity, seemed an essential element in religion.”83 Mirabeau turned on the Nantucketois, affronted that they refused to take up arms in defense of the Republic. “The defense of one’s neighbor,” he testily reminded them during a particularly tense standoff in 1791, “can also be a religious duty!”84 And in what perhaps signaled the death knell for Friends in France, Bonnot and Bayard both pronounced them just the same as everyone else. Bonnot argued that Quakers had fallen away from the purity of founders, sadly informing his audience that “under this costume there are no more honest men than under any other. . . . They are just ordinary men.”85 He continued: “If their adorers, their detractors, and their scorners had all observed them well, instead of talking about them with party feelings,” he wrote, “readers of these works would have had less trouble in judging the truth.”86 Ferdinand Bayard joined him in this assessment in his Voyage dans l’interieur des Etats-­Unis pendant l’ete de 1791. All who

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“portrayed the Quakers as models or pure spirits opposed to worldly goods,” he argued, had deliberately deceived the French public. In other words, the French people should not look to Friends as models nor assume that their peaceful and cosmopolitan society was ever a realistic possibility. Quakers were simply—­and sadly—­an unremarkable people. The dwindling number of their defenders could mount only a halfhearted defense. Some pointed out that William Penn advocated principles consistent with the Revolution, namely the numbering of days and the abolition of the priesthood. Others imitated John Adams’s obsessive tracking of support among Friends during the American Revolution, promising that Friends were about to convert to the French cause. An article in the Le Feuille Villageoise declared, “The Quakers of England are only awaiting the completion of our constitution to come to form an establishment. They are buying more than two millions worth of national property.”87 A play staged by Beffroi de Reigny, Allons, ça va, ou le quaker en France (1793), portrayed a Pennsylvania Quaker who traveled to revolutionary France because he was no longer content in America. The chorus included the refrain “Francais, Francais, un peuple libre est un peuple d’amis.”88 Reigny still held that his Quaker was the prototype of the perfect citizen, “incarnating . . . public-­ spiritedness and the principles of republicanism,” but insisted (or imagined) that this idealized Friend now also endorsed war—­a strange decision indeed by an avowedly pacifistic people.89 Crèvecœur himself even briefly waded back into the debate, assuring his readers that Friends “abhor war, but are no less patriotic for that.”90 And an anonymous French pamphleteer (thought to be Brissot) explained to his audience that “although they [Quakers] refuse to fight, a refusal which seems to shock the laws of states and the duty of a Patriot,” their critics should not blame Friends for their pacifism. After a century of espousing peace, this pamphleteer explained, “The spirit of the Quakers is too inflexible to adapt itself to the sudden change to which society is subject.”91 Again, a far cry from the “modern” Society championed only a few years earlier. And yet, in its own way, Brissot’s evolution actually mirrored that of Chastellux’s. Both men agreed that Friends had much to teach a previous era, but Chastellux insisted that the Revolution had fundamentally changed society. Along with it, he argued, must the French attitudes toward Quakers. “This revolution comes very opportunely,” he wrote, “at a time when the public has derived every benefit from them [Friends] they could expect; the walls of the house are finished, it is time to call in the carpenters & upholsterers.”92 The innards of this “home,” it can be assumed, were to be patterned after everything the Revolution was but that the Quakers were

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not: allegiant only to the Republic and willing to defend it with violence. In other words, good republicans. In this way, Chastellux’s criticism matched that of his fellow revolutionaries: Friends rejected war and patriotism while advocating caution, tolerance, and reconciliation. As the Revolution and then the Terror unfolded, Quakerism seemed at best a quaint ideal of the past, at worst an affront to the brave new world forged in French blood. By 1791, Brissot himself had forgone completely any remaining fidelity to Quaker tenets. In an editorial in Le Patriote François, he wrote: War! War! That is the wish of all French patriots, that is the wish of all friends of liberty spread out across the surface of Europe, who wait only for this happy diversion to attack and overthrow their tyrants . . . this war of expiation, which will renew the face of the world and plant the standard of liberty over the palaces of kings, the harems of Sultans, the chateaux of petty feudal tyrants, the temples of popes and muftis [is a] holy war.93

The transformation of this revolutionary was complete. Whereas only years before he had lauded Friends’ pacifism and insisted that he was deeply saddened when “the love of our fellow creatures yields to patriotism,” he now demanded war and celebrated patriotism as the highest calling for citizens.94 Fraternity, suddenly confined within the borders of a geopolitical nation, was a spiritual brotherhood; dedication to country was now infused with religious fervor. The remaining adherents to the Society in France took their cues. As discussed in chapter 1, the Nantucketois fled to Britain in the middle of the night, afraid for their lives. Jean de Marsillac disowned Quakerism in 1798 after dedicating nearly two decades of attempting to carve out a religious, cultural, and political space for the Society of Friends in France. Friends disappeared from the French consciousness. The new religion of nationalism, inaugurated by the Revolution and strengthened by the war with England, eliminated any possibility of Quakerism in France. This radical reversal was not confined to the philosophes of France. In Britain, the poet and polemicist Samuel Coleridge had also soured on the Friends—­a radical transformation for a man who once believed that Quakers had the potential to inspire the world toward change. In the years before the French Revolution, Coleridge envisioned a pantisocracy (“the republic of God’s own making”) based in Philadelphia.95 Familiar with and inspired by Brissot’s work, Coleridge claimed the original Quaker vision for the colony was the closest thing to a perfect utopia that had existed in the world. Coleridge drew inspiration from the journal of Public Friend John Woolman,

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lauding his home along the Susquehanna as the ideal place to begin “the equal government of all.”96 This optimism infused much of Coleridge’s early writing, such as the short-­lived periodical The Watchmen (1796), and influenced both his initial support for the French Revolution and his criticism of the British government’s response to it. And yet, like Chastellux, ensuing events dramatically changed Coleridge’s politics and his estimation of Quakerism. The wars between Great Britain and France fundamentally transformed British politics, provoking a feverish political atmosphere that extolled nationalism and eschewed cosmopolitanism. As Jennifer Mori describes, “Britons were presented with a model of active patriotism supportive of the status quo, any aberration from which was perceived in the loyalist press as suspicious, or, at worst, treasonable. Never before had Britons been asked to do so much for the country.”97 Of course, “real” Friends in Britain and in France actively opposed the war, insisting that they could not “discharge our duty to God, to [the Crown], and to our fellow subjects” and pointedly reminding the King that God blessed only “the peace-­makers.”98 But as the threat of French invasion loomed, Friends could escape neither the warmongering spirit of nationalism nor the demands of patriotism. Suspicion about the Society reemerged amidst the pitched atmosphere, and several Friends were imprisoned in York. Ironically, however, the British press simultaneously appropriated Quakers’ image to defend and advocate for the war (see fig 5.1). Here, the artist employed the patriotic Quaker to convey the righteousness of the cause and, perhaps, to browbeat defiant Friends into supporting the war. War converted Coleridge as well, causing him to embrace a politic “in which his earlier radicalism was largely but not wholly submerged in a conservative and nationalist authoritarianism.”99 Strikingly, this transformation becomes most clearly evident in his second attempt at a print periodical, The Friend (1808–­10). Coleridge chose this name specifically to invoke the Society (and to attract its members as subscribers), but then launched repeated and passionate criticisms of the sect in subsequent issues. Indeed, as one author describes, Coleridge used its very pages to “sneer” at the pacifist principles of Friends, espousing instead a “rapturous nationalism” predicated on “religious fervor and intensity.”100 By the middle of The Friend’s run, the conversion seemed complete: “Whereas the Christianity he espoused in the 1790s taught its disciples ‘never to use the arm of flesh, to be perfectly non-­resistant,’ the Christianity of 1809 form[ed] an uneasy alliance with a warring nationalism.”101 Coleridge’s transformation seems further evidence of Linda Colley’s argument regarding the centripetal pull

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Fig. 5.1. G. M. Woodward, Bonaparte and the Quaker (1803). Image courtesy of QSCHC. Here, the artist uses an image of the Quaker to underscore the willingness of all British subjects to take up arms to repel a French invasion as well as to highlight the weak resolve of the French nation.

of nationalism, as his loathing of Quakers seemed to escalate in direct correlation to his intensifying patriotism.102 Accompanying Coleridge’s embrace of an anti-­Jacobin conservatism was a rejection of his former hope for a cosmopolitan future. The poet adopted a militantly nationalistic worldview, one that did not permit dissent. For him, the nation was “circle defined by human affections, the first firm sod within which becomes sacred beneath the quickened step of the returning citizen . . . where the powers and interest of men spread without confusion through a common sphere like the vibrations propagated in the air by a single voice, distinct yet coherent, and all uniting to express one thought and the same feeling.”103 He condemned not just their irreligion, but also their inability to believe “in the existence of a Future State!”104 and criticized advocates of cosmopolitanism for their “infidelity.”105 He broke with

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his Quaker supporters (and subscribers), writing that he would “reject with indignant scorn” “the false Philosophy or mistaken religion, which would persuade him that cosmopolitanism is nobler than nationality and that the human race a sumblimer object of love than a People.”106 This fusion of church and state (a subject on which he would expand in his last published text) likely explains his final and public break with the Society. By the end of his life, Coleridge argued strenuously in favor of a national church, one that Mark Canuel explains rejected all dissenters “not because of [their] doctrines but because [of their] ‘customs, initiative vows, covenants, and by-­laws,’ which—­allied to a foreign power—­seem to constitute a threat to national security.”107 Coleridge, like so many of the French philosophes he purported to despise, disavowed his former admiration of the Society of Friends along with his cosmopolitan sensibilities. As the war dragged on, he became a full-­ throated patriot and adopted an increasingly nationalistic, and therefore pugilistic and exclusionary, worldview. The geopolitical boundaries he had previously hoped could be overcome now became imbued with a renewed political and religious significance. To defend the faith was to defend the nation; to oppose the nation’s war was to oppose the faith. Other chapters have fleshed out the significance of this conflation between church and state, but as the cases of Brissot, Coleridge, and their contemporaries demonstrate, their opinions of Quakers served as harbingers of their changing political opinions and allegiances. Once united to each other and to the Friends in their plans for a more cosmopolitan world, these Enlightenment thinkers abandoned their campaigns for tolerance and peace and recast their allegiances with their compatriots. In the process, they disavowed their former adulation of Quakers and the universalism they represented.

Hopeful Quakers Only Thomas Clarkson, it seemed, remained “loyal” to the Friends. At the close of the eighteenth century, Clarkson retreated to the Lake District. His health was failing, and the campaign to end the slave trade had stalled amidst the war fervor. In what must have seemed an odd choice, he poured his energy into writing the first of his “Quaker trilogy”: Portraiture of Quakerism (1806), a three-­volume tome in its own right. Friends had once again become widely unpopular in Britain, so much so that Clarkson and his close friend Coleridge would eventual fall out over their differing opinions about the Society. Even prominent members of the anti-­slave trade movement had begun to distance themselves from the Quakers and

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criticize them publicly, not the least among them Hannah More108 and William Wilberforce,109 who compounded their increasingly patriotic rhetoric by rapidly distancing themselves from the Friends. Clarkson, however, was undaunted. He endeavored to use the celebrity and authority that he had earned through his abolitionist work to dispel the ill will that many harbored toward the Society of Friends. Portraiture served as his attempt both to correct society’s common misperceptions of them and to shift public opinion in their favor. Clarkson was an outsider armed with an insider’s information and was thus able to expose the secluded and sometimes secretive world of the Quakers.110 In this way, he differed markedly from Brissot and his fellow French authors who had never had occasion to make acquaintance with an actual member of the Society of Friends. Clarkson, himself “nine parts out of ten” a Quaker, was intimately familiar with the inner workings of the sect. He lodged in their homes, attended meetings on many occasions, and worked alongside them in the abolitionist cause. Friends were real to him, and he resented the distorted image of the sect bandied about by those who had never even met a Quaker. Clarkson thus set out to stem the tide of those French travelers criticizing Friends for hype and for hypocrisy. “That men, as individuals, may be more perfect, both in and out of the society, is not to be denied,” he wrote. “But where shall we find them purer as a body?”111 In an attempt to account for Friends’ opposition to war with France, he reminded his audience that it was said during the English Civil War that “if they did not stand, the nation would run into debauchery.”112 He positioned Quakers as the moral conscience of the empire, arguing for the importance of their caution and incorruptibility amidst the heady atmosphere of war. Many historians have mined his pages for information about nineteenth-­ century Quakerism; to do so, however, is to miss Clarkson’s larger project and Portraiture’s broader significance to the political culture of these crucial decades. For this dedicated reformer to spend several years of his life and to risk the reputation of a movement to which he was so unfailingly committed, he must have hoped that Portraiture would accomplish more than merely the rehabilitation of the Quaker’s image. And indeed, as his argument unfolded, it became clear that he—­just like the French philo­ sophes before him—­drew on the history, organization, and philosophy of the Friends to articulate a model relationship between religion, politics, and culture. Clarkson used this work to instruct other reformers interested in building transnational movements. His analysis of their itinerant ministry illustrated methods by which individuals and organizations could facilitate and promote transatlantic connections between and among these

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nineteenth-­century reformers. And the considerable amount of time and space that Clarkson devoted to lauding the progressive and rational nature of their theology demonstrated the ways in which religion could be thoroughly in line with Enlightenment philosophy. Interpreted in these ways, Clarkson’s Portraiture of Quakerism becomes more than a defense of a small and seemingly insignificant religious sect, serving instead as a commentary on the debate between the pacifistic cosmopolitanism hoped for before the French Revolution and the militaristic nationalism that emerged during the wars that followed. Perhaps even more important, Clarkson made this argument at a time when the British government worried that the threat of the French Revolution and the demands of the Napoleonic Wars would destabilize the British empire-­state. Clarkson embraced the militantly pacifist and explicitly transnational model of the Quakers during a period of warmongering and intensified nationalism. Clarkson’s enthusiasm for and loyalty to the Society at this particular moment only contributed to his reputation as a dangerous and subversive character, not to mention a bit of an eccentric. Yet he firmly believed that world leaders could and should find Friends’ history and theology instructive. As such, Portraiture ultimately became a commentary on the political events of the early nineteenth century in which Quakers served as a means to criticize heightened nationalism, to illustrate the possibilities of peace, to demonstrate the importance of benevolence in international politics, and to advance a vision of a transnational alliance among likeminded thinkers (and believers). “If all men were to become real Christians, civil government would become less necessary,” Clarkson insisted, echoing the prediction made by La Feuille Villageoise.113 It was a thought entirely consistent with the hopes of the philosophes before the Revolution but entirely out of step with the current political atmosphere. Thus, as Clarkson filled the pages of his work with observations about Quaker organization and strategy, his work quickly evolved from a sectarian study to more reformer’s manual and manifesto. Portraiture served as an exposition of the means by which a tiny, committed community could not only persist in the face of continued harassment, but indeed effect significant change in the world. Again and again throughout Portraiture, Clarkson returned to the Society’s far-­reaching influence—­an effect, he argued, vastly disproportionate to their numbers. Friends were spread over several continents, and some among them attended small and isolated monthly meetings far from any formal structure or support. Furthermore, with the exception of Pennsylvania (and even here, Friends’ presence was not what it once had been), Quakers wielded little political power or cultural

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capital. They remained on the margins of society—­by choice and by force—­ and maintained a lifestyle and a political ideology distinctly in the minority. Finally, they had sustained this tightly knit community in the face of more than a century of intense persecution. Clarkson used discussions of their small numbers, the scattered nature of their community, the Society’s experiences of persecution, and interest in and history of political engagement to motivate and guide fellow activists involved in other reform movements. Indeed, one could infer that he used this rendering of the Friends as a way for those few cosmopolitan dreamers who remained to regroup and move forward. In this regard, Clarkson’s analysis mirrored the works of Voltaire, Crève­ cœur, Brissot, and Coleridge, as he sought to apply the lessons he learned from the Quaker religion to the political and cultural milieu of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He, like those before him, analyzed the Society’s past and present to understand the relationships among religion, activism, and nationalism. He too evaluated their interactions with each other and with the governments under which they lived to glean the best methods for pursuing political, social, and religious reform. And yet Clarkson alone remained committed to the cosmopolitan vision of Friends. Only he continued to argue—­in the face of a continent-­wide war—­that Friends provided the rest of society with “a beautiful and practical lesson of jurisprudence to the governors of all nations.”114 This was perhaps his boldest claim, as Quakers, their fellow citizens, and the governments under which they lived were once again in conflict over questions of loyalty, legislation, and taxes. Clarkson acknowledged this tension but praised them for continuing their charity in spite of “whether they are reputed hostile to the government under which they live.”115 In so doing, he urged his fellow abolitionists and other reformers to be willing to take the same risks to achieve their goals. He also, albeit more subtlety, urged his audience to reconsider their own kneejerk condemnations of Friends and unquestioning submission to their legislators. Clarkson used these passages in Portraiture as attempts to thwart the common mischaracterizations of Friends as disloyal and treasonous, arguing instead that they “do not confine their benevolence to their own countrymen, but extend it to the various inhabitants of the globe, without any discrimination.”116 He tried to refocus attention on Friends’ charity rather than on their allegiance and insisted that Quakers combined a broadminded definition of community with a commitment to reform—­an example he hoped would be followed by others involved in political movements. Most of all, he tried to glean practical lessons from the history of Friends. He

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studied their rather infamous eccentric and unswerving nature and used them as examples to organize more effectively his cohort of eighteenth-­ and nineteenth-­century activists. For Clarkson, the Quaker past and present formed an integral part of the future of his—­and others’—­cosmopolitan hopes.

Enduring Quakers While Friends themselves never quite resembled the subversive and fanatical rabble-­rousers of their critics’ minds, neither did they approach the selfless, Christ-­like figures idealized by their supporters. Each side found these simplistic and reductive caricatures useful for its political objectives, and both depictions tended to distort the reality of Friends’ theology and activism during this period. Large number of Quakers joined the late eighteenth-­and early nineteenth-­century reform movements, and a few prominent and influential Society members, mostly Public Friends, led these philanthropic endeavors. Yet ultimately, Clarkson’s assessment of the Society provides the information and insight needed to assess accurately the contributions of Friends to transatlantic reform movements, as he claimed that Quakers demonstrated to the world that “according to the doctrines of the New Testament, no geographical boundaries fix the limits of love . . . between man and man but the whole human race.”117 For Clarkson, as for other reformers, their example was the blueprint for shaping the universal citizen and the governing philosophy of the empire of benevolence. The embodiments of God’s still, small voice, Friends were the only people with the conviction necessary to “oppose the national voice.”118 For these reformers and revolutionaries, Friends epitomized a new model for “Enlightened” citizenship. Their transnational identity and their renowned commitment to philanthropy were the hallmarks of cosmopolitanism celebrated by eighteenth-­century philosophers. Quaker pacifism appeared to hold out the promise of a more peaceful future; their quietism and introspection gave the impression that they accepted and even revered rationality and logic. Friends’ benevolence seemed to make manifest a sublime sensibility that would solve the problems of war, slavery, and poverty and enshrine the values of peace, justice, and mercy. Of course, Quaker enthusiasts gave them far too much credit; however, they seized on the example of the Society as a way to bring to life what they believed to be the concrete possibility of utopia. Friends unwittingly became protagonists in an increasingly rancorous debate between cosmopolitanism and nationalism, a debate instigated by

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the violent ruptures and patriotic fervor that accompanied the era’s revolutions and wars for empire. Indeed, the debate remains as lively today as it did more than two hundred years ago, with scholars and citizens continuing to discuss the possibilities and consequences of political, economic, and cultural organizations that exceed the geopolitical confines of the nation-­ state. For his part, Bruce Robbins argues that “for better or worse, there is a growing consensus that cosmopolitanism sometimes works together with nationalism rather than in opposition to it.”119 If this is the case, this version of cosmopolitanism differs significantly from that articulated by the Society of Friends. The debates about Friends became vessels for writers and politicians of every stripe to argue the merits of different political ideologies, social movements, economic philosophies, and theological dogma. Indeed, the important thing was not who Quakers were, what they believed, or how they behaved, but rather what they represented. In the contested political environment of the 1780s and 1790s, those in power identified the transnational alliances of Friends as a threat to both a geopolitical nation and a unified citizenry; reformers recognized the potential to create an engaged and activist citizenry. Thus, detractors lambasted the Society, accusing them of sedition to delineate proper expressions of patriotism whereas admirers praised Friends’ philosophy and philanthropy as a way to illustrate the path to human (and national) perfection. Patriotism, not cosmopolitanism, was the quality, the feeling, and the identity lauded by even those allies who had previously praised Quakers’ disregard of country. The American and French Revolutions had inaugurated modern definitions of patriotism that included unwavering support for one’s government, obedience to its laws, and a willingness to fight and die for its defense. As defiant citizens of Zion, Friends ran afoul of these new obligations. Their transnationalism, their benevolence, and their pacifism were all at the very least liabilities to the revolutionary cause and at the very worst evidence of treason. As one of the Quakers’ only remaining public supporters lamented in the late 1790s, “the dangers of country do not allow us to have tolerant ideas.”120 As a result, many nineteenth-­century reformers sought to use the language of patriotism to achieve their goals, and most confined their movements to the nations in which they lived. The universalism that Friends had brought to their philanthropic work therefore disappeared from these groups as goals narrowed and the membership became more insular in nature. Also absent was Quakers’ insistence that transnational organizations had the right to stand in judgment of nations and hold governments accountable. Instead, they appealed to ideas about national difference and national virtue,

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rallying their followers through either boastful or shameful comparisons to other (rival) countries. They adopted exclusive definitions of citizenship, thereby reifying national difference, and they conceded the absolute sovereignty of worldly governments. Moreover, these reform movements recognized, respected, and subjected themselves to national law. They worked patiently within existing political and legal confines, seeking to amend laws rather than advocating a transnational vision of justice and practice of mercy. In short, they abandoned the cosmopolitan ideal. Members retreated and their dreams contracted; while some transatlantic connections may have remained, the transnational vision was lost. Thus, the radical possibilities represented by the Quakers’ holy nation of Zion—­their rare combination of transnationalism and benevolence—­ dwindled in the face of the violence and patriotic zeal inherent and endemic to the wars and revolutions of the period. Friends’ still, small voice was drowned out by the nationalist cheers. They faded to the back of reform movements purposefully and allowed others to pursue reform under the guise of patriotism. And so Job Scott was left to remind his fellow Friends on his deathbed in 1793 that our views of things do not usually open at once: it is so in the individual, it is so in the world. Things have been hitherto gradually evolving, and it may be consistent with infinite wisdom that such a progression should always continue. At the present day, things are considerably ripening, and I have not the least doubt that, before a great while, a highway will be opened through kingdoms and nations, where darkness has long reigned, for the publication of the everlasting Gospel.121

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At Peace with the World, at War with Itself

I

n 1814, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting felt moved to remind Friends the world over that “no outward distance or National distinction can destroy the unity” of the “sincere followers of Christ.”1 Peace finally seemed poised to return to the Atlantic World, and the Society of Friends used this auspicious moment to reflect on its past and anticipate its future. The rupture between Great Britain and the United States had become permanent, hence the now-­familiar rejoinder about distance and distinction. And yet the transatlantic Quaker community had survived, collectively, more than half a century of almost continual warfare. They had weathered the harassment of their nearest neighbors and withstood persecution at the hands of the governments under which they lived. They had established schools for their children, eradicated slavery among their membership, and waged campaigns of peace and reform outside of their borders. These remarkable achievements were made possible by the Quakers’ faith, unity, loyalty, and resolve. But while the Friends had presented a remarkably cohesive front to the world during the political upheavals of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, internal divisions began to develop and intensify in the years that followed. Indeed, by 1822, the same religious body now mourned that “the love and unity which characterizes the followers of Christ, is in many, but little felt, and in some places, is almost entirely laid waste.”2 After decades of persecution by the outside world, the Society of Friends suddenly found itself waging an internal war, one that would eventually result in the Hicksite-­Orthodox separation of 1827–­28 (followed by the Gurneyite-­ Wilburite split beginning in 1842). These schisms devastated the Society both as a religious body and as the “family of love” that had nourished members during the past five tumultuous decades.3 197

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Since the Reformation that began in the 1750s, the Quaker project had drawn its strength and resolve from the unity of its followers. The harmony among Friends and their allegiance to the holy nation was the cornerstone in Zion, inspiring the tenacity of its church militant, nurturing its youn­ gest members within walled gardens, providing the moral compass necessary to listen to the still, small voice, and prompting adulation and scorn for its universalism. Now, however, the unity of Friends was disintegrating, as Friends suddenly had “beaten their ploughshares into swords and their pruning hooks into spears! And thus converted that religion, whose very essence is love, into a pretext for the bitterest animosities.”4 As this reworking of the Quakers’ time-­honored scriptural verse all-­too-­painfully suggested, the very foundation of the Society was cracking, its familiar and familial world becoming almost unrecognizable to those inside and outside of the Society. The Friends, it seemed, could endure the pressures of warfare and persecution, but could not remain united amidst the demands of peace. As Friend turned against Friend, the outside world marveled at the chaos and animus that reigned within the Society. Some outsiders heaved a sigh of relief that their vexing opponents were now otherwise occupied, grateful that many Quakers seemed to have transformed their zeal for philanthropic reform into a fanaticism against their fellow coreligionists. Other observers, however, lamented that the Friends had mislaid their former principles and passion. Lydia Maria Child, for example, thought it a “pity that a sect founded on such high and broad principles should be buried in the mere shell of lifeless forms.”5 Others concurred. “The public good is involved in your doctrines,” wrote a former Society member. “And although you are accountable to no earthly power for your religious belief but that of public opinion, yet it is your duty to submit your cause to that tribunal and to stand undisguised before it.”6 Such a notion would have been inconceivable to Friends only a generation before, but, as one member lamented, the days when the Society was “a world within itself . . . as nearly separated from the world without . . . as any circle of mortals well can be” were rapidly disappearing as Friends became increasingly enmeshed in the outside world.7 And, as rancor and bitterness enveloped increasing numbers of people, Quakers and non-­Quakers alike prepared for what appeared to be the impending destruction of Zion. This conclusion considers the Hicksite schism as an important moment of transition in the Zion tradition. It is not meant to serve as a comprehensive analysis of this complex and important event; other historians have tackled this topic with more depth and skill than space permits. It is, however, intended to reassess the separation in light of the external pressures on

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the Friends’ holy nation this book has detailed and to propose the need to reconsider their internal struggles as reflective of the persecution suffered by Society members over the previous seventy-­five years. In so doing, it casts the events of 1827–­28 as the culmination of almost a century of war, the direct result of a narrowed understanding of citizenship, and the indirect consequence of a strengthening state. It then ends, however, by briefly noting the persistence of the Zion tradition among Friends, suggesting that the Society has continued to pursue a vision of community that transcends worldly boundaries and to call for a model of citizenship that promotes true peace and justice. In this way, the Quakers’ holy nation remains an important paradigm in an increasingly globalized and consistently violent world.

Zion falters Ostensibly, the Quaker Reformation had resolved the ways in which Society members were to be “in the world but not of the world.” The world, however, had changed dramatically over the course of the last three-­quarters of a century, and Friends confronted these problems anew after the resolution of decades of political turmoil. Once again, theological and political questions overlapped as Quakers wondered how, if at all, they should adapt to the new world around them and to their changed position within it. Ironically, one of the issues that set in motion the series of events that resulted in the great schism was actually an attempt to fortify and cohere the Society. In 1805, a subset of Friends initiated a movement to impose a uniform discipline on members of the various yearly meetings. Many of these ministers had survived the wrenching years of warfare and persecution (as well as the corresponding decline in membership) during the last century. They envisioned a more consistent set of rules, a more standardized meeting format, and thus, perhaps, a more homogenous membership. A majority of Friends resisted this attempt, condemning the “kingly, aristocratic, and clerical power”8 of these elders and predicting, “If the proposition to establish this head of aristocracy is united with by this meeting, it will ruin the Society of Friends.”9 These traditionalists insisted that both the true spirit of Quakerism and the historical structure of the Society should honor the fierce independence of its yearly meetings and reject any movement toward centralized authority. The attempt to impose a uniform discipline was certainly a departure from Quaker tradition, but at the same time, it was also indicative of the tenuous and perplexing situation of the Society in the nineteenth century. As the quotation at the outset of this chapter illustrates, British subjecthood

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was no longer sufficient to provide cultural or political unity for Friends, and the Society continued to struggle with overcoming the “National distinctions” among its membership. But perhaps even more urgent, the nineteenth century had ushered in additional challenges to unity among members. The beginnings of the market revolution and increasing consumerism also strained relationships between and among Quakers. It had always been necessary for the Society to navigate wealth stratification among its membership, especially in England, but rural Friends in the United States increasingly complained that wealthy Friends’ business ventures exemplified worrying partnerships with outsiders, that their successes had spurred a growing acceptance of luxury, and that their lack of sympathy for indebted and impoverished Friends had caused no small amount of hard feelings. Finally, both peacetime and political activism had further blurred the lines between Quakers and non-­Quakers. The appeal to and of political involvement in the worldly state rapidly became acceptable, even attractive, to many Friends, especially those who came of age after the Revolution and thus did not share the experience of persecution with their parents. For them, democratic engagement seemed to offer positive opportunities that did not compromise their religious convictions, now that participation did not require bloodshed. These external pressures were further complicated and compounded by internal dynamics within the Society, including the continued movement west of American Friends (and the subsequent creation of new yearly meetings) as well as the steep decline in membership among British Friends. A systematized set of beliefs and rules, therefore, was at least partly an attempt to ensure uniformity and conformity over great distance, widening political and economic divides, and a growing cultural rift between genera­ tions. Given these tensions, the move to recognize a uniform discipline made sense, as an older generation of Quakers recognized that their distinctive customs would not be strong enough to keep the Society unified or even intact in the future. That this push to systematize and regulate the membership stemmed from the efforts of Pennsylvania Yearly Meeting and London Yearly Meeting—­the traditional loci of power within the Society whose influence was waning amidst this new religious and political landscape—­underscores this point. The attempt to change Friends’ discipline would have unintended and far-­reaching consequences. One of the most outspoken opponents of the effort was Elias Hicks, a Quaker carpenter and a farmer from Jerico, New York. According to his journal, he first appeared in the ministry around 1775, though initial records of his formal acknowledgment as a minister

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date from 1778. The “scenes of war and confusion” that accompanied the British occupation of Long Island during the American War of Independence and the intrasocietal strife that ensued defined much of Hicks’s early service.10 He, like many other Quaker ministers during the war, preached often about the right administration of discipline and order in the church, and that all might be kept sweet and clean, consistent with the nature and purity of the holy profession we were making; so that all stumbling-­blocks might be removed out of the way of honest inquirers, and that truth’s testimony might be exalted, and the Lord’s name magnified, “who is over all, God blessed forever.”11

Perhaps because of this dedication to strict discipline, New York Quakers turned to Hicks to advise their yearly meeting during a particularly contentious debate. The British military had attempted to remunerate Friends for commandeering their meetinghouse during the war. Society members were at odds as to whether to accept the money, and New York Yearly Meeting appointed Hicks as part of a delegation to present their case before Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. His route to Pennsylvania marked his first extensive ministerial journey and likely his first encounter with many of those who would later become his largest and loudest critics. From the beginning, Hicks evinced concern for languishing discipline among Friends and expressed serious misgivings about what he considered to be an oppressive, authoritarian spirit among some meeting elders. He began to speak out against this concentration of power in the hands of the few, believing that it “shut up the way to others, and prevent[ed] the free circulation and spreading of the concern . . . which I have often found to be a very hurtful tendency.”12 Hicks also worried about the increasing devaluation of the Inner Light and the doctrine of continued revelation among his coreligionists. Like eighteenth-­century Quaker reformers before him, he was troubled by the “dull time” he encountered at many meetings for worship and hoped for a “stirring” among Friends. The awakening he envisioned was both spiritual and political, as Hicks also became well known (even notorious) for his strident abolitionist politics. He manumitted an enslaved man named Ben in 1778, though he did not begin his more formal and public campaign against the institution until 1797. Hicks became an early and strong proponent of the free produce movement, a consumer boycott of all goods produced by slave labor, and openly chastised Friends who did not join him in the strictest application and observance of abolitionist doctrine.

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By all accounts, Hicks was a dynamic and persuasive speaker, captivating Quaker and non-­Quaker audiences. Walt Whitman, after hearing him preach at Morrison’s Hotel in Brooklyn, praised his “resonant, grave, melodious voice,” and remarked that his power represented an “unnameable [sic] something beyond oratory” and “a powerful human magnetism.”13 It seemed that nearly everyone who encountered Hicks commented on his commanding presence, some even styling him a “prodigy” and a prophet after hearing him speak.14 Probably for this reason, Hicks quickly became the flashpoint for mounting tensions within the Society of Friends. Many Quakers seemed drawn to the charismatic preacher, emboldened by his passion and certainty, while others remained deeply troubled by these very same qualities. The controversy seemed to have finally surfaced in 1819 during his fifth visit to Friends under the care of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. Hicks had made some rather pointed remarks at the men’s meeting about those who continued to indulge in slave-­produced luxuries. Jonathan Evans, a wealthy Friend, influential meeting elder, and the intended target of Hicks’s condemnation, reacted poorly to the unsubtle and public criticisms. Against precedent and procedure, Evans adjourned the meeting during Hicks’s absence, a move seen as both heavy-­handed and a blatant affront by many of those in attendance. In retrospect, Hicksite and Orthodox Friends would come to mark this small gesture as the beginning of the troubles within the Society, but the tensions among Friends began much earlier, ran much deeper, and involved a much broader audience than this petty slight—­one so unimportant at the time that Hicks did not even record it in his journal. To this end, Quaker historians have well documented several immediate issues that strained relations among members of the Society. Of course, at base, religious differences caused the first and the final rift between the factions. Orthodox (Conservative) Friends had moved toward a more overtly evangelical stance and adopted a Bible-­centered theology that spurned the Quaker doctrine of continuing revelation. Many had also forged important relationships with likeminded members of other religious denominations through their involvement in benevolent societies. Many Friends, Hicks primary among them, decried these manifestations of increasing worldliness and “mixing” and lamented the turn away from traditional Quakerism. Instead, Hicks’s followers claimed to represent the true individualist ethos of Protestantism, as they continued to rely on the Inner Light and to celebrate the human capacity for reason and enlightenment. The Orthodox, in turn, charged them with deism and unitarianism, claiming that the increasingly rationalist stance

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of the Hicksites (including Hicks’s insistence that Jesus was fully human) amounted to a betrayal of the most basic Christian principles. Rural Hicksites also fiercely guarded the traditional peculiarity of Friends’ dress and speech and remained wary of the “modernizing” and corrupting influence of outsiders. They decried the increasing wealth and consumerism of Orthodox Friends and their acclimatization to conventional calendric and linguistic styles. The wealthier and more urbane Orthodox Friends defended their looser interpretation of traditional Quaker aesthetics, insisting that they remained observant of the spirit, if not the letter, of custom. Thus, at the risk of oversimplification, it seemed that the Orthodox accused the Hicksites of rejecting traditional theology in favor of modern philosophy while the Hicksites accused the Orthodox of rejecting traditional customs in favor of modern conventions. These religious differences certainly ran deep, but they also tended to reflect other, broader divisions within the Society. Friends were not immune from the boom and bust of the Market Revolution, and the division of wealth among Quakers replicated that of the larger society. Leading members of the Orthodox wing represented some of the wealthiest denizens of Philadelphia. As Larry Ingle argued, many of the Hicksites resented these so-­called “6 percent men”: Society members who had amassed great fortunes through their involvement in real estate, stocks, and bonds and their investments in canals, turnpikes and railroads. As one observer revealed in his wry twist on the adage from Micah, “however [they] may walk, [they] do not ride humbly, although [they] may do justly and love mercy.”15 Hicksite Friends tended to hail from more rural areas and more humble circumstances. Many, such as famed artist Edward Hicks, had been forced to declare bankruptcy and forfeit their homes at the hands of Orthodox creditors and landlords and their non-­Quaker business partners. To add insult to injury, debtors then frequently endured additional suffering when their creditors, often elders in their local meetings, moved to disown them for their poor financial management. These socioeconomic issues further intersected with some of the most pressing and rancorous political debates of the day. Halliday Jackson, an influential Pennsylvanian Friend, argued that the “party spirit” that engulfed the United States finally had infiltrated the Society. Specifically, Hick­sites advocated a more radical political stance toward abolitionism, attempting to move the entire Society toward an official position boycotting all goods and services that involved enslaved labor. Many of their Orthodox counterparts, enmeshed in an all-­too-­worldly world of business, dodged these

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discomfiting questions. Instead, many Conservative Friends devoted their resources to Bible and missionary societies. Some of their efforts actually focused on Hicksite Friends, most of whom, the Orthodox fretted, neither owned nor had ever even opened a Bible. Revealingly, this singular focus on scripture reflected a philosophy determined by their socioeconomic position, as wealthy Friends increasingly advocated morality and purity as the way to salvation in this world and the next. Hicksite Friends spurned the efforts to spread both the written gospel and the gospel of wealth, focusing instead on the equality of opportunity for every individual, both in religious meetings and in the world at large. Finally, there was an implicit generational divide. Both factions cast their struggle as one for the hearts and minds of their youngest members, openly competing for their loyalties. British minister Joseph John Gurney, for example, wrote this plea while visiting young Friends under the care of Baltimore Yearly Meeting: O how my heart bleeds, when I meet, in the streets, your goodly young people, over whom, as I fear, the enemy of souls is gradually spreading the net of unbelief! O how I mourn over the lovely children, who are likely to grow up to manhood, under a ministry at their meetings, and under a daily influence at home, opposed, as I believe, to the faith once delivered to the saints—­the faith whereby we are saved! Shall the tender mothers among you, who still love the Lord Jesus Christ, have no pity on their offspring? Shall they continue to expose them to the danger of being separated from the Savior?16

Such direct appeals were not confined to the Orthodox. Edward Hicks urged young people to speak as God’s oracles, while his brother Elias urged them not to adopt the corrupted religion of their parents.17 Revealingly, nearly all of the weighty Orthodox Friends were older than fifty and hence born before the American Revolution. So was Elias Hicks, of course, but his message did seem to appeal more to a new generation of Friends who had come of age in a postindependence world. Hicks’s warning about trying to serve God and mammon resonated with those young Friends confronting the economic uncertainty of the nineteenth century as opposed to the political instability of the eighteenth century. The market was the enemy for this generation of Quakers, not the nation-­state, and the attempts of Orthodox elders to quell what Jonathan Evans derisively termed “youthful unrest” rang hallow for many of these struggling Quaker youths.18

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What is more, the compromise of Friends’ walled gardens was beginning to falter as that first generation of Quaker boarding school attendees came of age. These children, educated in the Society’s traditions but also in social justice, had become increasingly radicalized by the democratic energy of the nineteenth century. This cohort of activists, perhaps best represented by James Mott and Lucretia Coffin Mott, answered the call of Hicksites such as Benjamin Ferris who declared that Quakers had remained too often and for too long in the background of political struggles.19 They joined benevolent societies in record numbers, and, in so doing, entered the world of worldly politics and politicking. The Orthodox, too, participated in domestic politics, but many of them objected to the increasing stridency and public rabble-­rousing of their young Hicksite counterparts. Their fear of radical democracy, forged during the Revolution, profoundly influenced this older generation of Friends. Their children, however, had come of age in a different world and their political constitution was thus much more comfortable with direct political action.

Zion Divides These theological, socioeconomic, political, and, ultimately, generational divisions deeply affected Friends and moved the Society closer toward disunion in the years that followed the initial auspicious meeting between Jonathan Evans and Elias Hicks. Ministers from Great Britain, alarmed by Hicks’s theology and his growing influence within the Society, traveled to the United States. Mostly, as Larry Ingle argued, transatlantic ministers like Anna Braitwaithe and Thomas Shillitoe only aggravated the situation, “plung[ing] into the whirlpool of controversy, agitat[ing] it vigorously, and then watch[ing] as the Society of Friends floundered hopelessly in the current.”20 By 1822, members had begun to predict privately that a separation seemed inevitable, and by 1827–­28, the schism had torn the Society in two—­ a split that would persist formally in some areas until the 1950s and, some would argue, endures informally even to today. Until this point, historians have tended to elide the external pressures of nationalism, citizenship, and allegiance that this book has traced and the role they played in the Hicksite controversy. Certainly, scholars have discussed the myriad ways that Quakers struggled with the tension between peculiarity and conformity. As Larry Ingle notes, “Their options were few. Friends could either drop their pretense to peculiarity and join the mainstream Protestant denominations, or they could cling to the roots of their

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faith as they perceived them and dare the outside world to conquer them.”21 Thomas Hamm, too, observes that Orthodox Friends’ “defense against contamination [by Hicksites] moved them significantly closer to the American religious mainstream. Orthodox Quakers offer a remarkable example of the subtle means by which a dominant culture draws outgroups under its influence and closer to the mainstream.”22 For both of these eminent Quaker scholars, the dilemma faced by Friends in the early nineteenth century was thus primarily religious and only secondarily cultural in nature. Moreover, observers then and now have also tended to treat the split as inevitable and used it to mark the end of Quaker influence in the United States. As one historian writes, the separation revealed “the apparent signs of dissolution—­not from violence without—­for it has suffered none in our day—­ but from disintegration within—­by that natural process of decay inevitable to every organization whose work is done.”23 Put in this light, the Hicksite-­ Orthodox schism was not only unavoidable but in fact an irrefutable sign that the Society could not exist in the modern world. The Friends, hopelessly and helplessly outmoded, descended into petty bickering, unable to see their intrasocietal strife as a symptom of their own obsolescence. And yet I would argue that the Hicksite schism was more a historically contingent product of decades of war and less an inevitable consequence of economic and cultural modernization than historians have previously understood. Certainly, wealth stratification was at its core, and there is no doubt that Quakers struggled as to how to respond to changing cultural conventions. But these trends had been unfolding for some time, and Friends had found ways to remain united amidst similar tensions before. And, in addition to the timing of the split, the way that the conflict unfolded—­ particularly the accusations hurled between the two camps—­reveal that the conflict was fundamentally political in nature. Specifically, it seems clear that the division between and among Friends resulted from a changing definition of citizenship, the growing power of the state, and an increasing pressure to adopt a nationalist identity. These three trends, begun during the wars for empire and independence of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, multiplied exponentially during the era of relative peace and political stability that followed the Treaty of Ghent and the Second Treaty of Paris. As discussed above, the appeal of worldly wealth and worldly politics attracted Friends from both sides of their religious divide. But perhaps even more important, Quakers no longer united behind a critique of geopolitical borders, of citizenship and allegiance, and of nationalist and patriotic ideology in the absence of direct war. A staunch opposition to violence

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and a shared experience with persecution had joined together a distant and disparate community for nearly a century. The advent of peace not only eliminated that particular tie that bound Friends together, but rendered their antiwar stance redundant. The cessation of war also made Quaker resistance to worldly citizenship seem disproportionate and eccentric. In practice, those in power no longer required young men to risk their lives in battle (even if the theoretical possibility still made formal citizenship an exclusively male privilege). The battlefield was not Brandywine or Yorktown, but the marketplace, and soldiers in the church militant could go to war there—­for either side. The strengthened geopolitical states that emerged after the Age of Revolution also made the Friends’ holy nation seem both fanciful and feeble. A strong, centralized state appealed to wealthy merchants and political activists alike, as each worked toward systematic change through extant political structures. Both interest groups could now lobby a centralized government—­ one that understood that its power rested, at least in part, on its ability to tend to a vocal and visible citizenry—­rather than the more localized and ad hoc approach they had pursued previously. No longer outsiders criticizing worldly governments from the political margins, Orthodox Friends now defended those in power and championed the conservatism of the Federalist Party. They thus also worried that the increasingly strident Hicksites would cost them their privileged position within the world of politics and business. Hicks himself had reproached Orthodox Quakers for having “quieted their consciences so as to get along easy in the Mixture with the Multitude,”24 and reformer Benjamin Ferris had accused his evangelical counterparts of joining Bible societies merely to “make themselves more acceptable.”25 Hicksite Hugh Judge perhaps put it best when he lamented the Orthodox attempts at political consensus and cultural assimilation, citing a “spirit and disposition among us which seeks Popularity.”26 It seems that Hicksite Quakers were at least somewhat accurate in these characterizations. Orthodox Friends, in addition to luxury, also enjoyed increasing political influence. When a faction of Hicksite Friends presented Senator Henry Clay with an abolitionist petition after he had attended a yearly meeting during the contentious years before the split, Orthodox Friends quickly distanced themselves from it because they were afraid it would cost them “the place and influence which, as a Society,” they enjoyed “with the rulers of their land.”27 Evangelical Quakers had similarly reconciled with their religious opponents. In Britain, an Episcopalian minister invited Friends to scrape dirt from George Fox’s grave and then rebury it, symbolically destroying their traditions and peculiarities28 while Orthodox

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Friends in the United States thought “it may be well for us not to be so fearful of following the practices of other societies, as to prevent our own improvement.”29 In religion and in politics, Orthodox members embraced opportunities to integrate with other evangelical believers and conservative advocates and to differentiate and distance themselves from their Hicksite opponents. The universalist theology and the cosmopolitan hope of the Zion tradition thus receded and conceded as the nation-­state solidified as the dominant model around which people would organize politically and with which people would identify culturally. Orthodox leader Jonathan Evans, for example, declared that he could not unite with Elias Hicks’s “professions of universal benevolence.”30 This striking admission demonstrated the great distance between Orthodox Friends and their cosmopolitan past. Or, perhaps more accurate, it illustrated the changing nature of cosmopolitanism. The Orthodox wing of the Society, particularly wealthy Friends, certainly believed in many Enlightenment principles and enthusiastically engaged in transatlantic business affairs. They preferred to accede to this more conservative definition, however, when rejecting the radical, utopic visions of world citizenship. Elias Hicks illustrated this divergence when he reminded his Orthodox opponents that “Banks, East India trade, civil government, agricultural societies, chemistry . . . and the Grand Canal” all belong to “men of this world, not children of light.”31 The Orthodox Friends involved in these endeavors clearly thought that children of light could and should become worldly men. The changed definition of citizenship and the growing power of the state resulted in an increased pressure to adopt (and an increased appeal to adopting) nationalist ideology, and it was this issue that became the clearest and most apparent source of division and strife among the Friends. Patriotic language and imagery saturated many pamphlets and debates during the schism. And, perhaps ironically, Orthodox and Hicksite Friends each employed nationalist imagery when accusing the other of oppressive tactics while simultaneously lambasting their opponents for mixing too much in and with the world. Even the resistant Hicksites adopted some of the trappings and imagery that would have been unimaginable to Friends only a generation beforehand. The breakaway Green Street Monthly Meeting gathered together at Carpenter’s Hall, for example, a deep irony that must have occurred to at least some of “the rebels” in attendance. Here, some of the exact Society members who had refused to allow outsiders to use their meetinghouses during the Revolution and had pleaded with the patriots to avoid the splintering of their society now gathered at the Revolution’s

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meetinghouse!32 This location was fitting, however, as many Hicksites had come to understand and describe their struggle against the “aristocratic” Orthodox membership as a reenactment of the American War of Independence. This sentiment was perhaps best illustrated when Hicksite Edward Atlee cried “liberty, rational liberty!” during the propitious 1823 yearly meet­ ing33 or when the Orthodox Friends refused to sit Hicksite members on the grounds that the Meeting for Sufferings was not “representative in any secular, republican sense.”34 Ultimately, however, the specific ways that the Orthodox Friends chose to denounce Hicksite theology revealed their ultimate capitulation to and embrace of nationalist rhetoric. Repeating the exact same accusations against and criticisms of the Hicksites that had been hurled at the Society only a generation beforehand revealed their deep identification with their governments (no longer “the governments under which they lived”) as well as their desperate attempts to prove their allegiance to those in power by distancing themselves from the Zion tradition promulgated by their ancestors.35 They accused the Hicksites of being “seditious” and of “invading” Philadelphia Yearly Meeting.36 They also charged that “a floating, speculative spirit” had infected the Hicksites, as their religious and political heterodoxy could be traced from Thomas Paine to Joseph Priestley to Robert Owen to Francis Wright to Elias Hicks.37 In a warning that must have particularly stung some Quakers and seriously frightened those who had survived the last round of persecutions, Evangelicals implied that Hicksites would (and should) soon incur the wrath of government. “In the end,” they foreshadowed, Hicksite Friends would “require a check, from the civil magistrate, who . . . heareth not the sword in vain; but for the punishment of evildoers.” If Hicks succeeded, they cautioned, there would be “no Christianity, Bibles, Missionaries, truth, morality, law or government in the world.”38 Another Orthodox Friend expounded on this ominous portent in the pamphlet Demi-­Quaker, writing that Hicksite theology “would abolish the Sabbath, tithes, ministers, the Bible, and ruling magistrates.”39 Here again, the repetition of the charges registered against Friends during the late wars for independence and empire was striking. Not only were Hicksite Friends to the Orthodox what the Society was to the governments under which they lived, but Orthodox Friends were actually going so far as to accuse the Hicksite Friends of being dangerous to the prevailing political, social, and economic order. The departure of Orthodox Quakers from both the Zion tradition and the universalism it represented became evermore clear as they began to use the very language of Zion to distance themselves from and even condemn

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the Hicksites. Jonathan Evans, for example, concluded that the “degeneracy among Friends approximated that of the Jews.” Anna Braithwaite concurred, arguing that Hicksites were mere “Jew’s believers.”40 She continued, alleging that Friends were “mere relics of the Jewish laws”41—­a charge repeated in many anti-­Hicksite pamphlets, such as that by Isaac Harrington who categorized them as “relics of Jewish error.”42 He continued, arguing that Hicksite Friends were cleansing the reputation and spreading the “falsehoods” of the Israelites: Methinks I can almost hear them [the ancient Hebrews] now crying from the dust, since this new weapon has been put into their hands—­since a large and respectable body of Christians have espoused their cause—­ and see them wiping from their long injured reputation . . . and it gives me much pain, to hear my own dear friends pleading their side of the cause.43

The irony of these Friends hurling the same accusations at their coreligionists that their persecutors had flung against a previous generation of Society members was profound; that this new evangelical turn in Orthodox Quakerism meant that its followers disparaged the parallels between the Hicksites and the ancient Jews—­connections that had provided such strength and succor to persecuted Friends only a few decades earlier—­was tragic. On the other hand, Hicksites clearly saw themselves as the true inheritors of the spirit of Reformation, and did not shy away from this radical and oppositional stance. They cast their cause as a continuation of the mission of the reformers from the previous generation and took pains to draw theological and political connections between them. They relied on the same theological references from the Hebraic scriptures to communicate their identities as warriors and crusaders and to communicate a message of urgency and sovereignty. Thus, Hicksite John Comly wondered “when will Zion arise and shake herself from the dust of the earth?”44 while Hugh Judge declared that his fellow soldiers partook in “a warfare maintained against the spirit of this world in all its forms and shapes.” He elaborated on this sense of mission in a letter to his friend and ally Elias Hicks: Of the law of Moses in any part thereof: being changed to sute [sic] the revolting and rebellious Israellights; did not the almighty; use way and means to humble them and who is humbled by the Chastisements of Deep Sufferings they were awakened to see they had sinned.45

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The wonderfully evocative term “Israellights” was likely an unintentional riff on the “New Light” and “Old Light” controversies engulfing many Christian sects in the United States at this time, but it also reinforced the connection Hicksite Quakers drew between their own struggles and those of the Israelites. They derisively labeled the Philadelphia elite “Rabbis” to decry the hollow nature of their outward adherence and to draw attention to their compromising relationships with those in power.46 What’s more, they used these references to celebrate their own. Hence, Elias Hicks became a “Shepherd of Israel”47 and an “old Hebrew prophet.”48 His persecution by the Orthodox, they warned, would “divide in Jacob and scatter in Israel.”49 The Orthodox Friends, for obvious reasons, relied less frequently on these references. Along with their evangelical allies in other Christian sects, there was a nearly singular focus on the saving grace of Christ and on textual references from the New Testament. There were still a few allusions, however. Isaac Harrington, a particularly strident critic of the Hicksites, wrote that “every friend to the prosperity of Zion—­who breathes the spirit of Glory to God in the highest, on earth, peace and good will to men, will at such a time, use all his influence in allaying the discords and healing the wounds that such a spirit inflicts upon the best interests of society.”50 Interestingly, however, Harrington was a recent convert to Quakerism and then left the Society of Friends soon after the schism. Perhaps more fittingly, the Orthodox Friends eulogized Richard Jordan with the same tribute that generations of Quakers had used for their ministers. He was a venerable “watchman on the walls of Zion,” but instead of watching for the external threats of persecution and war, he crusaded against the internal threat of the Hicksites.51 Similarly, Stephen Grellet warned that the Hicksites were like the “little dark cloud over Jericho” that had brought a “thick darkness over the land.”52 It is possible that these examples demonstrate an unwillingness by the Orthodox to entirely cede the language of Zion to their rivals, but it is more likely that these “ancient” and venerable Friends, each born before the American Revolution and a veteran of the church militant, specifically occasioned these allusions. Hicks’s supporters also cast themselves as continuing the struggle of the holy nation regarding the sovereignty of their religious beliefs and the resistance to the governments under which they lived. In this way, they saw themselves as the successors of the previous generation of reformers. In what could have just as easily been a missive from Sophia Hume or John Woolman in the 1760s, one Hicksite epistle thundered: “GOD ALONE IS THE SOVEREIGN LORD OF CONSCIENCE” and further that “no power,

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civil or ecclesiastical, should ever be permitted to interfere with it.”53 Hicksite reformers such as Abraham Lower concurred. In a statement that echoed Abel Thomas’s insistence to the New Jersey authorities during the Revolution that only God could judge him, Lower rejected the ability of civil magistrates to surpass or supplant divine law. Thus, he “den[ied] the authority or right of a temporal court to interfere with things purely spiritual.”54 Hicks agreed wholeheartedly. He insisted that he was only accountable to a universal deity, one who would bless “the same flow of love and unity” felt by all those engaged in the divinely ordained struggle against slavery.55 Further scandalizing his religious and political opponents, Hicks argued that God’s wrath would be felt more by those who smoked slave tobacco than by those who asserted that Jesus was fully human. In this way, Hicks called to the radical, cosmopolitan politics of an earlier era, arguing that abolitionism was the universal principle around which people should unite instead of Christian doctrine. For, as he argued, there were “other Scriptures written by other wise and good men; and the Scriptures do not properly belong to any, but those to whom they were written; they are so far from being any rule to the true Christian, that they are inconsistent and contradictory to themselves.”56 In these examples, Hicks pointedly invoked the cosmopolitan hopes of an earlier generation. He still imagined a transnational community of likeminded believers committed to enacting peace and pursuing justice. The Orthodox, however, no longer shared this vision with him. The Hicksite-­Orthodox schism fragmented the holy nation and, as in the above example regarding George Fox’s grave, quite literally buried the remnants of the Zion tradition. The same sect that had stood firm and united during a series of wars, persecution by the governments under which they lived, and harassment by their nearest neighbors—­the same members who had navigated together the complex issues of pacifism, education, and slavery within their own Society—­would remain internally divided for more than a century. Reflecting on the former cohesion and devotion among Friends, one mournful observer had this to say about the separation: This mild and peaceful doctrines, the meek and gentle spirit, and the Christian love and unity, which so admirably comported with the simple cognomen, by which you have chosen to be known, had long been the admiration and wonder of the world: but I soon learned, yea sorrowfully learned, that the baneful seeds of discord were thickly sown, and their poisonous germs were taking deep root among you. . . . A virulent animosity was thus awakened, violent controversies ensued, the strong

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bonds of brotherly love and unity were severed—­old and tried friends, whose intimacy was such that they appeared almost to be actuated by one mind and to think the same thoughts, were alienated and totally estranged; nay worse, became bitter enemies.57

Perhaps no other statements could have better demonstrated what had become of the Society’s former unity than when Elias Hicks accused Orthodox Friends of being under “British influence”58 or when Hicksites in Baltimore denounced British Public Friend Joseph John Gurney as “an itinerant foreigner” who had no business interfering in their meeting.59 For the Quakers, this internal struggle was both enduring and profound. Indeed, less than a generation later, another sectarian controversy caused further rupture in New England and Ohio. The Wilburites or Conservative Friends revisited many of these same issues. They rejected the increasingly evangelical bent of Orthodox Quakerism, cautioning Friends against relying too much on the scriptures and not enough on the Holy Spirit. “You will very likely become them,” they warned, as “this overactive, restless spirit” was “like the locust, the cankerworm, and the caterpillar” “ready to eat up every green thing.”60 Clearly, the continuing struggle to be “in the world but not of the world” plagued the Quakers throughout the nineteenth century, as they found themselves less apart from and more a part of a society that enjoined the participation of all individuals—­in ways sometimes subtle and sometimes not so subtle—­in worldly affairs. After remaining unified amidst decades of nationalist violence and patriotic rhetoric, the transnational harmony among Friends had finally been severed and Friends cast their lot with the worldly nations in which they lived.

Zion Reconciled This book began by examining the years before this rupture and declension within the Society of Friends. It explored the complexity of Quaker theology within an Atlantic context and during an Age of Revolution and Reaction. Scattered the world over, Quakers understood their community as diasporic, united in spirit if not in body. In this sense, they believed that “our world is not geographically assigned like others, but rather applies to all members of the Society of Friends.”61 And yet this statement, made by a Quaker elder agonizing about the impending schism, described a disappearing world. In the past, their sense of belonging had depended not on where they lived but rather what they believed. Moreover, each enclave of

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the Society had believed itself protected by figurative walls. Members had withdrawn behind these fortifications for nearly seventy-­five years, with Public Friends serving as watchmen to guard against both the decay within their membership and the intrusions of others. The Society of Friends cast themselves as a “holy nation” during this period, drawing on the Jewish tradition of Zion to articulate their relationship with God and to govern their interactions with outsiders. This parallel explained their suffering and gave meaning to their persecution, as Friends drew inspiration from the ancient Hebrews who remained faithful and steadfast amidst hardship and harassment. While the Friends’ rendering of the Zion tradition was primarily a theological orientation, it carried with it significant political implications during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The rise of the nation-­state (and empire-­state) necessitated that the “imagined communities” of citizens coincide with specific geopolitical borders. The boundaries of the nation, in other words, had to overlap with the people and territory under the control of the state. The Friends’ “holy nation” transcended these worldly delineations, and their doctrine prevented them from identifying with the geopolitical nations in which they lived. Because of this unique positionality—­to be in the nation but not of the nation—­worldly leaders remained wary of Friends. Significantly, the Quakers’ withdrawal occurred at the same time that the governments under which they lived demanded the increasing participation of their citizens as well as mounting demonstrations of their loyalty. Those in power required men to serve in the militia, households to pay additional wartime levies, voters to swear oaths of allegiance, parents to educate their children in the traditions of the country, and everyone to participate in the pageantry that advanced the agenda of the state. Taken together, political leaders hoped that these actions would ensure that a coherent, dedicated, and submissive citizenry emerged out of a disparate and diverse population. Quakers, however, could not abide any of these obligations. In fact, not only did the Friends refuse to promise their allegiance, service, or supplies to the governments under which they lived, they declared their commitment to one another across enemy lines and sent relief to all suffering parties, regardless of nationality or denomination. They also repudiated national tributes, celebrations, feasts, and fasts, even going so far as to gather together, host meals, and open their businesses during national prayer days. In this way, Quakers publicly undermined the efforts of those in power to create a unified and committed citizenry. They declined to participate in

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any of these nation-­building activities promoted by politicians and, on occasion, organized counterdisplays and protests. Governmental officials resented Friends’ obstinacy and worried that their dissent would inspire others to withhold resources or to rebuff attempts at forging nationalist identities. Most of all, however, they remained anxious about the Quakers’ insistence that God was the only and the highest authority and that divine decrees superseded worldly regulations. In keeping with their conceptualization of Zion, Friends believed that the law would go out from Zion, and thus they could not comply with any edict that betrayed (their interpretation of) divine will. Quaker theology, therefore, directly contradicted the authority of those in power and implied that the actions of the powerful authorities went against the will of God. In this way, Friends’ religious ideology highlighted the often-­tenuous political order of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as their protests against many state policies and burgeoning nationalism complicated the attempts of newly elected and established governments to consolidate their control over a territory and its population. They refused to recognize the authority of worldly leaders and professed allegiance only to their God. Until now, Quaker historians have categorized the era beginning in the mid-­eighteenth century and continuing well into the nineteenth as one of “quietism” within the Society, maintaining that Friends retreated from worldly politics to deal with intrasocietal discord. Yet this book has demonstrated that the Public Friends in particular remained extremely active during this period. As soldiers in the church militant, they declared war on those who pursued—­or allowed—­violence. They used the language of spiritual warfare to justify their continued engagement in and with the world, as they cast their peace work as campaigns on behalf of God. These comparisons worked to undercut the state’s claim of divine approbation of its war, as Friends’ public protests made it increasingly difficult for government officials to assert the universal support of its population or the inherent virtue of their actions. Additionally, Quakers’ pledge to serve only a divine commander challenged the growing association among citizenship, masculinity, and military service. Friends rejected charges of cowardice and asserted their unfettered courage in the lamb’s army. Men and women alike joined the ranks of the church militant, thereby attempting to undermine the emergence of “muscular citizenship” in modern nation-­states. To train subsequent generations of Christian soldiers, Friends founded a series of guarded (Quaker-­only) schools during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. These institutions sought to accomplish two

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seemingly incongruous objectives: to remove young Society members from the corrupting influences of the world and to train them to engage the world to change it. School planners adopted the metaphor of “walled gardens” to describe this dual mission, as children learned about the traditions of the Society behind protective “walls” and yet also acquired the skills necessary to transform the world around them. By educating their children thusly in the Zion tradition, Quakers rebuked the public education movement’s central goal to instruct children in the (invented) traditions of the nation. This pedagogical approach inspired a bold and unique generation of students, many of whom would join several of the nineteenth-­century reform movements and continue to question the definitions of nation and the obligations of citizenship. In all of these ways, the effect of these Quaker schools was more wide-­ranging than previous scholars have recognized and was of fundamental importance to the philanthropic movements of this era. As a people “zealous of good works,” Friends considered philanthropy both an obligation and a privilege. While several scholars have noted their overrepresentation in many eighteenth-­and nineteenth-­ century reform movements, few have recognized the essential role Quakers played in inspiring, funding, founding, connecting, and coordinating philanthropic organizations. Many Friends preferred to play secondary roles in these associations, as they worried that the ill will and distrust many people harbored against them would tarnish the causes about which they cared so deeply. Because these movements often criticized the policies of national governments, worldly leaders remained wary of these activists. As such, to associate too closely with the Friends and their “holy nation” would have damaged the credibility of these organizations. Thus, Quakers often chose to contribute their “still, small voices” and remained intentionally in the background. Their Zion tradition compelled them to pursue justice in the world, but their refusal to compromise with or calm the fears of national governments resulted in their quiet participation. And yet still their critics multiplied. The Friends, once admired for their universalism and benevolence, became victims of the political and the philosophical move away from cosmopolitanism and toward nationalism. Quakers had served as way for many important figures of the radical Enlightenment to stake out their position in debates about human nature and human society. French and British thinkers in particular wrote extensively about the Society to flesh out their own ideas about good government, rational religion, and a moral economy. These very same writers, however, soon decided that “the whole world [was not] their country.” The series of wars in Europe turned many of these former cosmopolites into ardent

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nationalists, and their writings about Friends reflected this about-­face on European politics. By the time peace returned to the Atlantic World in 1815, Quakers were once again on the margins of political society, shunned and vilified for their transnational vision of community. For this reason, peace was no easier for the Friends than the three-­ quarters of a century of violence and persecution they had endured. Global war had irrevocably changed the political landscape, and the Society of Friends would eventually fracture amidst the pressures brought to bear by geopolitical states, exclusive definitions of citizenship, and ideologies of patriotism. Each faction chose to respond to these new political systems and structures in strikingly different ways, and their divergent paths would not reunite for more than a hundred years. In short, the Friends’ holy nation remained divided while the people and institutions that opposed it became stronger and increasingly united as nineteenth-­and twentieth century states grew more robust and policed their geographic and ideological boundaries more effectively. For the historian, however, Friends’ protests were not merely failed and futile attempts to challenge definitions of nation and citizen. Rather, the Quaker experience during this period illustrates for modern audiences a moment when religion and nation did not exist comfortably alongside each other. Much of the existing scholarship has explored the ways in which the power and authority of the church and the nation-­state were mutually constitutive. These works have analyzed how politicians used religious belief and practice to promote, justify, and maintain their status and control. Scholars have also examined how, in turn, many ministers became involved in politics and advanced their own interests through their interaction with the state. Yet the Friends resisted these relationships with the governments under which they lived and rejected the strategies of other Christian denominations. They chose instead to join, support, and defend a transnational community of coreligionists and, together, to protest the constrictive and exclusive definitions of nation and citizenship that emerged during this critical period. The case of the Society of Friends thus demonstrates a moment at which the debate did not concern the role of the church within the state, but rather the place of nationalism within a universal church. Scholars must continue to grapple with those moments of conflict between religion and nation in American history. Studies of the Society of Friends are particularly important in this regard, as they complicate notions of identity and citizenship through an examination of the relationship between church and state. As of yet, we have not examined fully the ways in which religion has challenged the authority—­indeed the very existence—­of

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the nation (or empire). At present, the discourse casts religion as contained by the nation; however, we need to explore the possibility of the church as both larger than and in opposition to the nation. Serious questions regarding this latter position need to be considered, such as: Is religion truly catholic? In other words, is it universal, transcendent? Does it offer a constitution and an idea of citizenship in any way similar to those of the nation-­state? Most important, can one’s religious affiliation forge a new, alternative political identity? And if so, should it supersede one’s nationality? Until we can provide meaningful answers to these questions, and thus a viable alternative to the entrenched rhetoric concerning religion and nation, we cannot hope to counter the growing power of fundamentalists—­both religious and nationalist—­in American politics. The history of the Society of Friends, therefore, must be integrated into mainstream historical literature to forefront the inherent tension between religion and the politics of nation and empire. The potential for transnational identity and the commitment to reform enacted by the Quakers remains an intriguing possibility in a world still largely defined by the same concerns of religious and secular nationalism as well as similar debates regarding the responsibilities of citizenship. This project has demonstrated that in a time when political and economic upheaval challenged and altered ideas of nationality and citizenship, the Society of Friends offered a different possibility, one rooted in peace, progressive education, and philanthropy. Indeed, the Quakers encapsulated precisely this hope in their 1810 epistle: True faith, however small, furnishes ground to hope and trust that thro’ the progress of this light in the nations of this world, a day will come when the present disposition to war and bloodshed will cease to govern the councils of men and the love of peace will prevail. To be instrumental in promoting the coming of this happy day is one of the duties to which we believe our religious society is particularly called and under this view, we feel very desirous that all in profession with us may solidly ponder the path of their feet.62

The rediscovery of the fellowship and language of Zion, the Friends’ “holy nation,” will serve as an entry point into the current debate regarding the intersection between religion and politics as well as an important step in reclaiming the potential of religion to challenge definitions of citizenship and the requisite demonstrations of patriotism they have come to entail.

ac k n ow l e d g m e n t s

W

hen I embarked on this book project ten years ago, I could never have imagined how much my own vocation and community would come to reflect those of the diasporic and itinerant sect I studied. And yet, like the Friends, I too have drawn strength and inspiration from a network of people and a series of benevolent organizations. It is now a pleasure and a privilege to express my gratitude to those whom I owe so much. As I retraced the routes of the traveling ministers I discuss in this book, I benefited immeasurably from the assistance of archivists and librarians at many institutions across the Atlantic World. In particular, I would like to thank Anne Upton at the Quaker and Special Collections at Haverford College, Chris Densmore at the Friends’ Historical Library at Swarthmore College, Laura Wasowicz at the American Antiquarian Society, and the exceptional and skilled staff members and volunteers at the Library Company of Philadelphia, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Esther Duke Archives at Westtown School, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the New Bedford Whaling Museum, the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, the Huntington Library, the Friends’ Historical Library in Dublin, and the Library of the Religious Society of Friends in London. I have been fortunate to receive funding at critical points while developing and completing this book. Timely grants came from the Quaker and Special Collections at Haverford College, the Library Company of Philadelphia, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the American Antiquarian Society, the American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies, the Mellon Foundation, the Ahmanson Foundation and the J. Paul Getty Trust, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Institutional support from the University of Minnesota, Fairleigh Dickinson University, and San Francisco State University was also vital. 219

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Able and receptive audiences at a number of professional venues shaped the contours and contents of this book. In particular, I wish to thank Michael Meranze and Saree Makdisi, who, on behalf of UCLA’s Center for Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Studies, convened a wonderful series of conferences on the Age of Revolution and Reaction as well as Geoffrey Plank and Brycchan Carey who, with the McNeil Center, organized an important conference on Quakers and Slavery. Similarly, Boston College’s Biennial Conference on the History of Religion fostered rich and productive conversations, and I thank Jon Butler for keen insights that weekend. I was privileged to be part of Harvard’s International Conference for the History of the Atlantic World, and I am grateful to Bernard Bailyn for his leadership of the seminar and to Mary Maples Dunn for her thoughtful feedback. Finally, I have profited enormously from insights generously offered by audience members at conferences including the Omohundro Institute, SHEAR, the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, the American Historical Association, the American Studies Association, and the Conference of Friends’ Historians and Archivists as well as from exceptional commentators at these meetings, especially Richard Godbeer, David Kazanjian, Mary Kelley, Ann Little, and Geoff Plank. Several organizations have been particularly important as this book came together in earnest over the past two years. My thanks to the members of the Bay Area Seminar for providing this East Coast exile with a new intellectual home. I continue to be grateful for my new departmental colleagues, especially those in attendance at our Faculty Forum—­Chris Chekuri, Sarah Curtis, Sue Englander, Trevor Getz, Cathy Kudlick, Laura Lisy-­Wagner, Barbara Loomis, Elizabeth McGuire, and Eva Shepherd Wolf. Everyone associated with the University of Chicago Press has steered this book’s manuscript (and me) through the final stages with skill, care, and patience. I am indebted to the anonymous readers who offered incisive comments; series editors, Ed Gray, Stephen Mihm, and Mark Peterson; senior editor Tim Mennel; and editorial associate Nora Devlin. I have a number of colleagues I would also like to thank. This book would never have been possible without the support and guidance of Lisa Norling and Kirsten Fischer, both of whom gave generously of their vast knowledge and scarce time. Anna Clark, Ed Griffin, Pat McNamara, Kevin Murphy, Jean O’Brien, JB Shank, and Barbara Welke also profoundly shaped its intellectual foundations. As this book progressed, several people read partial drafts of the manuscript and offered key insights that significantly influenced my thinking. They include Sarah Curtis, Michael Meranze, and Amy Parsons. Jenna Gibbs was the first person to read a complete draft of

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the book, and I am almost as grateful for her sharp and meticulous commentary as I am for her unwavering friendship. I am also particularly indebted to Richard Godbeer who not only reached out to a scholar he didn’t yet know but then generously offered extensive and insightful comments on an early version of the manuscript. Finally, I am especially grateful for Robert Frame who gave the gift of insight and confidence when I needed it most. I have benefited from a wonderful group of people who have helped me professionally as well as personally. Among them are Dee Andrews, Tovah Bender, Danushi Fernando, Robert Frame, Miles Grier, Chantal Norrgard, Alexandra Pappas, Amy Parsons, and Jason Stahl. Here, I would also like to add my deepest and most heartfelt thanks to Allyson Poska, someone who began as a teacher, became a colleague, and has remained a mentor and a friend. At every milestone I reach in my career, I remember that I would never have arrived here without her. I am blessed with a wonderful family who never doubted me, even when doubting that the book would be finished. Their unfailing support made this book possible, and I am grateful that Mom cajoled and cheered me, Dad calmed and corrected me, and lil’ sis centered and comforted me at various points along the way. The Haskajs and Latifis, led by Tate and Bootsie, continue to offer love, laughter, and Kos. I would need a second book to thank N’Jai-­An Patters for all that she, Kelly, and Mesa have given me over the years, but fortunately, as we have said so often, we were raised righter than that. And finally, to Fatmir, my mixologist, who paced with me every one of the six hundred square feet of our apartment during every one of the six hundred nights I labored over this book: Faleminderit. Unë të dua. U kry! Te premtoj kurrë më nuk do të jetë keshtu veshtirë si këtë herë.

notes

introduction 1. Anthony Benezet to Morris Birkbeck, 10 month 16 1781, collection MISC 004, 1794–­1800, FHLSC. 2. For a recent exploration of the influence of the universal church ideology, its influ­ ence, and the resistance of American colonists to this religious orientation, see Rebecca Anne Goetz, The Baptism of Early Virginia: How Christianity Created Race (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012). Many Protestant sects invoked the Zion tradition, most notably the seventeenth-­century Puritans and later the nineteenth-­century Mor­ mons. The eschatological connections in these instances are clear, although I know of no scholarly works that explore the idea of a deeper and broader connection between these historical moments or communities to either the Hebrew scriptures or Jewish history. Friends, I believe uniquely during this era, combined the millennialism of a future, other-­ worldly Zion with the hope for an immediate, earthly Zion. 3. Though Fothergill’s sermon dated from the late eighteenth century, it was not pub­ lished until the early nineteenth century. Samuel Fothergill, Eleven Discourses Delivered Extempore, at Several Meeting-­houses of the People Called Quakers (Wilmington, DE: Coale & Rumford, 1817), 112. 4. The argument that Friends turned inward during this period is frequently unques­ tioned in the historiography. I assume that it originated with three works: Rufus Jones, The Later Periods of Quakerism (London: Macmillan, 1921), William Braithwaite, The Second Period of Quakerism (London: Macmillan, 1919), and Jack Marietta, The Reformation of American Quakerism, 1748–­1783 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984). It is still widely accepted today, as demonstrated by Pink Dandelion’s catego­ rization of this period as one of “Quietism, 1690–­1820s” in his Introduction to Quakerism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). I argue that this period was actually one of avid engagement (or, perhaps more appropriately, zealous disengagement) for the Religious Society of Friends, as they actively challenged the governments under which they lived during these decades—­just from a distance. 5. I have borrowed the term “empire-­state” from an insightful chapter written by Elizabeth Manke, “Chartered Enterprises and the Evolution of the British Atlantic

223

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notes to pages 5–6

World,” in The Creation of the British Atlantic World, ed. Elizabeth Manke and Carole Shammas (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 237–­62. In thinking about the development of British nationalism, I was also influenced by Krishan Kumar, The Making of English National Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), esp. chap. 6. 6. R. R. Palmer famously determined that the “Age of Democratic Revolution” lasted from 1760 to 1800, while Eric Hobsbawm used the years 1789 to 1848 as his parameters. I argue instead that these “democratic revolutions” are inexorably linked to the period’s wars for empire, thus demarcating this period as beginning with the Seven Years’ War and concluding with the Napoleonic Wars. See R. R. Palmer, The Age of Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America, 1760–­1800 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1959); E. J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution, 1789–­1848 (New York: New American Library, 1962). More recent interpretations have defined the parameters as 1775 to 1815 and 1775 to 1848 respectively. See W. M. Verhoeven and Beth Dolan Kautz, eds., Revolutions and Watersheds: Transatlantic Dialogues, 1775–­1815 (Amster­ dam: Rodopi, 1999); Wim Klooster, Revolutions in the Atlantic World: A Comparative History (New York: New York University Press, 2009). My periodization comes closer to the “Age of Revolution and Reaction,” though it still does not quite match up, as this chronological categorization reflects more of a European-­centered narrative and I begin with North American events and ideologies. I also do not include any discussion of Latin American revolutions and wars for independence, as there was no Quaker presence in Spanish-­speaking America at this point. See Charles Breunig, The Age of Revolution and Reaction, 1789–­1850 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1980). 7. See Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–­1837 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009); Carla Pestana, Protestant Empire: Religion and the Making of the British Atlantic World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010). See also Alison Games, The Web of Empire: English Cosmopolitans in an Age of Expansion, 1560–­ 1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Linda Gregerson and Susan Juster, Empires of God: Religious Encounters in the Early Modern Atlantic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010). All of the scholarship engaging ideas of nation and empire formation are indebted to Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983); Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983). The work of Anthony Marx is also helpful in this context. While he is concerned with competing nationalisms, as his conclusions highlight the challenges posed by Friends’ religious (trans)nationalism. As he argues, “when nationalism does not coincide with a state, it de-­legitimates it, potentially threatening that state’s coercive power.” Anthony Marx, Faith in Nation: Exclusionary Origins of Nationalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 7. Friends’ community, as well as their transnational orientation, support this assertion. Marx also maintains that the masses then perceived themselves to be members of varying “imagined commu­ nities,” but these did not neatly overlap with political boundaries. These divergent communities reflected culture, language, and then most prominently faith, as well as class interests and estates. But amid conflict within and between such communi­ ties, imagination by itself did not effectively bind the masses and it certainly did not

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bound them within units coinciding with state boundaries. Such coincidence would only emerge through explicitly political processes . . . with faith and secular identi­ ties reinforcing each other within particularist communities of nationalism. Marx, Faith in Nation, 19. Again, the eighteenth-­and nineteenth-­century Society of Friends provided an example when faith and secular identities did not reinforce one another but rather opposed each other. 8. There are surprisingly few books that have explored the role of religion in the American Revolution, although the few that have offer important and provocative theses that are discussed further in chapter 2. See Ruth Bloch, Visionary Republic: Millennial Themes in American Thought, 1756–­1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Thomas Kidd, God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution (New York: Basic Books, 2012); Mark Noll, America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). For two perceptive (and slightly competing) interpretations of the role of religion within the British Empire during the American Revolution and the sectarian response to the impending rupture, see Katherine Carté Engel, “The SPCK and the American Revolu­ tion: The Limits of International Protestantism,” Church History 1, no. 1 (2012): 77–­103; James E. Bradley, Popular Politics and the American Revolution in England: Petitions, the Crown and Public Opinion (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1986); James E. Bradley, Religion, Revolution, and English Radicalism: Non-­conformity in Eighteenth-­ Century Politics and Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Scholars have also thought carefully about the role of religion in other conflicts dur­ ing this period. For an introduction to this historiography, see Nigel Aston, Religion and Revolution in France 1780–­1804 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2000); Dale K. Van Kley, The Religious Origins of the French Revolution: From Calvin to the Civil Constitution, 1560–­1791(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996); Stewart Brown and Timothy Tackett, eds., Cambridge History of Christianity, vol. 7, The French Revolution and Religion to 1794 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Birgit Meyer and Peter Pels, eds., Magic and Modernity: Interfaces of Revelation and Concealment (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003). 9. See note 8 for full citation. 10. Nathan Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989). 11. Amanda Porterfield, Conceived in Doubt: Religion and Politics in the New American Nation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012). 12. Thomas Clarkson, A Portraiture of Quakerism (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1807), 1:ii. 13. Quoted without citation in Edwin S. Gaustad, Sworn on the Altar of God: A Religious Biography of Thomas Jefferson (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1996), 201. The original quotation came from a letter from Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval dated January 19, 1810, in which Jefferson explained why the Democratic-­Republicans failed to secure any Quaker votes in the last election, although it reflects Jefferson’s continuing suspicion of (and bitterness about) Friends’ refusal to support the revolutionar­ ies during the War of Independence. Interestingly, Jefferson tangled with the Society on several occasions—­most notably in a very public back and forth about the role of slavery

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in the new nation as well as during Friends’ campaign for official recognition as conscien­ tious objectors (without fines). In other words, Jefferson’s important work on religious freedom, most closely associated with his defense of the Danbury Baptists, did not extend as far as Quakers hoped. 14. The Society of Friends, Considerations on the Matters in Difference between the Friends of London and Hannah Barnard (Hudson, NY: Ashbel Stoddard, 1802), 20. Emphasis original. 15. Throughout this book, I employ the term “patriotism” to mean allegiance to the state and “nationalism” to mean fealty to the (imagined community of the) nation. I take this definition from Walker Connor, who writes, “For the sake of clarity, we begin by noting that nationalism and patriotism refer to two quite distinct loyalties: the former to one’s national group; the latter to one’s state (country) and institutions.” See Walker Connor, “Beyond Reason: The Nature of the Ethnonational Bond,” in Ethnicity, ed. John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 69. I would also like to thank my graduate student Emmanuel Dakpogan for pointing me toward the equally illuminating though perhaps apocryphal quote by George Clemenceau. To para­ phrase: “A patriot loves his country, a nationalist hates everyone else’s.” 16. Much important work has begun to explore the ways in which patriotic senti­ ment was encouraged in the United States during these important years. See David Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making of American Nationalism, 1776–­1820 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997); Simon Newman, Parades and the Politics of the Street: Festive Culture in the Early American Republic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999); William Pencak, Matthew Dennis, and Simon Newman, eds., Riot and Revelry in Early America (University Park: Penn­ sylvania State University Press, 2002); Susan Branson, These Fiery Frenchified Dames: Women and Political Culture in Early National Philadelphia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001). 17. Friends were only one among many religious bodies experiencing profound changes and ruptures during this era. The Christian church, particularly in the eigh­ teenth century, was as diverse as it was vibrant. Protestantism had continued to fracture, forming new denominations, and the number of immigrants from the Old World to the New continued to swell, giving life to new and old denominations. The Great Awakening was perhaps a high tide of transatlantic exchange, although eighteenth-­and nineteenth-­ century itinerant ministers of all denominations strengthened ties. For an important discussion of the impact of itinerancy on the American colonies, see Timothy Hall, Contested Boundaries: Itinerancy and the Reshaping of the Colonial American Religious World (Durham: Duke University Press, 1994), esp. chap. 2. For other treatments of the transatlantic orientation of religion in this era, see April Lee Hatfield, Atlantic Virginia: Intercolonial Relations in the Seventeenth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), esp. chap. 5. Two recent books on Puritanism also suggest important ties between the New and Old Worlds. See John M. Barry, Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul (New York: Viking, 2012); Sarah Rivett, Science of the Soul in Colonial New England (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011). Strong comparisons may be drawn between the Moravians and the Society of Friends,

notes to pages 9–13

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both marginalized sects, both early adoptees of pacifist tenets, and both fundamentally transatlantic in their origins. For two excellent works on eighteenth-­century Moravianism, see Jon Sensbach, Rebecca’s Revival: Creating Black Christianity in the Atlantic World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006); Katherine Carté Engel, Religion and Profit: Moravians in Early America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009). Finally, an excellent window into the religious diversity of Pennsylvania and the ways in which Quakers interacted with those around them may be found in John Smolenski, Friends and Strangers: The Making of a Creole Culture in Colonial Pennsylvania (Phila­ delphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010). 18. I borrow this term from the debate between Frank Lambert, The Founding Fathers and the Place of Religion in America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), and Jon Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People (Cam­ bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992). 19. Remarkably, I borrowed this section’s subheading from an actual pamphlet: Thomas Underhill, Hell Broke Loose, or, An History of the Quakers Both Old and New (London: Simon Miller, 1660). 20. George Fox, “The Journal of George Fox,” in Quaker Writings: An Anthology, 1650–­1820, ed. Thomas Hamm (New York: Penguin, 2011), 7. 21. Scholars exploring the theological foundations of the Society during this initial stage remain divided as to how to categorize the beliefs of the earliest adherents. Rufus Jones aligned first Friends with mystical traditions; however, other historians have lo­ cated the Society as a wing of early Puritanism. A third group of scholars has highlighted the prophetic impulse of Friends and their biblical sense of mission, while recent scholar­ ship suggests that the Society embodied the era’s millennialist fervor with its eschatologi­ cal spirituality. Dandelion, Introduction to Quakerism, 2–­4. 22. According to Rosemary Moore, Friends almost adopted the name “church of the firstborn” in reference to Hebrews 12.23. Moore quoted in Dandelion, Introduction to Quakerism, 29. 23. There are many wonderful monographs on this early period of Friends’ radical­ ism. I have been most influenced by Phyllis Mack, Visionary Women: Ecstatic Prophesy in Seventeenth-­Century England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); Chris­ topher Hill, World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas during the English Revolution (New York: Penguin, 1984). 24. William Braithwaite asserts that more than 15,000 Friends were jailed and more than 400 perished while imprisoned during this period. Thomas Hamm differs from Braithwaite, claiming 500 perished. Braithwaite, quoted in Dandelion, Introduction to Quakerism, 44; Thomas Hamm, Quakers in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 18–­22. 25. H. Larry Ingle, First Among Friends: George Fox and the Creation of Quakerism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 188. Reformers censored and censured the more outlandish behavior associated with early Friends, moved to eliminate challenges from “New Lights” (members who sought to challenge the truth as it was revealed to Fox, most notoriously James Naylor), and concentrated on managing disputes quietly among adherents. Scholars thus describe the 1660s as a decade in which a more “pragmatic and

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cautious” (some have even said more “mature”) version of Quakerism was “re-­presented” to the world as a means of avoiding persecution and internally strengthening the move­ ment. Dandelion, Introduction to Quakerism, 43. There have been a few noteworthy book-­length studies of Margaret Fell, including Sally Bruyneel, Margaret Fell and the End of Time: The Theology of the Mother of Quakerism (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2010); Margaret Askew Fell Fox, Elsa Gines, and Rosemary Moore, eds., Undaunted Zeal: the Letters of Margaret Fell (Richmond, IN: Friends United Press, 2003). 26. We also know that many affluent Society members observed perhaps the spirit but not the letter of the law, indulging in “the best sort, but plain.” See Frederick Tolles, “Of the Best Sort but Plain,” American Quarterly 11, no. 4 (1959): 484–­502. See also James Emmet Ryan, Imaginary Friends: Representing Quakers in American Culture, 1650–­1950 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2009); Emma Jones Lapsansky and Anne Verplanck, eds., Quaker Aesthetics: Reflections on a Quaker Ethic in American Design and Consumption, 1720–­1920 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002). 27. The phrase “In the light, there is neither male nor female” is closely associated with Quaker history. It stems from the biblical precept in Galatians 3.28: “There is nei­ ther Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” 28. Mary Maples Dunn, “Women of Light,” in Women of America: A History, by Carol Ruth Berkin and Mary Beth Norton (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979), 114–­36, quote at 125. 29. Thomas Hamm, The Transformation of American Quakerism: Orthodox Friends, 1800–­1907 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 30. 30. Earlier historiography tended to emphasize the equality of Quaker women—­ female itinerant ministers in particular—­suggesting, in some cases, that they all but “overcame” their gender and negotiated their ministry as virtually unsexed beings. More recent literature regarding Quaker women, particularly the uniquely gendered negotia­ tions undertaken by female ministers, complicates this argument. The books addressing these issues are too numerous to list, but for a good introduction to the debate, see the following representative examples: Margaret Hope Bacon, Mothers of Feminism: The Story of Quaker Women in America (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1986); Patricia Cline Cohen, “Safety and Danger: Women on American Public Transport, 1750–­1800,” in Gendered Domains: Rethinking Public and Private in Women’s History, Essays from the Seventh Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, ed. Dorothy Helly and Susan Reverby (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992); Christine Levenduski, A Peculiar Power: A Quaker Women Preacher in Eighteenth-­Century America (Washington, DC: Smithsonian, 1997); Rebecca Larson, Daughters of Light: Quaker Women Preaching and Prophesying in the Colonies and Abroad, 1700–­1775 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000); Amanda Herbert, “Companions in Preaching and Suffering: Itiner­ ant Female Quakers in the Seventeenth-­and Eighteenth-­Century British Atlantic World,” Early American Studies 9, no. 1 (2011): 73–­113. 31. There were separate meetings for men and women in the American colonies from the beginning; however, meetings in London lagged behind. In fact, London Yearly

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Meeting did not establish a women’s counterpart to the men’s meeting until 1784 after successful lobbying by several outspoken American Quaker women. 32. Pennsylvania established its Meeting for Sufferings during the Seven Years’ War, New York in 1758, and New England in 1775. 33. Dandelion, Introduction to Quakerism, 43. 34. This stereotype was so pervasive and so damaging that Thomas Clarkson devoted a significant portion of his three-­volume tome Portraiture of Quakerism to refuting this misperception. 35. For a classic discussion of Quaker merchants, see Frederick Tolles, Meeting House and Counting House: The Quaker Merchants of Philadelphia, 1682–­1733 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1963); Balwant Nevaskar, Capitalists without Capitalism: The Jains of Indian and the Quakers of the West (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1971). 36. When attendees were insufficient in number, the business meeting was officially “laid down” by the yearly meeting to which it belonged. This did not mean that local Friends did not continue to meet for worship, however, and Public Friends continued to visit these remaining members in Scotland throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. See John William Steel, A Historical Sketch of the Society of Friends ‘in Scorn Called Quakers’ in Newcastle and Gateshead, 1653–­1898 (Headley Bros., 1899), 74. 37. The population decline within the Society was similar to the decline within Irish society at large during the first half of the nineteenth century, as Irish Friends immigrated in proportions similar to the rest of the population. For an extended analysis of the chang­ ing demographics of Irish Friends, see Richard T. Vann and David Eversley, Friends in Life and Death: The British and Irish Quakers in the Demographic Transition, 1650–­1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). For a discussion of Friends’ continued influence in Ireland, see Helen Hatton, The Largest Amount of Good: Quaker Relief in Ireland (Montréal: McGill-­Queen’s University Press, 1993). 38. H. Larry Ingle, Quakers in Conflict: The Hicksite Reformation (Knoxville: Uni­ versity of Tennessee Press, 1986), 75. 39. Sheila Wright, Friends in York: The Dynamic of Quaker Revival, 1780–­1860 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1995). 40. While London Yearly Meeting did not control the meetings in any other yearly meeting’s jurisdiction, all others corresponded directly with it and usually deferred to its “advice.” It also dispatched copies of its annual epistle to every monthly meeting in Great Britain and America and directly corresponded with individual monthly meetings on both sides of the Atlantic. Philadelphia Yearly Meeting tried to exert this kind of influ­ ence on the American continent, but never quite succeeded. Indeed, yearly meetings in the colonies did not even correspond directly or regularly with one other. 41. For one classic and one contemporary book discussing Caribbean Friends, see Harriet Froher Durham, Caribbean Quakers (Hollywood, FL: Dukhane Press, 1972) and Kristen Block, Ordinary Lives in the Early Caribbean: Religion, Colonial Competition, and the Politics of Profit (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2012). Importantly, French émigré and Public Friend Stephen Grellet described his experiences in Haiti through a series of relatively unexamined letters exchanged with several other British and Ameri­ can transatlantic ministers. These letters and several of his travel diaries are found at Haverford College Library, Haverford, PA, Quaker Collection, collection 967. For a brief

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summary of the Norwegian Friends who claimed to have converted to Quakerism, see Friends Miscellany 8, no. 1 (Twelfth month, 1835): 1–­21. For a fascinating account of the Quaker presence in Russia through the eyes of a descendent of these nineteenth-­century Friends, see Richenda Scott, Quakers in Russia (London: M. Joseph, 1964). 42. E. Digby Baltzell, Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction, 1980). 43. Arthur Worrall, Quakers in the Colonial Northeast (Lebanon, NJ: University Press of New England, 1980). 44. A. Glenn Crothers, Quakers Living in the Lion’s Mouth: The Society of Friends in Virginia, 1730–­1865 (Gainsville: University Press of Florida, 2012). 45. Algie Newlin, Charity Cook: A Liberated Woman (Richmond, IN: Friends United Press, 1981). 46. Thomas Hamm argues that non-­Quakers actually migrated further south while Quakers from the same areas broke that pattern to actively seek out free-­soil territory. Hamm, Quakers in America, 38–­39. 47. Dandelion, Introduction to Quakerism, 80. 48. Hamm, Quakers in America, 33. 49. In 1856, about 26,000 Friends lived in Great Britain. See Dandelion, Introduction to Quakerism, 82. Generalizations are difficult, but it does seem that Friends lost members more as a result of internal dynamics such as the Reformation and Separation as well as their policy on marrying out than they did because of external pressures like state persecution. It also seems that wealthy and urban Friends tended to fade away while poorer and more rural Friends tended to move away in the nineteenth century. 50. I compiled this list of transatlantic ministers from “Ministering Friends of America who have visited foreign parts on Truth’s Service, 1656–­1839” and “Friends in the Ministry from Europe who have visited America on Truth’s Service, 1656–­1839,” collection 975C, QSCHC. As far as I have been able to determine, these lists are compre­ hensive and include the names of all of the Public Friends and the dates of their journeys during this time period. My emphasis on transatlantic travelers should not in any way diminish the accom­ plishments of the scores of ministers who traveled locally. Some of these Public Friends logged hundreds, even thousands, of miles traveling over rough terrain to visit the distant meetings in Scotland, Ireland, and the “woods” of the American colonies. 51. Mary Capper, “Memoirs of Mary Capper,” in Friends’ Library: Comprising Journals, Doctrinal Treatises and Other Writings of the Religious Society of Friends, ed. Thomas Evans and William Evans (Philadelphia: J. Rakestraw, 1848), 12:6. 52. Mary Dudley, “The Life of Mary Dudley.” in Friends’ Library, 14:287–­88. 53. For an excellent discussion of the published works of early Friends, see Kate Peters, Print Culture and the Early Quakers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 54. Rebecca Jones to Ann Alexander, 6 month 23 1805, MS Port 15/21, LRSF. 55. I am certainly not the first scholar to comment on either Friends’ transatlantic focus or the ways in which their quietism offered alternative identities in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Decisive works by noted Quaker scholars such as Rufus Jones and Frederick Tolles have provided generations of scholars with invaluable insights and

notes to pages 27–35

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sources. Rufus Jones, Quakers in the American Colonies (London: Macmillan, 1911) and Frederick Tolles, Quakers and the Atlantic Culture (New York: Macmillan, 1960).

chapter one 1. This remark may be found in the first edition of his book (1764), although this cita­ tion dates from the second publication in 1765. John Griffith, Some Brief Remarks upon Sundry Important Subjects, Necessary to be Understood and Attended to by All Professing the Christian Religion. Principally Addressed to the People Called Quakers (London: W. Richardson and S. Clark, 1765), 74–­75. 2. Like other dissident sects at the time, most notably Puritans, Quakers employed the language of Zion to denote their elect status, to justify their persecution at the behest of the Church of England, and to authorize their prophesying within the political realm. This worldview, while drawn from the faith tradition of the Hebrew scriptures, clearly incorporated elements from the Christian Bible, such as the “city on a hill,” and clearly responded to the struggles facing seventeenth-­century believers. Zion, then, while un­ mistakably a tenet of the Hebraic faith tradition, became a guiding principle for several Calvinist sects during this crucial era. The Religious Society of Friends was certainly not the only Christian sect to use this imagery. Sixteenth-­and seventeenth-­century Calvin­ ists, for example, “drew many parallels between the history of the Old Testament Israel and their own experiences.” Graeme Murdock, Calvinism on the Frontier, 1600–­1660: International Calvinism and the Reformed Church in Hungary and Transylvania (Ox­ ford: Clarendon Press, 2000), 261. Indeed, like the Friends, “Calvinist churches across Europe were bound together by shared doctrine, mutual recognition of confessional state­ ments, common forms of organization, and by expressions of solidarity for persecuted and exiled coreligionists” (258). Yet as these early modern Christians began to congregate in Geneva, their conceptualization of Israel as the “true church throughout the world” waned, and “ideas about building a new Israel slowly changed from an embattled holy remnant within any nation to embrace the possibility of elect nationhood by the early seventeenth century” (261). Similarly, nineteenth-­century Mormons drew on the Zion tradition as well as the Hebrew scriptures. Yet they, like the Calvinists and unlike the Friends, envisioned Zion as a literal place (including locations in first Missouri, then Illinois, and finally Utah). They too maintained that only members of their church lived as true and pure primitive Christians and, also like Quakers, labored with their parishioners to guide them toward perfection on earth. Yet unlike the Friends, the Mormons were a proselytizing sect and thus worked to convert outsiders to their religious worldview and not just to their poli­ tics. In this way, their rendering of Zion concerned only their own salvation rather than the redemption of the rest of the world. Finally, the Anglican Thomas Hartley, rector of Winwick in Northamptonshire, assured his mid-­eighteenth-­century audience that “the Lord hath not forgotten to be gracious to our Zion, but has a precious remnant still left in this land,” and urged “the children of Zion, wherever you are” to save the “true church” and build up the “New Je­ rusalem on earth.” Then would all God’s children “love one another,” cease “to learn war any more,” and finally be “a city which is at unity in itself, whose ‘walls shall be called

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salvation and whose gates praise.’” In these ways, he too compared “the state of modern Christendom with the state of the Jewish nation.” Thomas Hartley, God’s Controversy with the Nations: Addressed to the Rulers and People of Christendom (London, 1775), esp. 34–­38, 62–­68, and 90–­91. Scholars use three central tenets to characterize the Zion tradition as revealed in the Hebrew scriptures. First, God was the king of heaven and earth. (For specific scriptural support of the claim that God is king of nations, see Exodus 15.1–­18; Deuteronomy 32.1–­47. It is reaffirmed by Christians in the New Testament as well. See in particular Revelations 15:3–­4; Psalms 99:2 [“Great is the Lord in Zion; he is exalted over all the nations”].) Sec­ ond, the Lord resides in Zion. (See Psalm 132:13 [“For the Lord has chosen Zion, he has desired it for his dwelling”]; Isaiah 8:18; Psalms 48:1–­2, 78:68–­69; Ezekiel 40.2; Zechariah 14.10.) Third, God anointed the Davidic line as divine vice-­regents on earth. 3. The complete passage (Leviticus 20:22–­26) reads: You shall keep all my statues and all my ordinances, and observe them, so that the land to which I bring you to settle in may not vomit you out. You shall not follow the practices of the nation that I am driving out before you. Because they did all those things, I abhorred them. But I have said to you: You shall inherit their land, and I will give it to you to possess, a land flowing with milk and honey. I am the Lord your God; I have separated you from the peoples. You shalt therefore make a distinction between the clean animal and the unclean, and between the unclean bird and the clean; you shall not bring abomination on yourselves by animal or by bird or by any­ thing with which the ground teems, which I have set apart for you to hold unclean. You shall be holy to me; for I the Lord am holy and I have separated you from the other peoples to be mine. 4. Leviticus 20:24. 5. Joshua 23:7. 6. Deuteronomy 26:19. 7. Isaiah 28:16–­17 reads in its entirety: So this is what the Sovereign Lord says: “See, I lay a stone in Zion, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone for a sure foundation; the one who trusts will never be dismayed. One who trusts will not panic. And I will make justice the line, and righteousness the plummet; hail will sweep away the refuge of lies and waters will overwhelm the shelter.” 8. Isaiah 2:2. 9. Exodus 19:6 reads: “Israel is meant to maintain a degree of holiness higher than that of other nations just as priests observe more stringent purity rules than other Israel­ ites.” The authors of the Christian texts apply this decree to the Christian community in 1 Peter 2:5 and 2:9 as well as Revelations 1:6. 10. Isaiah 2:3. 11. Psalms 2:6; Joel 2:1. 12. Isaiah 2:2–­4. 13. Deuteronomy 28:1. Interestingly, author Herman Melville (an associate and fre­ quent critic of later nineteenth-­century Quakers) asserted that “America is the Israel of our time.” This usage is much later than that of the seventeenth-­, eighteenth-­, and early

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nineteenth-­century Friends discussed here; however, the meaning is somewhat similar, as many people believed that the United States was divinely ordained and would lead the rest of the world to salvation by its example. Reference taken from Lloyd Kramer, Nationalism: Political Cultures in Europe and America 1775–­1865 (New York: Twayne, 1998), 108. 14. Deuteronomy 28:64. 15. The term “mothers and fathers of Israel” was also used frequently by Friends to refer to the elders of the Society. 16. This quotation is found in a letter dating from the 1780s. MSS B 58 Grubb Collec­ tion, vol. 6, no. 88, FHLD. 17. Sophia Hume to Anthony Benezet, 7 month 24 1774, TEMP MSS 745/TR 37/15, LRSF. 18. Samuel Fothergill to Samuel Emlen, n.d., TEMP 745/94/23, LRSF. 19. MSS B 58 Grubb Collection, vol. 6, no. 89, FHLD. 20. Israel Pemberton to unnamed Friend, 10 month 7 1773, Pemberton Papers, vol. 25, p. 126, HSP. 21. Brown used this example “to incourage [sic] Friends to be steady in their testi­ mony against war and fighting and that if war should be waged against us had to mention ye case of Israel when Amalek made war against them in their Passage so likewise how the Lord made ways for them and wrought their Deliverance.” Notice in particular his contention that war would be waged against “us” (the Society of Friends). Joshua Brown, Journal, pp. 16–­17, collection 003/003, FHLSC. 22. Brown then also reminded his listeners of the peaceable testimony of Jesus Christ and for incouragement [sic] had to mention ye Instance of Elisha when ye Syrians had Incomposed about with an army and how ye Lord heard his prayers to open the Eyes of his servant to Bee ye chariots of fire and Horses that was about them also how ye Lord caused blindness to come on ye Syrian Army how he led them into [indecipher­ able] of Samaria and also to get the Good disposition that was in ye prophet to set Bread and water before them improving thereby a Christian disposition of mind in doing good for evil. Ibid., 25. 23. Thomas Clarkson, A Portraiture of Quakerism (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1807), 3:197. 24. “ER” to “much esteemed Friend,” 3 month 1767, MS BOX I/3/3, p. 135, LRSF. Note here that British Friends invoked “Sion” whereas American Quakers used “Zion.” 25. Jack Marietta, The Reformation of American Quakerism, 1748–­1783 (Philadel­ phia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984), 150. For an excellent analysis of this period in Pennsylvania history, see James Merrell, Into the American Woods: Negotiators on the Pennsylvania Frontier (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999). 26. This quotation is taken from a sermon delivered by Samuel Griffith, collection JT 745, vol. 37, pp. 68–­69, LRSF. 27. John Griffith, Some Brief Remarks, 13. 28. Excerpt from 1756 letter of Dr. Rutty, in Letters on Religious Subjects Written by Divers Friends, Deceased, by John Kendall (Philadelphia: Thomas Kite, 1831), 15.

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29. Governor’s wife of Tortola to Thomas Chalkley’s widow, 3 month 2 1742, MS BOX I/3/3, p. 111, LRSF. This letter was widely republished during the Seven Years’ War. 30. Hugh Williamson, The Plain Dealer, or Remarks on Quaker Politics in Pennsyl­ vania (Philadelphia: Andrew Steuart, 1764), 22. 31. Ibid., 23. 32. Philadelphienses, Remarks on the Quaker Unmask’d or Plain Truth Found to be Plain Falsehood Humbly Address’d to the Candid (Philadelphia, 1764), 8. 33. The British, for example, comprised English, Irish, Welsh, and Scottish “nations” to say nothing of the Catholic “nation” or the Jewish “nation,” as well as an endless list of dissenting Protestant sects. 34. Elizabeth Morris to Samuel Neale, 12 month 13 1777, James Cruikshank Letter­ book, vol. 3. 35. John Fothergill to James Pemberton, 5 month 6 1776, MS Port 38/106, LRSF. 36. The Spanktown controversy referred to an accusation that the Friends’ monthly meeting in “Spanktown” (nonexistent) had passed secret information along to the British. The Society defended itself immediately and perpetually, as the accusations resurfaced during the War of 1812. A more complete explanation is found in Thomas Gilpen, Exiles in Virginia: with Observations on the Conduct of the Society of Friends during the Revolutionary War (Philadelphia: Published for the subscribers, 1848). 37. A full account of Robert Walker’s experiences is found in collection TEMP MSS 869, LRSF. 38. “Some Remarkable circumstances attending the pillaging of David Sands’s house in North America,” MS Port 14/113, LRSF. 39. For a fascinating glimpse into the experience of one woman—­wife to one of the Virginia Exiles—­during the American Revolution, see Elizabeth Sandwith Drinker, Extracts from the Diary of Elizabeth Drinker (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1889). For a more modern interpretation, see Elaine Forman Crane and Sarah Blank Dine, eds., The Diary of Elizabeth Drinker: The Life Cycle of an Eighteenth-­Century Woman (Bos­ ton: Northeastern University Press, 1994). 40. Though officials on both sides occasionally offered monetary compensation for the use of Quaker meetinghouses and for the damaged property, Friends could not accept what they deemed to be tainted money. 41. The story of John Pemberton’s arrest and subsequent exile is quite remarkable. When the authorities came to take Pemberton away, he claimed he was not “easy” to al­ low it and remained seated at his desk. Despite the authorities’ best attempts to dislodge him, they were forced to dodge his wife, who tried to chase the men out of her house, and then to carry him out still sitting in his chair more than an hour later. When he and the thirteen other exiles were later led out of town, the free black community—­in a moving and courageous gesture—­lined the streets as a demonstration of their loyalty and support. The wives of the exiles led a campaign to secure the release of their husbands, petitioning both governmental and military officials until they realized their objective. 42. Thomas Paine, Common Sense: Addressed to the Inhabitants of America . . . A New Edition, with Several Additions in the Body of the Work. To Which Is Added an

notes to pages 46–50

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Appendix; Together with an Address to the People Called Quakers (Philadelphia: W. and T. Bradford, 1791). 43. Pennsylvania Gazette, October 9, 1776 (emphasis original). 44. Gilpen, Exiles in Virginia, 35. The warrant demanded that the proper authorities conduct “a diligent search” for “firearms, swords, and bayonets” of all such persons. The government also seized all of their “political papers,” which, revealingly in the case of the Friends, included monthly meeting minutes as well as their correspondences with British Quakers. See also Wendy Lucas Castro, “ ‘Being Separated from My Dearest Husband, in This Cruel Manner:’ Elizabeth Drinker and the Seven-­Month Exile of Philadelphia Quak­ ers” Quaker History 100, no. 1 (2011): 40–­63. 45. Pennsylvania Gazette, January 23, 1788 (emphasis original). 46. Gilpen, Exiles in Virginia, 34 (emphasis original). 47. Ibid., 53 (emphasis original). 48. “Old Patriotic Quaker” (thought to be British Friend Thomas Colley), Letters to the King from an Old Patriotic Quaker, Lately Deceased (London, 1778), 14–­15. 49. John Pemberton’s address to the Pennsylvania legislature may be found in the Pemberton Papers, vol. 36, no. 130, HSP. 50. Job Scott, Journal of the Life, Travels, and Gospel Labours of that Faithful Servant and Minister of Christ, Job Scott (Warrington, 1798), 244. 51. This opinion clearly continued for a long while, as when Rev. Hubbard accused that “Quakers have assumed the name friends, to distinguish them from other denomina­ tions, whereas they are not friends to any, except their own order.” Rev. Billy Hibbard, Errors of the Quakers Laid Open with Plainness, by a Plain Man and a Lover of Honesty (N.p., December 1808). 52. Pennsylvania Gazette, January 23, 1788 (emphasis original). 53. A transcript of this address by Samuel Fothergill to London Yearly Meeting made directly before his death is found in MS Port 15/9, LRSF. 54. Richard Jordan, A Biographical Memoir of Richard Jordan: A Minister of the Gospel in the Society of Friends (Philadelphia: Joseph R. A. Skerrett, 1827), 22–­23. 55. Samuel Fothergill, Eleven Discourses Delivered Extempore, at Several Meeting-­ houses of the People Called Quakers (Wilmington, DE: Coale & Rumford, 1817), 233. 56. William Rotch, Memorandum: Written by William Rotch in the Eightieth Year of His Age (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1916). Rotch also sent a series of exasperated and pointed letters to John Adams, beginning in April 1823, explaining once again the mo­ tives for his actions during the American Revolution. In particular, Rotch was incensed that Adams had instructed the Massachusetts Old Colony Memorial to insert “word for word” a description of Rotch as a traitor to the United States. Rotch insisted that he had only followed his conscience and therefore refused to apologize for his actions. See in par­ ticular William Rotch to John Adams, 4 month 10 1823, Rotch Family Papers, Ms N-­474, box 2, folder “1823,” MHS. 57. After the American Revolution, Rotch struggled to obtain the support of the US government to rebuild Nantucket’s whaling industry. When it failed to materialize, he and his eldest son sought opportunity elsewhere. Rotch first invited the British govern­ ment to invest in his whaling venture, but he moved onto France when the British Crown

236

notes to pages 50–53

would not grant his requests for the freedom to observe Quaker principles in peace. The French, however, offered considerable financial resources in addition to a pledge from Louis XVI to allow the Quaker community to practice their religion freely and to exempt them from military duty and ecclesiastical levies. 58. William Rotch to Samuel Rodman, Dunkirk, 11 month 12 1792, Rotch Family Papers, folder “Transcripts #1,” MHS. As a fascinating aside, when Rotch told the local officials why he could not illuminate in celebration of French victories, one of the men recognized Rotch from the petition he delivered to the French National Assembly. The Frenchman explained further that he believed that the new French government was mod­ eled after William Penn’s Pennsylvania and so excused his actions. 59. Rotch was so incensed (and perhaps paranoid) that he numbered all of his letters and insisted that his correspondents do the same to determine whether British officials had seized or delayed his letters. For at least two examples of this, see collection S-­G 1, series A, folder 2, New Bedford Whaling Museum. 60. This quotation is taken from the diary kept by Benjamin Rotch’s daughter. Rotch Papers, box 11, subseries 12, series B, volume 1, New Bedford Whaling Museum. 61. London Yearly Meeting, Epistle, 1781, London Yearly Meeting Epistle Collection, box 3, QSCHC. 62. See, e.g., John Woolman to Susannah Lightfoot, n.d., MS Port 31/88, LRSF. 63. This quotation is taken from Henry Hull’s undated sermon, though it likely dates from his 1785 journey through Great Britain. MS Vol 347/280, LRSF. 64. Job Scott, “Trouble looming for Great Britain” prophesy, 1793, MS Port 5/8, LRSF. 65. “Extract of a letter of Sophia Hume,” n.d., MSS MISC 004, box “1763–­1777,” FHLSC. 66. William Rotch to Charity Rotch, n.d., Rotch Family Papers, folder “Transcripts #1,” MHS. 67. William Rotch to Thomas and Charity Rotch, 10 month 12 1790, collection Ms N-­812, Rotch Family Papers, box “1790–­1809,” folder “1790–­1794,” MHS. 68. This quotation is taken from a letter dated 7 month 5 178? (the last digit was unreadable in the manuscript) from minister Jane Watson to Richard Chester (Watson was granted a certificate in 1787, so this letter probably dates from around that time). MS Port 34/54, LRSF. 69. London Yearly Meeting, Epistle, 1784, London Yearly Meeting Epistle Collection, box 3, QSCHC. 70. David Sands to William Jackson, 2 month 28 1782, RG5/217, FHLSC. 71. Robert Valentine to unknown Friend, 1 month 17 1784, Pemberton Papers, vol. 40, no. 671, HSP. 72. Mehitable Jenkins to Mary England, 5 month 31 1784, collection 1006, box “Ev­ ans family—­Z,” folder “Jenkins, Mehitable,” QSCHC. 73. Mehitable Jenkins to David Bacton Barwich, 11 month 18 1790, collection 1006, box “Evans family—­Z,” folder “Jenkins, Mehitable,” QSCHC. 74. Thank you note from Joseph Oxley to James Pemberton, 8 month 20 1772, Pem­ berton Papers, vol. 24, p. 7, HSP. 75. Lindley Murray, A Compendium of Religious Faith and Practice (York: W. Alex­ ander, 1815).

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76. Granddaughter of Elizabeth Wilkinson to the children and husband of Mary Swett, 9 month 28 1798, collection 1001, box S-­Z, QSCHC. 77. Will of Deborah Morris, 1793, collection 2015, HSP. 78. Rebecca Jones to John Pemberton, 9 month 16 1784, Pemberton Papers, vol. 42, no. 20, HSP. 79. Rebecca Jones to John Pemberton, 6 month 5 1788, Pemberton Papers, vol. 50, p. 64, HSP. 80. John Churchman to Mary Piesley, 8 month 14 1752, MS Port 3B/48, FHLD. 81. “Some Expressions of Thomas Ross during his last Illness at York to which Place he came the 2nd of 11th month 1785,” MS BOX I/3/3, p. 37, LRSF. 82. Ibid., 23. 83. Several psalms of the Hebrew scriptures support this claim: “You [the Lord] have rebuked the nations, you have destroyed the wicked” (Psalms 9:5). “He judges the world with righteousness; he judges the peoples with equity. The Lord is a stronghold for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble” (Psalms 9:8–­12). “The nations have sunk in the pit that they made; in the net that they hid has their own foot been caught” (Psalms 9:15). “Rise up, O Lord! Do not let mortals prevail; let the nations be judged before you. Put them in fear, O Lord; let the nations know that they are only human” (Psalms 9:19). 84. In Isaiah 41, a passage known as “God’s Trial of the Nations” calls on nations to go to the court with God to resolve the question of who controls history. Indeed, several of the Meetings for Suffering retained copies of God’s Controversy with the Nations by Thomas Hartley, the rector of Winwick in Northamptonshire, in which he maintained that “though the kingdom of Christ, as it is not of this world, but spiritual, neither is nor can be subject to your temporal jurisdiction.” Hartley, God’s Controversy with the Nations, 34. 85. Fothergill, Eleven Discourses, 134. 86. Ibid., 18. 87. Thomas Colley, A Discourse, Publicly Delivered (Philadelphia: Enoch Story, 1787), 10. 88. John Griffith, Some Brief Remarks, 18. 89. John Fothergill to James Pemberton, London, 10 month 19 1778, MS Port 38/109, LRSF. 90. London Yearly Meeting, Epistle, 1790, London Yearly Meeting Epistle Collection, box 5, QSCHC. 91. William Rotch to Samuel Rodman, 2 month 18 1792, Rotch Family Papers, folder “Transcripts #1,” MSP. Many Friends believed in the unity of humanity, as revealed when Friend Samuel Emlen reflected, “ ‘Who maketh thee to differ from another’ . . . are humbling queries often suggested to my mind,” in a letter to John Pemberton, 2 month 8 1764, Pemberton Papers, vol. 17, p. 80, HSP. 92. Thomas Scattergood’s address to London Yearly Meeting in 1795, MS Port 20/15, LRSF. 93. Transcript of Job Scott’s 1793 prophesy of “trouble looming for Great Britain,” MS Port 5/8, LRSF. 94. Thomas Carrington, A Christian Exhortation to the People (London: William Phillips, 1803), 8.

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notes to pages 58–68

95. William Matthews, Journal, pages undated and unnumbered. 96. Ibid. 97. William Hunt, “Expressions dropped by William Hunt,” MS Port 18/90, LRSF. 98. Isaiah 2.2–­4. 99. See Exodus 19:6 and Isaiah 43:20–­21.

chapter two 1. The scriptural passage quoted here is from Micah 4:3. 2. Job Scott, Journal of the Life, Travels, and Gospel Labours of that Faithful Servant and Minister of Christ, Job Scott (Warrington: W. Leicester, 1798), 268. 3. Ibid. The scriptural passage quoted here is from Isaiah 2:4. 4. Job Scott to his relations in Rhode Island, 11 month 7 1793, Shaw/Shoemaker microfilm collection #13553. 5. Scott, Journal, 261. 6. Ibid., 244. 7. Ibid. 8. Rebecca Jones, for example, noted that she “beat about the border of the [indeci­ pherable] cities, proclaiming War with the inhabitants thereof.” This quote is taken from the diary of Sarah Grubb, p.16, Allinson Collection 968, box 8, QSCHC. 9. Linda Kerber, No Constitutional Right to be Ladies: Women and the Obligations of Citizenship (New York: Hill and Wang, 1999). 10. Rebecca Jones to Richard Jordan, 9 month 30 1801, collection 1001, box Ho-­K, folder “R. Jones,” QSCHC. 11. Richard Jordan to John Pemberton, 11 month 8 1787, Pemberton Papers Collec­ tion, vol. 48, no. 190, HSP. 12. Susannah Boone, diary entry 2-­2-­1775, “Quaker women” microfilm collection at FHLSC. 13. Mary Ridgeway to John Pemberton, 12 month 22 1783, Pemberton Papers Collec­ tion, vol. 40, no. 41, HSP. 14. Sarah Stephenson, Memoirs of the Life, etc. of Sarah Stephenson (1815), 12. 15. For biblical reference, see 1 Timothy 12. Original sermon delivered 5 month 26 1767. Quoted in Samuel Fothergill, Eleven Discourses Delivered Extempore, at Several Meeting-­houses of the People Called Quakers (Wilmington, DE: Coale & Rumford, 1817). 16. London Yearly Meeting, Epistles from the Yearly Meeting of the People Called Quakers (London: Samuel Clark, 1760), 1:2. 17. See in particular Ephesians 6:10–­20. Other key scriptural passages include Isaiah 11, 49.2, 59.17; Hosea 6.5; Wisdom of Solomon 5.17–­20; 1 Thessalonians 5.8; and 2 Corinthians 6.7. 18. The scriptural passage quoted here is from Isaiah 11.6. 19. Stephen Grellet to Lydia Nield, 7 month 27, 1846, MS Port 39/79, LRSF. 20. Scott, Journal, 277. 21. Friends based their peace testimony on three scriptural references in particular. The most oft-­quoted was Isaiah 2:2: “He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears

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into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.” Friends argued that peace was a sign of God’s favor and a state toward which all Christians should work. Their second most common citation was John 18:36: “Jesus said, ‘My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to pre­ vent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place.’ ” Quakers used this excerpt to illustrate why they refused to engage in armed conflict. They, as Jesus’ ser­ vants, were not of this world and therefore would not bear arms on his behalf or anyone else’s. Finally, many Quakers trusted in the prophesy of Isaiah 65:25 that “the wolf and the lamb shall feed together.” The US government also recognizes the Mennonites and the Brethren as “official” historical peace churches. Despite the contemporary recognition of Friends as perhaps the most prominent peace sect (the Society received a Noble Peace Prize for their relief work after World War II), Mennonite peace testimony dates over a century earlier than Quak­ ers’. Mormons continue to use the language of an “army of God” to describe their mis­ sion work. Eighteenth-­century Friends did not proselytize, and some nineteenth-­century Mormons did engage in violence; however, both sects shared these references to Zion (see chapter 1) and to the church militant. 22. These categorizations also appeared as the two kingdoms of God, the kingdom here on earth and the kingdom in heaven. Catholic theology added a third category, the “church suffering” or the “church expectant,” comprised of those Christians locked in purgatory. 23. James King to William Rathbone, n.d., Pemberton Papers Collection, vol. 24, no. 24, HSP. 24. Samuel Fothergill, Eleven Discourses, 67. 25. This interpretation of the church militant is clearly analogous to one of the Islamic conceptualizations of jihad as a spiritual struggle against individual sins and as a collective struggle against the sins of the world. 26. Rachel Coope, Journal, 7, Misc. collection 003, FHLSC. 27. Nicolas Waln to his aunt, n.d. Reprinted in the Quaker periodical Friends’ Miscellany, vol. 5, no. 3 (1820). 28. Again, see in particular Ephesians 6:10–­20; Isaiah 11.5, 49.2, 59.17; Hosea 6.5; Wisdom of Solomon 5.17–­20; 1 Thessalonians 5.8; and 2 Corinthians 6.7. 29. For a discussion of the literal, physical incarnation of the Puritan church mili­ tant, see E. Digby Baltzell, Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction, 1996). 30. William Cowper, one of the only non-­Quaker authors of whom reform-­minded Friends approved, drew inspiration from George Herbert’s poems. His most notable works include The Temple: Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations (1633), and Herbert’s Remains, or Sundry Pieces of that Sweet Singer, Mr. George Herbert (1652). This second volume was later published in 1671 as A Priest to the Temple or the Country Parson. 31. This concept was articulated most clearly by nineteenth-­century Methodist lead­ ers. See, e.g., Bishop H. M. Turner, The Genius and Theory of Methodist Polity, or the Machinery of Methodism (Philadelphia: Publication Department, A.M.E. Church, 1885). 32. This obituary of George Hiney was recorded in an unnamed Middletown, PA, newspaper. “The Hineys of PA and IA,” Ancestry.com, accessed November 6, 2012, http://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~sam/hineys.html.

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33. I have drawn on Harold Bosley’s work on the Methodists in this section to explain Friends’ definitions of and experiences with their own church militant. For further refer­ ence, see Harold A. Bosley, The Church Militant (New York: Harpers & Brothers, 1952). The passages quoted are found on page 90. 34. Ibid., 32. 35. This interpretation was closer to its Latin root (militans, meaning serving as soldier, military). 36. Ruth Fallows to Benjamin Grubb, 4 month 17 1784, MSS B 56 S. Grubb 194, LRSF. 37. Several able scholars continue to debate both the development of Friends’ early peace testimony and the different degrees to which they observed pacifism at different points in their history; however, all accede that the church militant of the late eighteenth century advocated a rigorous definition of pacifism. For the debate concerning the early years of Quaker pacifism, see Meredith Weddle, Walking in the Way of Peace: Quaker Pacifism in the Seventeenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). She, I find, offered the most complete and most sensitive understanding of the emergence of Friends’ pacifism, categorizing existing scholarship into two distinct historiographic camps. The first, consisting of such well-­known Quaker historians as Rufus Jones and W. C. Braithwaite, described Friends’ pacifism as a straightforward outgrowth of their faith and emphasized the scriptural foundations of Quaker ideology. The second, including scholars such as Barry Reay, W. Allen Cole and Christopher Hill, explored how Friends negotiated the fraught political terrain during the English Civil War and Restoration and concluded that Friends’ pacifism was a necessary response to the antagonism of the outside world. This position was largely accepted in the field until Weddle’s work maintained that these analyses depicted Friends’ pacifism as “uncomplicated, homogenous, self-­evident or unproblematical.” In light of these limitations in the literature, Weddle argued that scholars must recognize that pacifism “is organically connected to its historical setting and to inspired individuals, arising within a specific social culture, political system, legal and economic structure, and religious outlook.” The result of her work was a sensitive exploration of Quaker faith and practice, one that historicized religious doctrine while still taking seriously the element of spirituality important to Friends’ experience. For fur­ ther reference, see Weddle, Walking in the Way of Peace, esp. 4–­11. For a broader portrait of the English Civil War (the context during which Quaker peace testimony emerged), see Brian Manning, ed., Politics, Religion and the English Civil War (London: Edward Arnold, 1973); Peter Gaunt, ed., The English Civil War: The Essential Readings (Oxford: Black­ well, 2000). For a more complete history of Friends’ peace testimony, see Peter Brock, The Quaker Peace Testimony: 1660–­1914 (York: Sessions Book Trust, 1990). 38. The governor of Tortola published a series of letters to and from the island’s Quaker community, defending his demands that they muster for the militia. For an excellent description of Friends’ experience on this Caribbean island, see Kristen Block, Ordinary Lives in the Early Caribbean: Religion, Colonial Competition, and the Politics of Profit (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2012), esp. chaps. 10–­13. 39. Marietta correctly asserted that as Quakers gradually became more and more a part of the “outside world” in the first half of the eighteenth century, their visible marks of difference declined (in particular, their distinctive speech patterns and style of

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dress). As such, pacifism increasingly became one of the only means by which Quakers could highlight their difference, and Friends’ interest in peace thus became more about enforcing doctrinal accord within the Society than a concern about warfare itself. In his estimation, Friends’ pacifism had ceased to be a deeply felt spiritual call and/or a move­ ment to end war the world over, but rather had, for the most part, become a ritualistic performance. Jack Marietta, The Reformation of American Quakerism, 1748–­1783 (Phila­ delphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984). 40. This description referred to Rebecca Jones’s efforts in Scotland during her only transatlantic trip. Quoted in the unpublished 1785 copybook of Sarah Grubb, p. 16, Al­ linson Collection 968, box 8, QSCHC. 41. The original sermon was delivered 5 month 19 1767. Fothergill, Eleven Discourses, 59. 42. London Yearly Meeting, Epistle, 1771, London Yearly Meeting Epistle Collection, box 3, QSCHC. 43. Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, Epistle (Philadelphia, 1812), 1. The biblical reference here is from Philippians 2:12. 44. Ibid., 2. 45. London Yearly Meeting, Epistle to Friends in Upper Canada, 1812, London Epistles Collection, FHLSC. 46. John Hunt, diary entry, 7 month 26, 1771. RG5/240, Box 1, FHLSC. 47. See Abel Thomas, The Narrative of Abel Thomas (Philadelphia: Benjamin & Thomas Kite, 1824), esp. 5. 48. Joseph Hoag, Journal of the Life of Joseph Hoag, an Eminent Minister of the Gospel in the Society of Friends (Auburn: Knapp & Peck, 1861), 199. The full exchange between Hoag and the general is found on pages 198–­202. 49. William Savery, Seven Sermons and a Prayer, Preached at the Meetings of the Religious Society of Friends in America and England (Philadelphia: Benjamin C. Buzby, 1808), 45. 50. London Yearly Meeting, Epistle, 1790, London Yearly Meeting Epistles Collec­ tion, box 5, QSCHC. 51. Thomas Clarkson to the Sovereign of Haiti, 5 month 4 1816, MISC 004 collection, folder “1813–­1819,” FHLSC. Note that Clarkson adopted Friends’ style of dating when writing to the Haitian leaders. See chapter 4 for a further discussion of Clarkson’s use of Friends’ theology and behavior as well as his relationship to the authorities in Haiti. 52. Lindley Murray, A Compendium of Religious Faith and Practice (York: W. Alex­ ander, 1815), 52. 53. I again cite Anthony Marx’s phrase “faith in nation.” Quakers’ holy nation of Zion challenge this double entendre here (to have faith in a nation, but also, to have faith contained within a nation), as they had no faith in the concept of worldly nationhood and their faith resided outside of the geopolitical boundaries of the nation-­state. 54. Hannah Barnard to William Matthews, 9 month 6 1802, collection 851 (Bath Collection), folder “letters of American Friends,” QSCHC. Indeed, Barnard was such a zealous advocate of peace that she began to preach that the wars in the Christian Old Tes­ tament were meant as instructive illustrations and thus rejected the Christian claim that the Bible was divine revelation (the revealed word of God and thus word-­for-­word true).

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notes to pages 79–82

For this transgression, among others (she condemned publicly the hypocrisy of British Friends who loaned money to the government that it clearly intended to use to support the war effort), she was turned out of the Society of Friends. 55. Society of Friends, Considerations on the Matters in Difference between the Friends of London and Hannah Barnard (Hudson, NY: Ashbel Stoddard, 1802) (emphasis original). 56. John Wells, An Essay on War (Hartford, CT: Printed by Hudson & Goodman, 1808), 115. Item located at the Peace Collection at Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA. 57. Stephenson, Memoirs of the Life, 162–­63. 58. Stephen Grellet to his wife, 1 month 7 1814, MS Port 15/37, LRSF. 59. This letter, dated from Brieves 9 month 5 1818, is found in this same collection. 60. Perry Bush, Two Kingdoms, Two Loyalties: Mennonite Pacifism in Modern America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 16. 61. Ibid., 7. 62. Ibid., 16. 63. I have both appropriated the term “muscular citizenship” and drawn from the discussions of the concept of “muscular Christianity.” While this term applies mainly to the late nineteenth-­and early twentieth-­century Protestant response to industrialization, modernization, and socioeconomic disparity, the relationship between gendered ideas of religion and political participation are salient for discussions of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. For further discussions of “muscular Christianity,” see Kristin Hoganson, Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Provoked the Spanish-­ American and Philippine-­American Wars (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998); Gail Bederman, Manliness & Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880–­1917 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995); Clifford Putney, Muscular Christianity: Manhood and Sports in Protestant America, 1880–­1920 (Cam­ bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001). 64. An important and growing literature explores women’s support of and participation in the wars of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—­particularly the American Revolu­ tion. Very little work, however, has explored the role of women in opposing violence. A few works have explored this position in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. See, e.g., Heloise Brown, The Truest Form of Patriotism: Pacifist Feminism in Britain, 1870–­1902 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003). More work is needed for this earlier period. For a broad history of the subject of women and violence, see Shani D’Cruze and Anupama Rao, eds., Violence, Vulnerability and Embodiment: Gender and History (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005). For a more specific treatment of women in the American Revolu­ tion, see Carol Berkin, Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America’s Independence (New York: Knopf, 2005); Joan Gundersen, To be Useful to the World: Women in Revolutionary America, 1740–­1790 (New York: Twayne, 1996). There is an extensive popular literature regarding many important and well-­known women during the American Revolution. See, e.g., Melissa Lukeman Bohrer, Glory, Passion, and Principle: The Story of Eight Remarkable Women at the Core of the American Revolution (New York: Atria Books, 2003). Finally, for an important, classic text on the same subject, see E. F. Ellet, Revolutionary Women in the War for American Independence (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998). 65. Sarah Grubb to Sally (Sarah) Dillwyn, 1 month 28 1787, collection 955, QSCHC.

notes to pages 82–86

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66. Stephen Gould to Thomas Thompson, 12 month 1824, MS Port 29/47, LRSF. 67. Samuel Neale to Mary Abel, 12 month 3 1757, MSS B 49 S. Grubb SJ3, LRSF. 68. Sarah Stephenson, The Memoirs of the Life and Travels in the Service of the Gospel of Sarah Stephenson (Philadelphia: Kimber, Conrad, 1807), 71. 69. Rachel Coope, Journal, 7, Misc. collection 003, FHLSC. 70. This quote is taken from the unpublished 1785 copybook of Sarah Grubb, p. 16, Allinson Collection 968, box 8, QSCHC. 71. Rebecca Jones to Ann Tuke, 4 month 10 1794, MS Port 15/11, LRSF. 72. Rebecca Jones to Esther Tuke, 6 10 month 1788, MS BOX I/3/3, p. 163, LRSF. 73. Rebecca Jones to John Pemberton, 9 month 4 1789, Pemberton Papers Collection, vol. 52, HSP. 74. Scholars have explored many facets of early American masculinity over the past two decades. A few relevant examples that take a broad view: E. Anthony Rotundo, American Manhood: Transformations in American Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era (New York: Basic Books, 1994); Thomas Foster, Sex and the Eighteenth Century Man: Massachusetts and the History of Sexuality in America (Boston: Bea­ con Press, 1997); Mark Kahn, A Republic of Men: The American Founders, Gendered Language and Patriarchal Politics (New York: New York University Press, 1998); Dana Nelson, National Manhood: Capitalist Citizenship and the Imagined Fraternity of White Men (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998); Janet Moore Lindman, “Acting the Manly Christian: White Evangelical Masculinity in Revolutionary Virginia,” William and Mary Quarterly 57, no. 2 (2000): 393–­416; Richard Godbeer, The Overflowing of Friendship: Love Between Men and the Creation of the American Republic (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), esp. chaps. 3 and 4. 75. Voltaire, Lettres Philosophiques (London: J. and R. Tonson, D. Midwinter, M. Cooper, and J. Hodges, 1778), Letter I, 9. 76. Savery, Seven Sermons and a Prayer, 75–­76 and 110 (emphasis original). 77. Ibid., 9. 78. Hoag, Journal, 199. 79. London Yearly Meeting, Epistle, 1807, 3, London Yearly Meeting Epistle Collec­ tion, box 6, QSCHC (emphasis original). 80. Rebecca Jones to John Pemberton, 11 month 8 1787, Pemberton Papers Collec­ tion, vol. 48, no. 190, HSP. 81. William Hunt to unnamed male Friend, 2 month 15 1771, Gratz Collection, case 14, box 1, HSP. Both Hunt’s tone and his instructions to his correspondent suggest that he was a school-­aged young man. 82. William Hunt to unnamed male Friend, 6 month 16 1771, Gratz Collection, case 14, box 1, HSP. 83. David Hall, “An Epistle to Friends in Great Britain, or elsewhere, containing advice and consolation,” Pamphlet Collections, Miscellaneous Tracts, vol. 7, p. 24. 84. This quote is found in a letter contained in an unpublished copybook, MSS B 57 Grubb Collection Book, vol. 1, no. 50, FHLD. 85. Henry Hull, An Address to the Youth of the Society of Friends, in Great Britain and Ireland, Especially Those Who Attended the Yearly Meeting in London, in 1812 (Philadelphia: Benjamin and Thomas Kite, 1813), 11.

244

notes to pages 86–95

86. Brissot de Warville, A Critical Examination of the Marquis de Chatellux’s Travels in North America (Philadelphia: Joseph James, 1788), 41. 87. Ibid., 45. 88. This quote is found in a letter contained in a copybook, MSS B 58 Grubb Collec­ tion Book, vol. 6, no. 67, FHLD. 89. Noah Worcester, Friend of Peace, no. 2 (Cambridge, MA: Hilliard and Metcalf, 1815), 20. 90. Deirdre Coleman, Coleridge and the Friend (1809–­1810) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 105. 91. Tim Fulford, “The Politics of the Sublime: Coleridge and Wordsworth in Ger­ many,” Modern Language Review 91, no. 4 (1996): 828–­29. 92. See, e.g., the published debate about New York’s allowances for conscientious objection entitled “A Dialogue between Telemachus and Mentor.” Here, Telemachus challenged the mentor: “I have ever regarded that opinion [pacifism] in the Quakers as a weakness, or as a species of fanaticism. But as they are generally a harmless sort of people, I thought it wise in the government to exempt them from military duty. I was not, however, prepared to expect that people of other denominations would adopt the opinion.” The mentor defended the right of Friends to conscientious objection, as pro­ tected by the first amendment in the Bill of Rights, though Telemachus remained wary of the political and societal implications of Quaker protests. Shaw/Shoemaker microfiche collection, #43849. 93. The government defined “necessary persons” as people with irreplaceable occupa­ tions such as ministers, teachers, doctors, high-­level politicians, and other skilled and/or educated and necessary and/or well-­connected people. 94. Society of Friends, Memorial and Petition to the Legislature of Virginia, on the Subject of Militia Fines, Together with the Letter of Benjamin Bates on the Same (New York: Samuel Wood, 1818), Shaw/Shoemaker microfilm collection, #44112. 95. Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, “To the Senate and House . . . of the United States . . . ,” 1796, Evans Collection, #30458. 96. Society of Friends, Memorial and Petition, Shaw/Shoemaker microfilm collec­ tion, #44112. 97. Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, Epistle, 1812, Quaker Special Collections, Haverford College 98. Pacificus, A Serious Expostulation with the Society of Friends . . . (1808), 1. 99. Job Scott, “An Epistle from Job Scott to his friend, Mary Leadbeater,” 5 month 30 1793 and entered into the copybook of a young Quaker student at Westtown School in Pennsylvania. Item located in Martha Baker’s 1801–­2 copybook, box 3, EDA. 100. Thomas Colley, A Discourse Publicly Delivered (Philadelphia: Enoch Story, 1787), 18.

chapter three 1. Owen Biddle, A Plan for a School on an Establishment Similar to that at Ackworth, in Yorkshire, Great-­Britain, Varied to Suit the Circumstances of the Youth within

notes to pages 95–100

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Limits of the Yearly-­Meeting for Pennsylvania and New-­Jersey (Philadelphia: Joseph Cruikshank, 1790), 19. 2. Benjamin Rush, “Thoughts upon the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic,” in Essays Literary, Moral and Philosophical (Philadelphia: Thomas and William Bradford, 1806), 10. Interestingly, Noah Webster also focused on this issue of the heart, writing: “The virtues of men are of more consequence to society than their abilities; and for this reason, the heart should be cultivated with more assiduity than the head.” A Collection of Essays and Fugitive Writings: On Moral, Historical, Political, and Literary Subjects (Boston: I. Thomas and E. T. Andrews: 1790), 26 (emphasis original). 3. Rush, “Mode of Education Proper,” 7. 4. Ibid., 8. 5. Biddle, Plan for a School, 5. 6. Jeremiah 10:23. Interestingly, Benjamin Rush frequently compared himself to the prophet Jeremiah. In perhaps a revealing parallel, Jeremiah was a prophet who lived to see the destruction of the temple and the diaspora after the kingdom of Judah fell to the Baby­ lonians. I certainly do not mean to imply that Rush identified with Quakers and their holy nation, but it is an interesting note of comparison and demonstrates the widespread influence of Hebraic scriptures in the late eighteenth century. 7. I would like to thank the staff of the Esther Duke Archives at Westtown School for introducing me to this term. Public Friends frequently used the idea of a “walled garden” to describe the Society of Friends. The scriptural reference comes from the Song of Solo­ mon 4:12 and variously translated as a “walled garden,” a “locked garden,” and a “garden enclosed.” Samuel Fothergill, for example, twice told his audience that Quakers were “a garden enclosed” (see Eleven Discourses Delivered Extempore, at Several Meeting-­houses of the People Called Quakers [Wilmington, DE: Coale & Rumford, 1817], 112 and 113, and http://www.qhpress.org/quakerpages/qhoa/sf111.htm). George Dillwyn also used this meta­ phor in his efforts to promote a guarded education within the Society. A good introduction to Dillwyn’s ministry may be found in Occasional Reflections, Moral and Religious (Lon­ don: W. Phillips, 1818). Rebecca Jones also specifically used it when addressing the students at Ann Tuke’s school, writing that “I wish thee to greet the Lassers who religiously preside over them—­may that ‘inclosed Garden’ under the special Culture of the great & good ‘Sower’ in the appointed Season bring forth ‘some thirty some sixty and some an hundred fold’! . . . How glad am I to find that precious Plant.” This reference is found in a letter from Rebecca Jones to Ann Tuke dated 4 month 10 1794, MS Port 15/11, LRSF. 8. Rush, “Mode of Education Proper,” 14. On that same page, he also referred to extant boarding schools as “gloomy remains of monkish ignorance.” 9. After Fox’s first visit to the American colonies, he established a book trade with the colonists in North America. He instructed the Quaker press to print six extra copies of each new treatise and send them to the New World so that Friends the world over could read the same discourses and remain in constant communication with one another. North Carolina Yearly Meeting recognized the potential benefits of this exchange and required its quarterly meetings to establish a lending library in each of their jurisdictions. Each library contained the writings of Quaker leader George Fox and the founder of Penn­ sylvania William Penn. Friends also collected the journals of such eminent Public Friends

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as John Woolman, Richard Jordan, Henry Hull, William Savery, John Churchman, Samuel Neale, Mary Piesley, and Abel Thomas. They included the letters of Irish minister Rich­ ard Shackleton as well as British Quaker Lindley Murray’s Power of Religion on the Mind in their collections. Finally, Friends purchased copies of The Manners & Customs of the Jews and Dimon’s work on war (Zora Klain, Quaker Contributions to Education in North Carolina [Philadelphia: Westbrook, 1925], 246). North Carolina Friends hoped that sharing these volumes would unite Friends behind a common ideological orientation, and this policy met with such great success that they expanded the program. In 1829, North Carolina Yearly Meeting urged its members to put as many of these works as possible in every Quaker home (ibid., 60). Donations of books and money came from many distant Friends who were inspired by the efforts of the North Carolina meeting (ibid., 216). Lon­ don Yearly Meeting as well as a small monthly meeting in Philadelphia donated a set of books to Friends in a local Marlborough meeting. 10. Public Friend Catherine Payton advised young Irish Friend Sarah Stephenson to bring Friends’ writings with her to the isolated Isle of Man as the best means of ensuring she grew properly in the Quaker faith. See Sarah Stephenson, Memoirs of the Life and Travels in the Service of the Gospel of Sarah Stephenson (Philadelphia: Kimber, Conrad, 1807), 17, for this exchange. Indeed, ministers encouraged all Friends—­young and old—­to read the same works, so as to make certain that each member of their scattered com­ munity accepted the same doctrine and adhered to the same discipline. In this way, the writings of prominent Public Friends conveyed to distant members the correct behavior, theology, and political orientation that the Society expected of its members. These books and pamphlets educated isolated Friends about Quakerism. Friends distributed their peri­ odicals far and wide, directing epistles to “Ye that dwell in remote and lonely situations,” hoping that “if these few pages should reach you, let me recommend to you the dwelling near that power that will preserve and support you.” Yearly Meeting, Friends Miscellany 8, no. 2–­3 (1836): 134. 11. Klain, Quaker Contributions, 62. 12. George Fox coauthored Instructions for Right Spelling and Plain Directions for Reading and Writing True English with Ellis Hookes in 1673. This work met with such great success that as early as the turn of the eighteenth century, New England meetings asked London Friends to send enough copies of Fox’s primer that they could distribute it to all of their children. By midcentury, they had reprinted it in Boston. See Klain, Quaker Contributions, 52; Howard Brinton, Quaker Education in Theory and Practice (Walling­ ford, PA: Pendle Hill Pamphlet Series, 1940), 59. This primer was the first in a long line of Quaker educational materials. Christopher Taylor, the first master of the Waltham Abbey School, expanded Fox’s work to include lessons in Latin. Others also wrote “First Books for Children” including John Perrot (1660), Stephen Crisp and George Fox the younger (1681; translated into Dutch in 1755), Francis Daniel Pastorius (1698), William Thompson (1711), John Chambers (1728), John Woolman (1774), Anthony Benezet (1778), John Gough (1780), Ackworth School (1790), Thomas Huntley (1793), Samuel Wood (1800), John Dalton (1801), Stephen Day (1804), John Comly (1805), Joseph Lancaster (1808), Maria Hack (1812), Hannah Kilham (1818), Elihu Marshall (1820), Goold Brown (1823; used in New York public schools until 1900), Thomas Christmas (1825), Maria Arthington (1828),

notes to pages 100–102

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Barton Dell (1832), John Hodgkin (1839), Mahlon Day (1840), and Lindley Murray, whose collected works went through fifty to one hundred editions during the early nineteenth century. For this complete list as well as other important information about Quaker schoolbooks and publishing, see Brinton, Quaker Education in Theory and Practice, 59. 13. W. A. Campbell Stewart, Quakers and Education as Seen in Their Schools in England (London: Epworth Press, 1953), 43. 14. The William Penn Charter School, established in 1689 by William Penn, is the oldest Quaker school in the world. 15. Stewart, Quakers and Education, 46. 16. Brinton, Quaker Education in Theory and Practice, 34. One of these schools was the famous Ballitore taught by three generations of the Shackleton family, many of whom were noted Irish Public Friends. 17. Stewart, Quakers and Education, 46–­48. 18. For a further description of the mission of and planning for Ackworth School, see John Fothergill, A Letter to a Friend in the Country, Relative to the Intended School, at Ackworth, in Yorkshire (London: James Phillips, 1779). 19. Ackworth remained the most prominent and well-­known Quaker school in England, although other quarterly meetings eventually did open their own institutions, among them Saffron Walden (1807), Clerkenwell (1808), Sidcot (1808), Wigton (1815), Bootham (1829), and The Mount (1831). 20. Zora Klain, Educational Activities of New England Quakers (Philadelphia: West­ brook, 1928), 10. 21. Moses Brown, quoted in Klain, Educational Activities, 75. 22. Klain, Educational Activities, 45–­47. Rachel Thayer, a wealthy Friend from Providence, was so inspired by Brown’s vision that she established an endowment for education in her will and named Public Friends Moses Brown, Elisha Thompson, and Job Scott as its executors. Out of this fund, Scott was paid $80 a month to teach a school within the limits of the Smithfield, Rhode Island, Monthly Meeting. 23. Benjamin Franklin sent advice to the founders of Westtown, including a pamphlet describing an earlier French school for orphans in Amsterdam. Helen Hole, Westtown through the Years (Westtown, PA: Westtown Alumni Association, 1942), 19. Noted physi­ cian and reformer Benjamin Rush was also in correspondence with Public Friends and guarded school advocates Thomas Carrington, Thomas Goodwin, and William Savery. He reserved particular praise for Savery, writing that he was “a man possessed of a be­ nevolent mind towards his fellow men and I believe no country but Pennsylvania could have cultivated such a mind, for there the mind is free, and by that freedom capable of receiving the dictates of reason.”. Box O, “Before 1799,” EDA. These letters are addressed simply to “Friends,” so it is impossible to determine his specific correspondent, although he communicated frequently with the students and staff of Westtown. 24. Hole, Westtown, 18. 25. Biddle, Plan for a School, 5. 26. Hole, Westtown, 18. 27. Twelve Public Friends donated considerable resources for the endeavor, including monetary support from the Pembertons and the Drinkers and a significant investment

248

notes to pages 102–105

of time by noted transatlantic ministers William Savery, George Dillwyn, Thomas Scat­ tergood, and Rebecca Jones. Hole, Westtown, 12–­16. 28. This quote is taken from the Nine Partners’ committee’s meeting minutes, col­ lection RG2 NYy 5.1, FHLSC. This financial support was not unique to Nine Partners, as British Friends provided significant portions of the funding of several American institu­ tions. Irish Friend Robert Grubb, for example, donated 100 guineas to Westtown. And John Eliot sent £100 along with £500 from Irish Quaker John Dawson Coates (Hole, Westtown, 26). Nor did Friends stop with mere monetary donations. Humphry Marshall sent $300 dollars along with an offer of his expert advice in botany, and several Public Friends served on the library’s acquisition committee (see collection RG2 NYy 1.2 FHLSC). 29. North Carolinian Friends had tried as early as 1801–­2 to establish a boarding school within the borders of their yearly meeting but failed to secure the necessary money and commitments from teachers. Klain, Quaker Contributions, 72–­75. 30. Ibid., 322. 31. When the infamous William Rotch returned from Europe, he and his family were instrumental in establishing the Friends’ Academy in New Bedford. His son, William Rotch Jr., and his son-­in-­law, Samuel Rodman, donated the land and money necessary to open the school. Interesting, Rotch had been involved in the education movement for quite some time, as he had served on the education committee in Nantucket previous to and during the American Revolution. 32. Klain, Educational Activities, 130–­65. By the mid-­nineteenth century, Friends centralized the oversight of their schools and had—­what else—­formed a committee to discuss the state of education within the Society. Quakers annually appointed two male and two female delegates to attend conferences sponsored by each of the American yearly meetings to evaluate the status of their schools. 33. For a unique and classic narrative of Friends’ relationship with Czar Alexander, their experiences in Russia, and their attempts to reform Russian schools, see Richenda Scott, Quakers in Russia (London: M. Joseph, 1964). 34. Mark Garrett Longaker, Rhetoric and the Republic: Politics, Civil Discourse, and Education in Early America (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2007). 35. Keith Whitescarver, “Creating Citizens for the Republic: Education in Georgia, 1776–­1810,” Journal of the Early Republic 13, no. 4 (1993): 455. 36. Webster, Collection of Essays, 26. 37. Ibid., 3. 38. Franklin Walker, “Enlightenment and Religion in Russian Education in the Reign of Tsar Alexander I,” History of Education Quarterly 32, no. 3 (1992): 345. 39. Rush, “Mode of Education Proper,” 9. 40. Kim Hays, Practicing Virtues: Moral Traditions at Quaker and Military Boarding Schools (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 1. 41. Daniel Walker Howe noted that “in the young American republic, the educational goals of Christian and secular educators were remarkably similar.” “Church, State, and Edu­ cation in the Young American Republic,” Journal of the Early Republic 22, no. 1 (2002): 13. 42. Jean E. Friedman, Ways of Wisdom: Moral Education in the Early National Period (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2001), xv. 43. Kim Hays argued that Quaker schools and military schools were condemned

notes to pages 105–108

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during the early national period for being too disconnected from society and strident in their individualistic way of life. In response to their critics, she argues, Quakers and military officials advanced an ethical stance that gave back to society. They taught their students to live a full-­time moral identity and to adopt self-­sacrifice as a way of life. See Hays, Practicing Virtues, 41. 44. Howe, “Church, State, and Education,” 21. 45. For three examples of students who recorded this eulogy during the 1799 school year, see Catherine Ridgeway’s copybook in box E3, Hannah Jones’s copybook in box B-­1, and Kezia Mickle’s copybook in box 1, EDA. 46. These two Quaker schools recently commemorated the two-­hundredth anniver­ sary of the beginning of this relationship in a transatlantic celebration. 47. See Catherine Ridgeway’s 1799 copybook, box E3, EDA. In another example of the relationship between the transatlantic ministry and these schools, as well as the ways in which students admired and emulated these Public Friends, another student copied a letter from Irish Friend Richard Shackleton to the same Catherine Payton. See Kezia Mickle’s 1799 memory book, box 1, EDA. 48. Martha Baker’s 1801–­2 copybook, box 3, EDA. 49. Josiah Albertson’s 1803 copybook, box E3, EDA. 50. Ibid. 51. Watson W. Dewees, A Brief History of Westtown Boarding School (Philadel­ phia: Sherman, 1873), 29. Scattergood also made a point to visit all of the monthly meeting schools in North Carolina during his journey through the state in 1792. Klain, Quaker Contributions, 160. 52. For example, see the entry dated 10 month 25 1802, in Rebecca Scattergood’s copybook (the young student was not an immediate relation to minister Thomas Scat­ tergood), box E3, EDA. 53. Stewart, Quakers and Education, 44. 54. Rush, “Mode of Education Proper,” 15. 55. M. R. Bartlett, The Common School Manual: A Regular and Connected Course of Elementary Studies, 2nd ed. (New York: James Conner, 1830), 2:212. 56. William Cardell, Moral Monitor (Rochester, NY: Marshall & Dean, 1832), 12–­13 and 75, respectively. 57. Whitescarver, “Creating Citizens for the Republic,” 460. 58. Society of Friends, The Friendly Visitant for Parents and Children 2, no. 12 (1837): 566. 59. John Woolman, A Firstbook for Children (Philadelphia: Joseph Cruikshank, 1774), pages unnumbered. 60. Society of Friends, To the Youth of Norwich Meeting (Philadelphia: Joseph Phipps, 1772), 5. 61. Douglas McKnight, Schooling, the Puritan Imperative, and the Molding of an American National Identity: Education’s “Errand into the Wilderness” (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2003), 5. 62. Webster, Collection of Essays, 23 63. Samuel Goodrich, The Tales of Peter Parley about America (Boston: S. G. Good­ rich, 1829), 135.

250

notes to pages 108–111

64. Ibid., 110. 65. See The Washington Primer or First Book for Children (Philadelphia: William Johnson, 1834). 66. Take, for example, this description of George Washington: “It was this expansive view, which, resting on principle and setting the good and ill of life in just order, could equalize the mind of Washington, whether struggling to preserve the suffering remnant of a defeated army; or walking on flowers, strowed by beauty in his path, and cheered by the plaudits of a nation.” Cardell, Moral Monitor, 104. See also Goodrich, Peter Parley, 153: “[Washington] is like a father, and the people are like his children. He watches over them. If enemies come against them, he sees that they are driven away, and he takes care that the laws are obeyed and the people protected.” In the same book, Goodrich also assured the readers that Washington abhorred war but would do what was necessary to protect the citizenry. Ibid., 159: “Two nations frequently go to war with each other. Nations at war send soldiers to kill the people, burn the houses, and destroy the property of their ene­ mies. Now suppose the King of England should make war on this country. He would send soldiers here, to kill the people, burn our houses, and destroy our property. What could be done in such a case to defend the people? Why the president must send soldiers to fight the soldiers sent by the King of England and drive them away. Thus, you see, it is the duty of the president not only to watch over the people by seeing that the laws are obeyed, but it is also his duty to see that the people are defended in time of war. It is im­ portant that the president should be a very wise and good man. If he is not so, the people may suffer very much.” 67. Bartlett, Common School Manual, 2:10. 68. See the manuscript collection “Old Letters and Accounts Scrapbook #3,” pages unnumbered, EDA. 69. Webster, Collection of Essays, 23. 70. Lindley Murray to Sarah Grubb, 6 month 6 1803, MSS Grubb Collection B 44, bk. 1, no. 22, FHLD. 71. Samuel Wood, The New York Preceptor, or Third Book (New York: Samuel Wood, 1809), 66. 72. Samuel Wood, The Instructive Alphabet (New York: Samuel Wood, 1809), pages unnumbered. 73. D. R. Preston and Benjamin True, The Juvenile Instructor, or a Useful Book for Children, of Things to be Remembered (Boston: B. True, 1803), 30. 74. The Washington Primer, cover. 75. Wood, Instructive Alphabet, the letter “L.” 76. Ibid., the letter “I.” 77. Goodrich, Peter Parley, 135. 78. Joshua Bailey’s copybook, box E3, EDA. 79. See Catherine Ridgeway’s 1799 copybook, box E3, EDA. Stephenson lectured the King that he needed not to rely on his own wisdom but to look inside to discern what course God wanted him to follow. This plea was a clear challenge to the King, implying not only that he had not followed God’s will, but indeed as of yet, had not determined correctly what that desire was.

notes to pages 111–119

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80. Lindley Murray, A Compendium of Religious Faith and Practice (York: W. Alex­ ander, 1815), 52. See chapter 2 for a more in-­depth explanation of the ways in which Murray’s primer urged children to follow their consciences, even if this required them to disobey—­or refuse to comply with—­national laws. 81. Bartlett, Common School Manual, 2:22. 82. Warren Nord, Religion and American Education: Rethinking a National Dilemma (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 65. 83. Webster, Collection of Essays, 26. 84. William Savery to Sarah Grubb, 2 month 24 1798, MSS B 44 Grubb Collection, bk. 1, no. 28, FHLD. 85. Walker, “Enlightenment and Religion in Russian Education,” 352. 86. For an account of Marsillac’s efforts, as well as copies of his communications with British Friends and the French government, see MS BOX Q3/5, 2, LRSF. 87. Ibid., 12. 88. Ibid., 20. 89. Ibid., 27. 90. Ibid., 17. 91. Ibid., 5. 92. At least two students copied this poem into their copybooks. See Josiah Albert­ son’s 1803 copybook and Rebecca Smith’s undated copybook, both in box E3, EDA. 93. Joseph Rickman wrote this poem in 1828 for his two sons, John and William, at­ tending Ackworth at the time. It was republished in a Philadelphia newspaper that same year. A copy is found at FHLD. It is also referenced in Norman Penney, The Journal of the Friends’ Historical Society (Bishopsgate: Headley Brothers, 1917), 14:33. 94. Goodrich, Peter Parley, 12–­13. 95. Ibid., 85 and 24, respectively. 96. Bartlett, Common School Manual, 2:260–­61. 97. Preston and True, Juvenile Instructor, 14. 98. Ibid., 17–­18. 99. Bartlett, Common School Manual, 2:260–­61. 100. Preston and True, Juvenile Instructor, 15. 101. Bartlett, Common School Manual, 2:125. 102. Ibid., 2:187. 103. Friends structured the curriculum of their schools around four necessities of growth: a sense of belonging, discovery of the worlds of nature and man (in which students were encouraged to “widen and deepen human relationships”), and a discovery of ideals. Harold Loukes, Friends and Their Children: A Study in Quaker Education (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1958), 66. 104. For examples of these exercises, see manuscript collection R1/5, “Ackworth copybooks,” LRSF. In particular, see lesson books from Joseph Sam’s 1809 class, Joseph Donbavand’s 1807 and 1809 class, and John Gott’s 1812 class. 105. Students in Joseph Donbavand’s 1800 class copied these exercises. 106. Collection MS BOX G1/5 LRSF. 107. See Josiah Albertson’s 1803 copybook, box E3, EDA.

252

notes to pages 119–121

108. This letter, dated 2 month 1785, was copied by Westtown student Josiah Albert­ son in his 1803 copybook, box E3, EDA. 109. An example of this assignment is found in an anonymous 1808–­11 piece book, box 5, EDA. 110. Josiah Albertson’s 1803 copybook, box E3, EDA. 111. Ibid. 112. This extract was copied by Kezia Mickle in her 1799 memory book, box 1, EDA. 113. One night around midnight, an African American woman knocked at Lewis’s door, frantic because slave catchers had seized her husband. Within hours, Lewis had awoken neighboring Friends, collecting more than £100 in donations from them and adding £300 of his own money (his yearly salary was £500). Together, he and this woman secured her husband’s freedom the next morning. The two families lived as neighbors for the rest of their lives. This story is recounted in Hole, Westtown, 104. 114. If accurate, this action would have been uncommon among the Friends at West­ town, particularly after the Orthodox-­Hicksite schism in the 1820s (Hole, Westtown, 115). After the Orthodox-­Hicksite schism in the Society of Friend (the beginnings of which originated with Public Friend Elias Hicks’s ministry in the early 1800s), Westtown identified as an Orthodox institution. On the whole, Hicksite Friends were more active in the antislavery movement. While nearly all Orthodox Friends shared the abolitionist sentiments of the Hicksites, they preferred to withdraw from the rest of society rather than to unite with other non-­Quakers in direct action or public protests. As a result, the involvement of Orthodox Friends in organizations like the Underground Railroad would have been rare. 115. Public Friends and schoolmasters Moses Brown and James Mott both used Worcester’s Friend of Youth textbook for a while in each of their schools. See Moses Brown to Noah Worcester, Providence 3 month 5 1823, Ms-­474, Noah Worcester Cor­ respondence, box 2, folder “1823,” MHS. See also Moses Brown to Noah Worcester, Providence 10 month 30 1822, Ms N-­474, Noah Worcester Correspondence, box 2, folder “1822: June–­November,” MHS. 116. I would like to thank Philip Lapsansky at the Library Company of Philadelphia for introducing me to this fascinating document. The following questions were offered by the teachers in the Nine Partners’ Boarding-­School, to their pupils, and the answers given in by them (Danville, VT: Daniel Lowell, 1818). 117. Stewart, Quakers and Education, 45. Though the teachers at these institutions were interested primarily in abolition and pacifism, many of the early school officials also educated students about other nineteenth-­century reform causes. As early as 1797, James Mott Sr. wrote a book condemning the use of corporal punishment in schools. Observations on the Education of Children (New York: Samuel Wood & Sons, 1816). Perhaps inspired by Mott’s work in the early nineteenth century, Westtown superintendent Headmaster Comly did away with the rod as a form of punishment. He also worked to integrate the religious and science curriculums at the school, as he was a firm proponent of the Enlightenment ideal of reason and natural philosophy. The Sharpless family (as the male and female superintendents) dominated Westtown for more than a decade in the middle of the nineteenth century and became intensively involved in the campaign for the more ethical treatment of American Indians. Hole, Westtown, esp. 119, 130, 132, 145.

notes to pages 121–123

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There is considerable debate as to the effectiveness of the Sharplesses’ efforts, as well as the paternalistic attitude they often exhibited to their American Indian friends and busi­ ness associates. 118. The literature concerning Quakers, gender, and the experiences of travel is grow­ ing. See, e.g., Rebecca Larson, Daughters of Light: Quaker Women Preaching and Prophesying in the Colonies and Abroad, 1700–­1775 (New York: Knopf, 1999). Also, I have presented on this topic in the past. See Sarah Crabtree, “In the Light and on the Road: Patience Brayton and the Quaker Itinerant Ministry” (paper presented at the Berkshires Conference of Women’s Historians, Claremont, CA, June 2004). 119. See in particular the manuscript collection “Old Letters and Accounts Scrap­ book #1,” p. 45, EDA. 120. See MSS “Old Letters and Accounts Scrapbook #2,” p. 38, EDA. 121. Dewees, Brief History of Westtown, 27. 122. Hole, Westtown, esp. 130–­32. Historians use the concept of Republican mother­ hood, asserted first by Mary Beth Norton and Linda Kerber, to explore the ways in which women of the early Republic used their status as mothers to assert their importance and expand their opportunities. In particular, women argued that their responsibilities to educate their children (especially their sons) mandated an improvement in their own education as well as their increased participation in the political process, the economy, and cultural discussions. These contributions served as manifestations of their patriotism and citizenship. While I do not believe that Quaker women used such explicit nationalis­ tic rhetoric, I will suggest that the increased attention to and celebration of motherhood provided a means by which female Friends could argue for larger roles within the Society of Friends and within these school committees. Their efforts on behalf of tradition­ ally “feminine” activities, such as nutrition, health care, and manners, as well as their involvement in the discipline process and the library committee, support this contention. For the classic definitions of Republican motherhood, see Linda Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (New York: W. W. Norton, 1986); Mary Beth Norton, Liberty’s Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750–­1800 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1980). 123. Zora Klain included a list of books that Friends considered “proper” for their libraries according to an epistle in 1813. Among them were the works of Shakespeare; Ben Johnson; Bell’s British Poets; Rousseau’s collected works; Woolstonecraft’s travels; the novels of Fielding, Smollett, and Defoe; Locke’s essays; and Gibbon’s Roman Empire. The complete list is found in Klain, Educational Activities, 132. She further described the efforts of the library committee on 84–­85. 124. Though young Lucretia Coffin had been reading about slavery and abolition since the age of ten (she had been initially inspired by a sermon she heard preached by British Public Friend Elizabeth Coggeshall), it was at Nine Partners that she read Thomas Clarkson and Pricilla Wakefield and listened to the sermons of Elias Hicks. 125. Rush, “Proper Mode of Education,” 19. 126. Mary Kelley, Learning to Stand and Speak: Women, Education and Public Life in America’s Republic (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 23–­25. 127. Kelley, Learning to Stand, 23–­25. 128. Bartlett, Common School Manual, 2:9 (emphasis original).

254

notes to pages 123–126

129. Ibid., 2:45. 130. Ibid., 2:22. 131. Rebecca Jones to Ann Swett, Bristol 11 month 17 1800, collection 1001, box S-­7, QSCHC. 132. W. A. Campbell Stewart included the following tasks in his list of chores at Ack­ worth: dining-­room waiters, washers, tailor’s waiters, shoemaker’s waiter, shed-­sweepers, garden-­sweepers, shoe-­cleaners, knife-­cleaners, bath-­cleaners, bread-­carriers (assistants to the baker), washing-­mill boy, churners, door keepers (assistant to the superinten­ dent), sheet-­carriers, morning-­waiter, bed-­roller, manglers, school-­sweepers, hair-­teasers, stocking-­menders, boys employed in the garden, hay-­makers, and occasional employ­ ment. For an explanation of these tasks, see Stewart, Quakers and Education, 61–­62. 133. Dewees, Brief History of Westtown, 26. 134. This reference was recorded by an anonymous female student in her 1808–­11 piecebook, box 5, EDA. 135. Interestingly, Mary Kelley notes that female academies never addressed women’s contributions to the American Revolution. Claiming that “history can do it no justice,” texts intended for girls’ academies included no discussion of women’s roles, as “neither its presence nor its influence was supposed to be visible . . . it was designed to be felt.” Kelley, Learning to Stand, 217 (emphasis original). 136. Kelley, Learning to Stand, 15. 137. Emmor Kimber promised these funds to Noah Worcester in a letter dated 2 month 11 1820, Ms N-­474, Noah Worcester Correspondence, box 2 “1820–­1824,” folder “1820,” MHS. 138. Hole, Westtown, 338n8. Rebecca Jones also received a sampler from female student at Clonmel boarding school in Ireland. In another example of the influence of transatlantic ministers in the education movement, Public Friend Sarah Grubb was its mistress at the time. This information was taken from William J. Allinson, Memorials of Rebecca Jones (Philadelphia: Henry Longstreth, 1849), 59. 139. This citation is found in Rebecca Smith’s 1802 copybook, box E3, EDA. 140. For a forceful argument in favor of women’s equal education and its implications for the participation of women within political society, see Abigail Mott, Observations on the Importance of Female Education, and Maternal Instruction, with Their Beneficial Influence on Society (New York: Mahlon Day, 1827). 141. For an extended analysis of Quaker contributions to nineteenth-­century reform movements, see Margaret Hope Bacon’s works: The Quiet Rebels: The Story of the Quakers in America with an introduction “The Quaker Contribution to Nonviolent Action” (Philadelphia: New Society, 1985); Mothers of Feminism: The Story of Quaker Women in America (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1986). I explore these contributions and their impact on the role of women in nineteenth-­century political society in chapter 4. 142. Kelley, Learning to Stand, 111. 143. This letter was copied into a piece book, MS Vol 345/27, LRSF. 144. This quote is found in “Extract of a letter from an indifferent hand on his visit­ ing Ackworth School,” author anonymous. His account was copied into MS Vol 345/15 and is located at the LRSF.

notes to pages 126–128

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145. Noah Worcester, A Solemn Review of the Custom of War Showing that War Is the Effect of Popular Delusion and Proposing a Remedy (Cambridge, MA: Hillard & Metcalf, 1815), 31–­32. 146. Mott requested that Worcester send him several copies of his Brief Hints to Parents so that Mott could distribute them among Friends’ families on his travels. James Mott to Noah Worcester, 4 month 12 1823, collection Ms N-­474, Noah Worcester Cor­ respondence, box 2, folder “1823 April–­June,” MHS. 147. Rev. Charles J. Mahoney, The Relation of the State to Religious Education in Early New York, 1633–­1825 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1941), 123. 148. Ibid., 131. Divie Bethune, a member of the Society of Friends and the Free School Society, wrote to the New York Gazette and urged its readers to support their cam­ paign to raise funds for free schools. He purposefully obscured his membership in both organizations. He then wrote to Governor DeWitt Clinton, asking him to place these letters in the Albany press and to hide his affiliations once again. Incidentally, DeWitt Clinton was connected to the Society of Friends by marriage. 149. Mahoney, Relation of the State, 121. He describes “an alliance of Quaker sectar­ ian Protestantism with the Deism of the day,” arguing that “each [was] seeking to extend and perpetuate its sectarian religious belief through a common ‘non-­denominational’ religious instruction.” 150. Stewart, Quakers and Education, 56. 151. Dewees, Brief History of Westtown, 33. There was considerable concern among Society members regarding the end of guarded education, and a few parents removed their children from the larger institutions to send them to smaller, still Quaker-­only schools. Indeed, debates concerning the outreach of Friends’ schools to outsiders as well as the role of the Quaker faith in Friends’ schools continue today. 152. Dewees, Brief History of Westtown, 32. 153. Brinton, Quaker Education, 41. This transition also occurred in some locales in New Jersey, North Carolina and Indiana. 154. Klain, Quaker Contributions, 224. Unfortunately, even if this statement was true, North Carolina remained the state with the highest illiteracy rate (28%) until 1840. This calculation was taken from Daniel Walker Howe, “Church, State, and Educa­ tion,” 23. 155. Brinton, Quaker Education in Theory and Practice, 40. 156. William C. Dunlap, Quaker Education in Baltimore and Virginia Yearly Meetings (Philadelphia: Science Press, 1936). 157. Louis T. Jones, The Quakers of Iowa (Iowa City: Clio Press, 1914). 158. Ethel H. McDaniel, The Contributions of the Society of Friends to Education in Indiana (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1939). 159. The number of Quakers continued to decline well into the nineteenth cen­ tury; however, the schism of the 1820s also negatively impacted enrollment in Friends’ schools. Institutions were forced to ally with either the Hicksite or the Orthodox faction and lost many of their students, faculty, and staff as a result. 160. Klain, Quaker Contributions, 145.

256

notes to pages 128–140

161. Lloyd P. Jorgenson, The State and the Non-­Public School, 1825–­1925 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1987), 203. 162. Michael Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture (New York: Vintage, 1993). 163. Biddle, Plan for a School, 50.

chapter four 1. William Richardson was an Evangelical Anglican vicar of St. Michaels le Belfre parish in York. This quotation is taken from Sheila Wright, Friends in York: The Dynamics of Quaker Revival, 1780–­1860 (Keele, Staffordshire: Keel University Press, 1995), 99. 2. London Yearly Meeting, Epistle, 1787. 3. London Yearly Meeting, Epistle, 1790. 4. London Yearly Meeting, Epistle, 1804. 5. The conviction that God speaks through a still, small voice comes from 1 Kings 19:11–­12 (KJV). The relevant part of this passage reads: Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire; and after the fire a still small voice. 6. New York Meeting for Sufferings, To the Citizens of the United States (New York: Isaac Collins & Son, 1803), 1 and 8, respectively. 7. Ibid., 9. 8. See, e.g., Rufus Jones, “The Remnant” in The Christian Revolution Series, vol. 8 (London: Swarthmore, 1920). 9. Isaiah 10:1–­2. 10. London Yearly Meeting, Epistle, 1804. Interestingly, New York Yearly Meeting for Sufferings concurred, urging its audience to eradicate their sinful behavior to hasten the day when “ ‘swords would be beat into ploughshares.’ ” New York Yearly Meeting for Suf­ ferings, To the Citizens, 10. The prophet Micah also employed the language of the holy remnant: Friends often quoted the verse that contained the instructions: “Do Justice Love Mercy and Walk Humbly with Thy God.” Micah 6:8. 11. Samuel Fothergill, Eleven Discourses Delivered Extempore, at Several Meeting-­ houses of the People Called Quakers (Wilmington, DE: Coale & Rumford, 1817), 112 (emphasis original). London Yearly Meeting echoed Fothergill’s language years later, describing Friends as “a living people, zealous of good works.” London Yearly Meeting, Epistle, 1784, London Yearly Meeting Epistle Collection, box 3, QSCHC. 12. In emphasizing Quakers’ commitment to (and belief in) good works, Fothergill reproached the Calvinist principle of sola fides (salvation by faith alone). Significantly, he did not rebuke the doctrine altogether, as to do so would not only have been heresy but have served to link the Quaker and papist (Catholic) faith traditions—­something still unthinkable to eighteenth-­century Friends. Rather, Fothergill merely highlighted the fun­ damental importance of philanthropy as a spiritual obligation to differentiate the Society of Friends from other Protestant sects.

notes to pages 140–145

257

13. Fothergill, Eleven Discourses, 259. 14. Ibid., 124. 15. Jack Marietta discussed “the perils of philanthropy” in his Reformation of American Quakerism, arguing that Pennsylvania Friends worried what would happen to the commitments they had made to their American Indian allies if they withdrew from gov­ ernment during the Seven Years’ War. See Jack Marietta, The Reformation of American Quakerism, 1748–­1783 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984), 188–­94. 16. For an extended discussion, see Michael Goode, “A Failed Peace: The Friendly As­ sociation and the Pennsylvania Backcountry during the Seven Years War,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 136, no. 4 (2012): 472–­74. 17. Sheila Wright, Friends in York, 21. 18. Sydney James, quoted in David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery Age of Revolution, 1770–­1823 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 222. Christopher Brown arrived at a similar conclusion when investigating why British Friends pursued a more active and engaged political agenda after the War of Independence. Quoting Rufus Jones, he main­ tained that Quakers had no “outer history” prior to the Revolution. A conflict within the Society caused it to turn outward, he argued, as a new cohort of Quaker leaders “thought the Society of Friends should conceive of itself as a force for good in the world, not merely a refuge from its temptations.” Christopher Brown, Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 419. 19. Hugh Cunningham, introduction to Charity, Philanthropy and Reform from the 1690s to 1850, ed. Hugh Cunningham and Joanna Innes (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), 10. 20. Joanna Innes, “State, Church and Voluntarism in European Welfare, 1690–­1850,” in Charity, Philanthropy and Reform from the 1690s to 1850, ed. Hugh Cunningham and Joanna Innes (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), 39. 21. Richard Greaves argues that Friends recognized the “limits to obeying the state.” See Richard Greaves, “Seditious Sectaries or ‘Sober and Useful Inhabitants’? Changing Conceptions of the Quakers in Early Modern Britain,” Albion 33, no. 1 (2001): 35. 22. Lawrence Friedman quoting Robert Gross in “Philanthropy in America: Histori­ cism and its Discontents,” in Charity, Philanthropy and Civility in American History, ed. Lawrence J. Friedman and Mark D. McGarvie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 8. 23. Kirsten Sword, “Remembering Dinah Nevil: Strategic Deceptions in Eighteenth-­ Century Antislavery,” Journal of American History 97, no. 2 (2010): 324. Sword was refer­ ring specifically to John Woolman and Anthony Benezet. 24. Ibid., 325. 25. Brown, Moral Capital, 433. 26. As Joanna Innes reminds us, it was important to the state that “the leadership of such societies lay in safe hands,” and Friends, of course, were not entirely “safe hands.” Innes, “State, Church and Volunteerism,” 39–­40. 27. A. Gilleart to Noah Worcester, 25 November (no year specified), Ms N-­474, box 1, folder: “undated,” MHS. 28. John Watson (he was not a member of the Society of Friends) to Noah Worcester, 1 November 1818, Ms N-­474, box 1, folder “1818,” MHS (emphasis original).

258

notes to pages 145–147

29. As Christopher Brown notes, “the ‘take-­off’ of Quaker abolitionism ultimately depended on the cooperation of allies outside the Society of Friends.” Brown, Moral Capital, 433. 30. Vaux confided to Worcester, “I hope ere long, a ‘Peace Society’ will be established in Phil’a to make such an institution availing its members must be gathered from all professions with the exception of Friends. The principles of that People are known, conse­ quently such an organization as a peace society, will have most effect without their public interposition.—­Friends, are fully disposed to contribute freely all requisite pecuniary assistance toward the publication of tracts showing the inhumanity of War, on this score they will be foremost” (emphasis original). Robert Vaux to Noah Worcester, Philadelphia, 3 month 17 1818, collection Ms N-­474, box 1, MHS. 31. This decision to make “their giving in secret” was entirely in keeping with Chris­ tian belief and practice (see Matthew 6:3–­5). 32. Ellen Gibson Wilson, Thomas Clarkson: A Biography (New York: Palgrave Mac­ Millan, 1990), 13–­14. 33. Granville Sharp, An Essay on Slavery: Proving from Scripture Its Inconsistency with Humanity and Religion (Burlington, NJ: Isaac Collins, 1773). 34. Sword, “Remembering Dinah Nevil,” 337. 35. According to Dunn, in nineteenth-­century America, 40 percent of female aboli­ tionists, 19 percent of feminists and 15 percent of suffragists were Quaker women. Con­ sidering the Society of Friends comprised only 2 percent of the population, these numbers were remarkable. Mary Maples Dunn, “Women of Light,” in Women of America: A History, by Carol Ruth Berkin and Mary Beth Norton (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979), 114–­36, quote at 132. 36. See Margaret McFadden, Golden Cables of Sympathy: The Transatlantic Sources of Nineteenth-­Century Feminism (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999); Sandra Stanley Holton, “ ‘To Educate Women into Rebellion’: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the Creation of a Transatlantic Network of Radical Suffragists,” American Historical Review 99, no. 4 (1994): 1112–­36; Bonnie Anderson, Joyous Greeting: The First International Women’s Movement, 1830–­1860 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). 37. I am grateful to Cecilia Walsh-­Russo for pointing me toward the work of Sidney Tarrow, Charles Tilly, and Ronald Burt. See, e.g., Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly, Dynamics of Contention (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Ronald Burt, “Social Contagion and Innovation: Cohesion versus Structural Equiva­ lence,” American Journal of Sociology 92 (1987): 1287–­1335. This model of rooted cosmo­ politanism may help us to take up Kristen Sword’s call, who writes: “Historians readily acknowledge the transatlantic ideological origins of antislavery laid out in the pioneering work of David Brion Davis, but they nevertheless gravitate toward national antislavery stories.” Sword, “Remembering Dinah Nevil,” 315n1. 38. McFadden, Golden Cables of Sympathy, 3. Studies such as McFadden’s, while notable for recognizing and hypothesizing these important transatlantic avenues of communication, nevertheless have perpetuated the impression that these networks were ambiguous, tenuous, and indefinable. Yet as Katherine Lloyd and Cindy Burgoyne demonstrate in their work on transatlantic conversations about reform, “practices which involved some individuals acting as unofficial agents to connect further individuals in

notes to pages 147–150

259

a communication network meant that those networks widened and deepened. [Early reformers] were centrally positioned in a late eighteenth century [reform] network, the branches of which extended between individuals living on both sides of the Atlantic.” Katherine Lloyd and Cindy Burgoyne, “The Evolution of a Transatlantic Debate on Penal Reform,” in Charity, Philanthropy and Reform from the 1690s to 1850, ed. Hugh Cun­ ningham and Joanna Innes (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), 211. These connections were rarely formalized; however, scholars have identified three modes of communication among such transatlantic reformers: personal and private correspondence, organized and formalized reform society networking, and the increasingly anonymous sphere of print culture. Their research has demonstrated that early participants relied mainly on the first and second methods, while the introduction of the third form altered significantly the tenor and direction of the transatlantic conversations regarding reform. 39. See, e.g., Kate Davies, Catharine Maccaulay and Mercy Otis Warren: The Revolutionary Atlantic and the Politics of Gender (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Seymour Dresher, From Slavery to Freedom: Comparative Studies in the Rise and Fall of Atlantic Slavery (New York: New York University Press, 1999); Cristina Rodriquez, “Engendering an American Awakening: A Study of the Transatlantic Network of Women Abolitionists and the Development of an Anti-­Slavery Ideology in the United States, 1835–­1860” (master’s thesis, University of Oxford, 1998). Also, McFadden, Golden Cables of Sympathy; Holton, “To Educate Women into Rebellion.” 40. William Allen to Noah Worcester, 6 month 18 18—­(date cut off), Ms N-­474, box 1, folder “18—­,” MHS. 41. Noah Worcester, Friend of Peace, no. 2 (Cambridge, MA: Hilliard and Metcalf, 1815), 34. 42. Gibson Wilson, Thomas Clarkson, 13–­14. 43. While it is not certain that these admirers were Friends, it is a striking coinci­ dence that this town (Pyrmont) was also the center of Quaker activity in Prussia. This information is contained in a letter from “ER” to Noah Worcester, 4 month 2 1819, Ms N-­474, box 2, folder “1819,” MHS. It is impossible to determine whether or not his correspondent is a Friend, as the letter was addressed only to these initials and no reply has survived. “ER” did use Friends’ unique dating system, however, and this distinctive practice would suggest that he or she was likely a Quaker. 44. Sandra Stanley Holton argues that Elizabeth Cady Stanton frequently stayed with Friends while traveling throughout England and that the “Quaker sisterhood” with which Stanton became acquainted would eventually “play an important role in the women’s movement in Britain.” Holton, “ ‘To Educate Women into Rebellion,’ ” 1117. And just as Worcester argued that his peace societies built on the tradition of Friends, so Stanton believed that her generation had been “bred in the pacific school” in which “the presence of so many Quakers spread about an atmosphere of brotherly love.” Ibid., 1135–­36. 45. Dorothy Ripley was a fascinating historical figure in the nineteenth century. She crossed the Atlantic at least eight times on a mission to, among other things, intervene in a capital case in New York, berate slave owners in Virginia, open a school for black girls in Pennsylvania, and meet with American Indian leaders from the Six Nations (she seemed to have no clear, actionable agenda with her Native American hosts). Ripley identified as a “Universal Friend,” which meant that although she looked like a Quaker

260

notes to pages 150–153

and talked like a Quaker, she was, in fact, not a Quaker. This small detail infuriated Friends but did not concern Ripley. To be fair, Ripley had attempted to join the Society of Friends before she left on her first transatlantic voyage; however, Friends were “not easy” to admit her into their membership. Quakers thus took out numerous ads in local papers disavowing Ripley, yet she continued to gain in notoriety as she traveled from England to North America on her divinely ordained mission. For a further exploration of the incomparable Dorothy Ripley, see Dorothy Ripley, The Extraordinary Conversion, and Religious Experience of Dorothy Ripley: With Her First Voyage and Travels in America (New York: G. and R. Waite, 1810). 46. For a brief but thorough history of the Société des Amis des Noirs, see Daniel P. Resnik, “The Societe de Amis des Noirs and the Abolition of Slavery,” French Historical Studies 7, no. 4 (1972): 558–­69. 47. Brissot, Critical Examination. 48. Gibson Wilson, Thomas Clarkson, 53 and 59. 49. Ibid., 147. As Friends expanded the borders of their itinerant ministry to include Haiti (and Russia), they continued to carry letters back and forth between Clarkson and King Henry, as well as Clarkson and Czar Alexander, for years. Thus, once again, Clark­ son and the abolitionists relied on the transatlantic network of Friends to forge, solidify, and maintain connections among their far-­flung membership. 50. This quotation is found in a letter from Stephen Grellet to William Allen, 8 month 17 1816, collection 967, folder “Grellet, Stephen,” QSCHC. 51. Alexander met privately with William Allen, John Wilkinson, and Stephen Grel­ let for more than two hours while in London, declaring afterward that he was “one in sentiment with us . . . though, from his peculiar position, his practice be much different.” Before leaving London, he and his sister paid a call on a “middling” Quaker family to observe their simple but “honorable” lifestyle. 52. For many individuals, these efforts also resulted from a genuine desire to support the nation, for, as Kirsten Sword notes, “antislavery additionally offered pacifist Quaker men a moral and political calling that could compete with the call of the nation at a mo­ ment when war seemed imminent.” Gibson Wilson, Thomas Clarkson, 147–­48. 53. In a letter to John Pemberton, Elizabeth Wilkinson sent her love to John Wool­ man and further expressed her concern that no Friend settle on American Indian land. (It was Quaker policy to forbid any Friend from owning or residing on any plot of land taken—­legally or illegally—­from American Indians.) She had preached on this subject pre­ viously while traveling through the American colonies. Elizabeth Wilkinson to John Pem­ berton, 8 month 23 1763, Pemberton Papers, vol. 16, no. 130, HSP. Several decades later, Nicolas Waln headed a committee charged with investigating whether Friends should live on any land not purchased honestly (even years ago) from American Indians. Waln and his committee decided in the negative, and Friends could be disowned for refusing to comply with their decision. For an account of this committee and its verdict, see the epistle dated 2 month 1834, Friends Miscellany 5, no. 3, 124. 54. Chapter 3 deals more specifically with Friends’ schools and their connection to philanthropy. The three most prominent Public Friends involved in the refinement and promotion of a unique Friends’ pedagogy were British Quaker Lindley Murray, Pennsyl­ vanian Friend (and brother of British abolitionists and minister William Dillwyn) George

notes to pages 153–157

261

Dillwyn, and famed British Quaker and philanthropist William Allen. The first two published several primers and textbooks while the last contributed significant funds for the development of the Lancastrian system of education. 55. Quakers pioneered facilities for the mentally ill in Britain, Philadelphia, and Nan­ tucket. Again, Public Friends were active in spreading the ideas between distant meet­ ings. Sarah Talbot, William Tuke, Mary Watson, M. Sterry, Sarah Stephenson, and Samuel Emlen were among the first ministers to visit the Retreat (near York, England) and then passed information to those members involved in the creation of the Asylum (near Phila­ delphia). For an account of these visits, see Sarah Talbot, Journal, MS Journal Collection, FHLSC. For a description of these facilities, see Society of Friends, An Account of the Rise and Progress of the Asylum, Proposed to be Established, Near Philadelphia for the Relief of Persons Deprived of the Use of Their Reason with an Abridged Account of the Retreat, a Similar Institution Near York, in England (Philadelphia: Kimber and Conrad, 1814). 56. Friends had long been involved in prison reform. John Pemberton, for example, sent his entire wedding feast over to the nearest prison to protest the living conditions of the prisoners. Meetings regularly took up subscriptions to provide necessary supplies for the prisoners. And they were instrumental in the planning and establishment of Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. In fact, its system of isolation (solitary confinement) as well as its program of physical exercise was based in part on Quaker ideas about silence, reflection, atonement, and the benefits of a communion with nature. Of course, many modern reformers consider solitary confinement cruel and unusual punishment, but in the eighteenth century, it was considered a new and positive innovation. 57. Catherine Phillips sent a letter to local magistrates and the proprietors of mines asking them to investigate the safety of working conditions of miners. For a description of this missive, see William Rotch to Samuel Rodman, 4 month 4 1792, Rotch Family Papers, Ms N-­812, box 1684–­1789, folder “transcripts #3,” MHS. 58. The Constitution of the New Jersey Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, collection 975a, “Burlington County Branch Minutes, 1793–­1809,” 1, QSCHC. 59. Baltimore Yearly Meeting, Epistle, 1809, 1. This item is found in the collection “Uncategorized Epistles,” in the “Anti-­Slavery” folder, QSCHC. 60. Collection 975a, “Burlington County Branch Minutes, 1793–­1809,” 84, QSCHC. 61. The open letter to George Washington is found in box 1797, MHS. See in particu­ lar the preface and pp. 8–­9, 13–­14, 17, 20, and 23. 62. William Clark to unknown Friend, 2 month 15 1804, collection 851, QSCHC. 63. Address of the Society of Friends Baltimore Yearly Meeting to Thomas Jefferson and His Reply (1807), Shaw/Shoemaker microfiche collection, #12626. 64. Collection 975a, “Burlington County Branch Minutes, 1793–­1809,” 22, QSCHC. 65. This letter from Thomas Wistar to Joseph Scattergood dated 1870 referred to the exclusion of New York Indians from their claims to Kansas lands. A copy is found in Pennsylvania Yearly Meeting Book Committee, Quaker Biographies: A Series of Sketches, Chiefly Biographical (Philadelphia: Friends Book Store, 1909), 110. 66. Neither the name of the legislator nor his correspondent was included in this copy of their exchange. MISC 004, folder “1794–­1800,” FHLSC. 67. Cecilia Walsh-­Russo, “ ‘The World Is My Country and My Countrymen Are All

262

notes to pages 157–169

Mankind’: Transnational Tactical Diffusion of Anglo-­American Anti-­Slavery Organizing, 1824–­1839” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2008), esp. 214–­16. 68. Thomas Clarkson, in Gibson Wilson, Thomas Clarkson, 145. 69. Fothergill, Eleven Discourses, 112. 70. Rev. Billy Hibbard, Errors of the Quakers Laid Open with Plainness, 16. 71. Cunningham, introduction to Charity, Philanthropy and Reform, 7. 72. These references are from Benjamin Rush’s correspondence to English physi­ cian John Coakley Lettsum, urging him to carry on the philanthropic tradition of the English Quaker and noted Public Friend Samuel Fothergill, whom I have quoted often in this book. Quotations are taken from Lloyd and Burgoyne, “Evolution of a Transatlantic Debate,” 209 and 210, respectively. 73. Nineteenth-­century abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison echoed these sentiments when he famously intoned “the world is my country, and my country all of mankind.” 74. Eloise Ellery, Brissot de Warville: A Study in the History of the French Revolution (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1915), 423. 75. Thomas Clarkson, A Portraiture of Quakerism (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1807), 3:27. 76. Worcester, Friend of Peace no. 4, 38. 77. Ibid., no. 2, 35. 78. Ibid., no. 4, 37. 79. Noah Worcester, The Substance of Two Sermons (Concord, NH: G. Hough, 1812), 7. 80. These references are from Benjamin Rush’s correspondence to English physician John Coakley Lettsum, urging him to carry on the philanthropic tradition of the English Quakers and noted Public Friend Samuel Fothergill. Quotations are taken from Lloyd and Burgoyne, “Evolution of a Transatlantic Debate,” 209 and 210, respectively. 81. Baltimore Yearly Meeting for Sufferings, To the Quarterly and Monthly Meetings of Friends . . . (Baltimore, 1809). 82. Ibid. 83. London Yearly Meeting, Epistle, 1804. Here, they specifically referenced 2 Corin­ thians 13.

chapter five 1. Eloise Ellery, Brissot de Warville: A Study in the History of the French Revolution (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1915), 423 and 59, respectively. 2. Ibid., 78. 3. Jacques Pierre Brissot, A Critical Examination of the Marquis de Chatellux’s Travels in North America (Philadelphia: Joseph James, 1788), 47. 4. Ibid., 48. 5. Jeremy Popkin, Revolutionary News: The Press in France, 1789–­1799 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990). 6. Christopher Iannini, “‘The Itinerant Man’: Crèvecœur’s Caribbean, Raynal’s Revo­ lution, and the Fate of Atlantic Cosmopolitanism,” William and Mary Quarterly 61, no. 2 (2004): 206.

notes to pages 169–173

263

7. Philip Gould, “Catharine Sedgwick’s Cosmopolitan Nation,” New England Quarterly 78, no. 2 (2005): 235. 8. Dena Goodman, The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment (Cornell, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996), 11. 9. Gould, “Catharine Sedgwick,” 236 (emphasis original). 10. I found Louise Blakeney Williams’s article particularly useful in elucidating the postcolonial critique of Enlightenment cosmopolitanism. She argues that models of both world government and international peacekeeping “became the subject of new humani­ tarian theories intended to check the increasingly aggressive policies of European nation-­ states” and that [t]his new cosmopolitanism is contrasted to most nineteenth-­and twentieth-­century forms of nationalist thought because it questions the value of nation-­states with unique, unitary cultures opposed to all others. At the same time, it also differs from the “old” cosmopolitanism or universalism of the eighteenth century, which proposed that national differences be minimized in favor of one uniform enlight­ ened culture. Rather, “new” cosmopolitans, who also have been called “rooted” or “realistic” cosmopolitans, respect the variety of traditions and nationalities, but also believe in universal values that all people in all countries should accept. Louise Blakeney Williams, “History of Rabindranath Tagore and W. B. Yeats,” American Historical Review 112, no. 1 (2007): 70. 11. Gould, “Catharine Sedgwick,” 235. 12. David Bell, First Total War: Napoleon’s Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know It (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008). 13. John Bryant, “Citizens of a World to Come: Melville and the Millennial Cosmop­ olite,” American Literature 59 (1987): 28. 14. Ibid., 21. 15. Dorothy Lloyd Gilbert and Russell Pope, “Quakerism and French Quietism,” Bulletin of Friends Historical Association 29, no. 2 (1940): 93–­96. 16. Ann Moore, “Sea Journal,” 1760, collection 003/100, FHLSC. 17. Sheila Wright, Friends in York: The Dynamics of Quaker Revival, 1780–­1860 (Keele, Staffordshire: Keele University Press, 1995), 47. 18. Ibid., 99. 19. Sarah Harrison, “Memoirs of Life and Travels of Sarah Harrison,” Friends Miscellany 11 (1838). 20. William Savery to Sally (Sarah) Savery, Paris, 3 month 29 1797, collection 851, box 16, folder “S,” QSCHC. 21. George Dillwyn, Occasional Reflections Offered Principally for the Use of Schools (Burlington, NJ: David Allison, 1815), 168. 22. Ibid., pages unnumbered in the final section. 23. William Savery, Seven Sermons and a Prayer, Preached at the Meetings of the Religious Society of Friends in America and England (Philadelphia: Benjamin C. Buzby, 1808), 35–­36. 24. James Neal to Noah Worcester, Eliot, 6 month 4 1820, collection MS N-­474, box 2 “1820–­1824,” folder “1820,” MHS.

264

notes to pages 173–177

25. This letter to John Pemberton is found in Friends Miscellany 8, no. 2–­3 (1836), 172–­73. 26. The London Yearly Meeting, An Address to the Inhabitants of Europe on the Iniquity of the Slave Trade (London: W. Philips, 1822), 5. 27. Samuel Emlen to John Pemberton, 8 month 2 1764, Pemberton Papers, vol. 17, p. 80, HSP. 28. William Rotch to his son-­in-­law Samuel Rodman, Dunkirk, 2 month 18 1792, Rotch Papers, MS N-­812, box “1684–­1789,” folder: “transcripts #1,” MHS. 29. Savery, Seven Sermons and a Prayer, 49. 30. Society of Friends, Address to the Inhabitants of Europe, 5. 31. Savery, Seven Sermons and a Prayer, 89. Interestingly, this sermon was delivered on 7 month 31 1796. 32. Job Scott, Journal of the Life, Travels, and Gospel Labours of that Faithful Servant and Minister of Christ, Job Scott (Warrington: W. Leicester, 1798), 280. 33. Quotation taken from an obituary of or eulogy for Stephen Grellet, collection 851, box G, folder “Gr-­Ha,” QSCHC. 34. Society of Friends, Address to the Inhabitants of Europe, 14. 35. Anthony Benezet, The Case of Our Fellow Creatures, the Oppressed Africans, Respectfully Recommended to the Serious Consideration of the Legislature of Great-­ Britain by the People called Quakers (Philadelphia: James Philips, 1784), 4. 36. Bryant, “Millennial Cosmopolite,” 20. 37. Ibid., 23. 38. Bryant, “Millennial Cosmopolite,” 21 and 28, respectively. 39. “The true cosmopolite was ‘at home’ wherever he traveled,” wrote literary scholar Philip Gould, who also pointed out that both Samuel Johnson and Noah Webster described the consummate cosmopolite as someone who is “at home in every place” and “one who is nowhere a stranger.” Gould, “Catharine Sedgwick,” 235. 40. Edith Philips, The Good Quaker in French Legend (London: Oxford University Press, 1932), 1. 41. Ibid., 29–­30. 42. Voltaire, Lettres Philosophiques (Letters on the English), letter 1, accessed June 1, 2014, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1778voltaire-­lettres.asp. 43. Philips, Good Quaker, ix. 44. Ibid., 44–­45. 45. W. H. Barbar, “Voltaire and Quakerism: Enlightenment and the Inner Light,” in Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, ed. Theodore Besteman (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1963), 24:109. 46. Bernard Vincent, The Transatlantic Republican: Thomas Paine and the Age of Revolutions (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005), 74. 47. Voltaire in particular admired the Society of Friends and espoused their virtues, despite the fact that, at that point, he had never met a Quaker. Thus, on hearing that a Friend, Claude Gay, was traveling in close proximity to Voltaire’s residence, Voltaire went to great lengths to arrange a meeting between them. Gay wrote to Friends in London that he remained “insensible to Voltaire’s sarcasm and his wit and remained cool and seri­ ous” during the encounter. Others present at this meeting remembered that “Voltaire’s

notes to pages 177–182

265

vivacity at last turned to downright anger; his eyes flashed Fire whenever they met the benign and placid countenance of Claude Gay.” After lecturing Voltaire on the differ­ ences between “worldliness” and “godliness,” Gay finally ended the appointment and walked more than fifty miles back where he was staying in Geneva. Supposedly, Voltaire remained surly for days, as this actual Friend had not lived up to those in his imagination. Collection 745, p. 72, LRSF. 48. Barbar, “Voltaire and Quakerism,” 82. 49. For the quotations cited in this paragraph, see Encyclopedia of Diderot and d’Alembert, Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, accessed September 13, 2014, http://quod.lib.umich.edu/d/did/did2222.0000.802/--quaker?rgn=main;view=full text;q1=Quaker. 50. Iannini confirms Crèvecœur’s shifting tone: “Crèvecœur revised material from the English edition to qualify its anti-­Revolutionary and pessimistic aspects and to aug­ ment its idyllic qualities.” He also argues that Crèvecœur included flattering portraits of Franklin and Lafayette to boost sales, as the French reading public were “sops” to all things American. Iannini, “Itinerant Man,” 232. 51. Ibid., 202. 52. Ibid., 222. 53. J. Hector St. John De Crèvecœur, Letters from an American Farmer, letter 7, accessed June 1, 2014, http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/CREV/home.html. Crèvecœur writes: “Some of the Friends (by which word I always mean the people called Quakers) fond of a contemplative life, yearly visit the several congregations which this society has formed throughout the continent. By their means a sort of correspondence is kept up among them all; they are generally good preachers, friendly censors, checking vice wherever they find it predominating; preventing relaxations in any parts of their ancient customs and worship.” 54. Ibid., letter 7. 55. Ibid., letter 2. 56. Ibid., letter 3. 57. Ibid., letter 11. 58. Ibid., letter 1. 59. Ibid., letter 11. 60. Ibid. 61. Ibid., letter 3. 62. Ibid. 63. Ibid., letter 7. 64. Ibid. 65. Ibid., letter 3. 66. Ibid., letter 11. 67. Ibid. 68. Ibid. 69. In an early letter to an acquaintance, Franklin confessed his surprise and pleasure at the French (mis)perceptions of Philadelphia and the Society of Friends: “I have lately received a number of new pamphlets from England and France, among them a piece of Voltaire’s on the subject of Religious Toleration. I will give you a passage of which being

266

notes to pages 182–187

read here at a time when we are torn to pieces by Faction, religion and civil, shows us that while we sit for our picture to that able painter, ’tis no small advantage to us that he views us at a favorable distance.” This quotation is found in Philips, Good Quaker, 63. For an article detailing the relationship between Franklin and the Friends, see Jacqueline Miller, “Franklin and Friends: Benjamin Franklin’s Ties to Quakers and Quakerism,” Pennsylvania History 57, no. 4 (1990): 318–­36. 70. Adrina Michelle Garbooshian, “The Concept of Human Dignity in the French and American Enlightenments” (PhD diss., Wayne State University, 2006), 381 and 660, respectively. 71. Ibid., 681. 72. Thomas Paine, “The Crisis,” in The Political Writings of Thomas Paine, ed. G. Davidson (New York: Solomon King, 1830), 120. 73. Vincent, Transatlantic Republican, 138. 74. Intriguingly, just as the Revolution forced French philosophes to embrace Paine’s criticisms of the Friends, he himself actually altered his position once again and began to praise them. Seemingly mollified, he described Quakerism “the religion that approaches the nearest of all others to true deism” in his Age of Reason and included in the pages of his Theophilanthropist positive descriptions of Quakers, including American Indians’ es­ teem of them and further admitting that he “revered” the Friends for their philanthropy. See Thomas Paine, “Age of Reason,” in The Life and Writings of Thomas Paine: The Age of Reason, ed. Daniel Edwin Wheeler (New York: V. Parke, 1908), 1:70; Thomas Paine, The Theophilanthropist: Containing Critical, Moral, Theological, and Literary Essays (New York: H. Hart, 1810). 75. Philips, Good Quaker, 100. 76. Crèvecœur, Letters from an American Farmer, letter 11. 77. Philips, Good Quaker, 123. 78. Ibid., 150. 79. Vincent, Transatlantic Republican, 75–­77. 80. Brissot, Critical Examination, 38. 81. Ibid., 41. 82. Ibid., 43. 83. Philips, Good Quaker, 152. 84. Vincent, Transatlantic Republican, 76. 85. Ibid., 76–­77. 86. Philips, Good Quaker, 143–­44. 87. Ibid., 139. 88. Ibid., 161. 89. Vincent, Transatlantic Republican, 80. 90. Philips, Good Quaker, 111. 91. Ibid., 80. 92. Chastellux quoted in Stuart Andrews, The Rediscovery of America: Transatlantic Crosscurrents in an Age of Revolution (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), 140–­41. 93. Sylvia Neely, “The Uses of Power: Lafayette and Brissot in 1792,” Proceedings of the Western Society for French History 34 (2006). 94. Brissot, Critical Examination, 3.

notes to pages 187–191

267

95. Sister Eugenia, “Coleridge’s Scheme of Pantisocracy and American Travel Ac­ counts,” PMLA 45, no. 4 (1930): 1079. 96. Ibid., 1071. 97. Jennifer Mori, “Languages of Loyalism: Patriotism, Nationhood, and the State in the 1790s,” English Historical Review 118, no. 475 (2003): 55. 98. The Society of Friends, Address to the King from Friends (1793), MSS Broadside Box, QSPHC. 99. Tim Fulford, “The Politics of the Sublime: Coleridge and Wordsworth in Ger­ many,” Modern Language Review 91, no. 4 (1996): 818. 100. Deirdre Coleman, Coleridge and The Friend (1809–­1810) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 19. 101. Ibid., 5–­6. 102. Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–­1837 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009). She discusses Coleridge specifically on 312–­13. 103. Mark Canuel, “Coleridge’s Polemic Divinity” ELH 68, no. 4 (2001): 940. 104. Coleridge wrote: “You must condescend to believe in a God, and in the exis­ tence of a Future State!” I find the combination here between religion and state (not church and state or religion and nation) illuminating and evocative. The quote is found in Canuel, “Coleridge’s Polemic Divinity,” 946. 105. Coleridge had a very public falling out with Joseph Lancaster, the controver­ sial Quaker educator. He accused him of “potential infidelity,” again demonstrating an interesting connection in his mind between religious and national loyalties. See Canuel, “Coleridge’s Polemic Divinity,” 941. 106. Coleman, Coleridge and The Friend, 105. 107. Canuel, “Coleridge’s Polemic Divinity,” 959. 108. Hannah More, like Clarkson, sought out Quakers in Bristol, believing them to be crucial allies and mentors. She found them “all charmed with the Negro Project.” Yet only two months later, she became frustrated with the Friends, writing to an acquain­ tance that there was “nothing that could be more lukewarm, cautious, and worldly wise than they are.” This quotation is found in Anne Scott, Hannah More: The First Victorian (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 52. 109. William Wilberforce once wrote to Friend William Allen that he wished “your religious principles and my own were more entirely accordant.” Allen echoed the familiar sentiments of many Quakers, writing to Wilberforce that he wished his colleagues in the movement could be convinced that “we are, as we are willing to admit they may be, real genuine Christians.” Friends have confronted (indeed, continue to confront) these challenges as to their “questionable” status as Christians. Whatever the diverse range of present-­day Friends may hold, eighteenth-­and nineteenth-­century Friends most certainly considered themselves to be true and devoted Christians. This quotation is found in Ellen Gibson Wil­ son, Thomas Clarkson: A Biography (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 1990), 124. 110. Perhaps because of this rare glimpse into the somewhat enigmatic world of the Society of Friends, Clarkson’s book sold quite well. He received a £600 advance and cleared an estimated profit of £1700 on the first edition. Portraiture was so popular that three editions of the work were published in less than a year. Gibson Wilson, Thomas Clarkson, 135.

268

notes to pages 191–204

111. Clarkson, Portraiture, 3:367. 112. Ibid., 3:267. 113. Ibid., 3:2. 114. Ibid., 3:270–­71. 115. Ibid., 3:138. 116. Ibid., 3:138. 117. Ibid., 3:27. 118. Ibid., 3:184. 119. Bruce Robbins, “Introduction Part I: Actually Existing Cosmopolitanism” in Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling beyond the Nation, ed. Pheng Cheah and Bruce Robbins (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), 2. 120. Philips, Good Quaker, 163. 121. Open letter from Job Scott to the Quaker community, Shaw/Shoemaker micro­ fiche collection, #13553.

conclusion 1. Society of Friends, Epistle, 1814, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Collection, FLSC. 2. Larry Ingle, Quakers in Conflict: The Hicksite Reformation (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1987), 98. 3. Martha Routh, “Journal,” 1794, 3, QSCHC. 4. Ingle, Hicksite, 131 5. Lydia Child in Kathryn Grover, Fugitive’s Gibraltar: Escaping Slaves and Abolitionism in New Bedford, Massachusetts (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2009), 33. 6. Isaac Harrington, Relics of Ancient Judaism: or Hicksite Doctrines Considered and Refuted (Poughkeepsie, NY: Jackson and Schram, 1838), 6. 7. An unnamed Quaker quoted in Thomas Hamm, Transformation of American Quakerism: Orthodox Friends, 1800–­1907 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), 10. 8. Ingle, Hicksite, 115. 9. An unnamed young reformer quoted in Ingle, Hicksite, 78. 10. Henry Wilbur, Life and Labors of Elias Hicks (Philadelphia: Friends’ General Conference Advancement Committee, 1910), 31. 11. Ibid., 29. 12. Ibid., 35–­36. 13. Ingle, Hicksite, 40. 14. Ibid. 15. This observation specifically refers to Anna Braithwaite—­a British Orthodox minister, a fierce critic of Hicks, and a lover of very fine carriages. Quotation is taken from Ingle, Hicksite, 33. 16. Joseph John Gurney, A Letter to the Followers of Elias Hicks in the City of Baltimore and Its Vicinity (Baltimore: Woods & Crane, 1840), 6. 17. Ingle, Hicksite, 124. 18. Jonathan Evans quoted in Ingle, Hicksite, 17.

notes to pages 205–211

269

19. Ingle, Hicksite, 95. 20. Ibid., 37. 21. Ibid., xiii. 22. Hamm, Transformation, xvi. 23. James DeGarmo, The Hicksite Quakers and Their Doctrines (New York: Chris­ tian Literature, 1897), 20. 24. Elias Hicks in Ingle, Hicksite, 74. 25. Benjamin Ferris in Ingle, Hicksite, 134. 26. Hugh Judge in Ingle, Hicksite, 38. 27. Hamm, Transformation, 27. 28. Ingle, Hicksite, 74. 29. Hamm, Transformation, 27 30. Jonathan Evans in Ingle, Hicksite, 20. 31. Elias Hicks in Ingle, Hicksite, 46. 32. Ingle, Hicksite, 212. 33. Ibid., 124. 34. Ibid., 166. 35. Here, I am thinking specifically about the quotation from the Seven Years’ War that appeared in chapter 1: Factions subvert Government, render Laws impotent, and beget the fiercest Animosi­ ties among Men of the same Nation, who ought to give mutual assistance and protec­ tion to each other. And what should render the Founder of Parties more odious is, the Difficulty of extirpating the Parties, who once have taken Rise in any State. They naturally propagate themselves for many Centuries and seldom end but by the total Dissolution of that Government, in which they are planted. They are besides, weeds which grow more plentifully in rich Soils’ and tho’ despotic Government are not quite free from them, it must be confessed, that they rise more easily, and propagate themselves faster in free Governments. Philadelphienses, Remarks on the Quaker Unmask’d or Plain Truth Found to be Plain Falsehood Humbly Address’d to the Candid (Philadelphia, 1764), 8. 36. Ingle, Hicksite, 207 and 211, respectively. 37. Hamm, Transformation, 17. 38. Ingle, Hicksite, 146 (emphasis mine). 39. Ibid., 150 (emphasis mine). 40. Ibid., 226. 41. Anna Braithwaite in Ingle, Hicksite, 127. 42. Harrington, Relics, 5. 43. Ibid., 9. 44. John Comly in Ingle, Hicksite, 49. 45. Hugh Judge in Ingle, Hicksite, 38. 46. Ingle, Hicksite, 115. 47. Unnamed observer describing Elias Hicks in Ingle, Hicksite, 113. 48. Walt Whitman quoted in Pink Dandelion, Introduction to Quakerism (Cam­ bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 85.

270

notes to pages 211–218

49. Ingle, Hicksite, 119. The Orthodox, for their part, warned that Hicks would be a “troubler in Israel.” Walt Whitman quoted in Dandelion, Introduction, 86. 50. Harrington, Relics, 4. 51. Ingle, Hicksite, 184. 52. Stephen Grellet in Ingle, Hicksite, 122. 53. Ingle, Hicksite, 199. 54. Ibid., 52. 55. Elias Hicks and Thomas Willis, The Answers by Elias Hicks to the Six Queries Addressed to Him, with his Declarations upon the Same Points, on Other Occasions, Contrasted with Each Other, and with the Doctrines of the Society of Friends (New York: Mahlon Day, 1831), 6. 56. Ibid., 16 (emphasis mine). 57. Harrington, Relics, 3–­4. 58. Ingle, Hicksite, 146. 59. Society of Friends, A Defense of the Religious Society of Friends, Who Constitute the Yearly Meeting of Baltimore against Certain Charges Circulated by Joseph John Gurney (Baltimore: Wm. Wooddy, 1839), app., 6. 60. Hamm, Transformation, 31. 61. Samuel Philbrick, Facts and Observations Illustrative of Some Recent Transactions in the Society of Friends at Lynn and Salem, MA (1823), 59, box L-­1823, MHS. 62. Meeting for Sufferings, Epistle, 9 month 21 1810, PYM Collection, FHLSC.

index

Page numbers in italics refer to figures. abolitionism. See antislavery Ackworth School, 95, 101–­2, 106, 113, 115, 119, 124–­26 activism: as challenge to government, 138, 141–­42, 153–­59; duty as Christians and, 135–­37, 140, 142, 156; duty as citizens and, 136–­38, 153–­57; and forging connections with non-­Friends, 138, 144–­50, 150–­52, 157–­60; Friends’ obscured role in, 145–­46; network theory and, 147–­48, 157–­58; as outgrowth of transnationalism, 139, 152, 159–­60, 193–­95; and relationship to meeting structure, 14–­15; as response to increasing power of state, 134–­38, 153–­57; as response to war, 133–­34, 137; as strategy for reapproaching nation-­state, 10, 116–­17, 141–­42, 200; as taught in schools, 119–­30. See also antislavery Act of Toleration (1689), 13, 36, 51 Adams, John, 74, 182, 186 African Americans, 8, 64; Fox preaching to, 12; Friends working alongside of, 21, 55, 153; portrayals of in mainstream and Quaker education, 118–­21. See also activism; antislavery Age of Revolution, definition of, 5–­7, 224n6. See also names of specific conflicts Alexander, Czar, 19, 103, 112, 151, 158. See also Russia Allen, William, 23, 148, 150–­51 American colonies. See United States

American Indians: Friends’ relationship with, 50, 141, 153, 156; portrayals of in education, 103, 117–­18; and Seven Years’ War, 40–­41, 41, 140; and US citizenship, 64 American Revolution, 1–­2, 6–­7; as challenge to Quaker identity, 73–­74, 143; as commemorated in schools, 107–­12; Friends’ experiences during, 42–­52, 73–­79, 81; as influence on French opinion of Society, 182–­84; as influence on Quaker activism, 135–­38, 141–­44; role of during Hicksite schism, 201, 208–­9. See also citizen-­ soldier; nationalism; patriotism Anglicanism, 6, 9, 13, 51, 69, 144, 173 antislavery: and building larger movement, 146–­51, 166, 191–­93; encouragement of within Quaker schools, 117–­24; Friends’ travel in the Caribbean and, 19, 55; history of within Society, 14, 15, 21, 143, 201–­7; as means of repairing relationships after American Revolution, 136–­38, 141–­43; as part of vision for new world, 157–­62; use of to chastise government, 154–­56, 160. See also activism; African Americans Baltimore Yearly Meeting, 21, 155, 160, 204, 261 Barnard, Hannah, 7, 8, 20, 79, 80, 122 benevolence. See activism Benezet, Anthony, 1, 2, 20, 101, 140, 184 Biddle, Owen, 75, 95–­99, 101–­2, 129–­30

271

272

index

Brissot, Jacques Pierre, 86–­87, 144, 151, 162, 165–­67, 176–­87, 190–­93 British Empire. See Great Britain Canada, history of Friends in, 20, 55, 103 Caribbean, history of Friends in, 9, 13, 17–­19, 34, 36, 55, 71, 153, 174, 229–­30n41 Catholicism, Quakerism compared to, 6, 113, 166, 167, 173, 176, 180, 183 charity. See activism children. See youths, Quaker chosen people, Friends as, 33, 37–­43, 90. See also Jews; Zion church militant: as battling external foes, 81–­92; as battling internal dissent, 62, 71–­76; decline of, 67, 89–­92; language exemplifying, 65, 71, 82–­83, 91; men’s role in, 81–­88; theological interpretations of, 68–­71; women’s role in, 67, 81–­83 citizenship: active nature of, 63, 64, 72–­74, 77–­81, 88–­89; and allegiance, 8–­9, 76; changing definitions of, 10, 36; exclusive nature of, 10, 28, 217–­18; Friends as poor examples of, 42–­43; gendered nature of, 63–­64, 66, 81–­89; within holy nation, 72, 76, 81–­83; linkage of to military service, 81–­84, 88–­90. See also citizen-­soldier; subjecthood citizen-­soldier, 62–­67, 81–­92, 114 Clarkson, Thomas, 7, 38, 78, 88, 120–­22, 146–­ 52, 158, 160, 162, 190–­94 Coleridge, Samuel, 88, 187–­93 conscientious objection, 88–­90, 153, 244n92. See also pacifism cosmopolitanism: in contradistinction to nationalism, 4, 98, 185–­90; Enlightenment philosophers’ admiration of Quakers for, 167–­76, 188–­95, 263n10; and Hicksite schism, 208; as part of activism, 139, 147, 159–­63. See also transnationalism; universalism cowardice, accusations of against Friends, 8, 46, 64, 66–­67, 84–­88, 92, 215 Crèvecœur, J. Hector St. John de, 166, 178–­83, 186, 193 deism, association of Quakerism with, 6, 176, 177, 182–­83, 202 diaspora, 2, 3, 33–­35, 48–­56, 59–­60, 105, 213 disloyalty: accusations of against Friends, 4, 8, 40–­50, 74–­75, 102, 133, 190; retribu-

tion for perceived, 44–­45, 49–­51. See also persecution distraint of property during wartime, 45, 73, 88, 133 education: early Friends’ interest in, 100–­103; in France, 112–­14; for girls, 96, 122–­25; in Great Britain, 95, 100–­102; guarded, 95–­ 108, 114–­15, 127–­28; movement toward public, 2, 21, 95–­102, 116, 119, 124–­30, 217; as nationalist project, 95–­100, 103–­5, 107–­9, 116, 119; in Prussia, 112; role of religion in, 104–­5, 107; in Russia, 112; in United States, 95–­100, 103–­5, 107–­9, 126–­ 30. See also pedagogy; youths, Quaker England. See Great Britain English Civil War. See Great Britain: and English Civil War Enlightenment philosophy: Friends as proxies for debates about, 165–­96; and Hicksite schism, 202–­3, 208; Quaker activism as outgrowth of, 159–­64. See also cosmopolitanism; deism evangelicalism among Friends, 6, 69, 70, 134, 159, 172, 202, 207–­13 Evans, Jonathan, 204–­5, 208, 210 Fell, Margaret, 13, 15 Fothergill, Samuel, 4, 48, 56, 65, 68, 72, 101, 140, 158, 160, 163 Fox, George, 12, 15, 20, 100, 178, 184, 207, 211 France: attempt to start school in, 113–­14; changing opinions of Quakerism by French citizens, 165–­77, 182–­88, 91; history of Friends in, 19, 22, 55, 79–­80; philanthropic efforts in, 150–­51. See also French Revolution Franklin, Benjamin, 39, 144, 146, 182 Free Quakers, 75–­76, 95 French Revolution: and changing opinions of Friends, 168, 183–­92; Friends protesting against, 50, 57, 80, 113–­14; fusion of religion and, 6; as part of Age of Revolution, 5, 32, 34. See also France Friends. See Society of Friends gender. See citizenship: gendered nature of; masculinity; women, Quaker Great Britain: Empire as overarching identity for Quakers, 2, 73–­74, 143; and English

index Civil War, 11–­13, 61, 70–­71; and fracturing of Empire, 34, 51–­54, 58; Friends perceived as bad subjects of, 40–­43, 46–­47; history of Quakers in, 11–­13, 17, 22, 36, 101, 133–­36, 187–­94; and interference in Hicksite schism, 205–­6; and movement toward empire-­state, 134–­35, 187–­90, 223–­24n5. See also Napoleonic Wars; subjecthood Great Separation. See Hicksite schism Grellet, Stephen, 23, 55, 67, 80, 82, 151, 174, 211 Haiti. See Caribbean; Haitian Revolution Haitian Revolution, 4, 6, 32, 55, 78, 151 Hebrew scripture. See Jews Hicks, Elias, 119, 120, 200–­213 Hicksite schism, 21, 197, 198, 200–­213 Holland, history of Friends in, 19, 34, 113 holy nation: as articulation of religious unity, 2, 32–­33; as challenge to worldly nation, 3, 5–­7, 9–­10, 54; composition of, 22–­23, 25; as different than holy state, 4; as enforcing discipline, 3, 24; as having sovereign laws, 64–­65; scriptural concept of, 1–­3, 59; as separate from worldly nation, 1–­3, 5, 9–­10, 33–­35, 214. See also nation; nationalism; Society of Friends: maintaining transatlantic connections among; transnationalism holy remnant, 136–­37, 152–­58, 163–­64 Ireland, history of Friends in, 6, 7, 17–­18, 22 Irish Rebellion of 1798, 18, 34, 62, 110 Israel. See Zion Israelites. See Jews itinerant ministry, 12, 72, 176, 179. See also Public Friends Jefferson, Thomas, 7, 155, 182 Jews, Friends as compared to, 2, 8, 31–­60, 210–­12. See also chosen people; diaspora; persecution; prophesy; Zion Jones, Rebecca, 24, 54, 72, 82, 102, 123–­24 London Yearly Meeting, 18–­19, 51–­53, 65, 76–­77, 85–­86 manhood. See masculinity Marsillac, Jean de, 103, 113–­14, 171, 183, 186–­ 87. See also France; French Revolution

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masculinity, 9, 61, 63–­64, 67, 81–­88, 215. See also citizenship: gendered nature of; citizenship: linkage of to military service; cowardice Massachusetts. See New England men. See masculinity Methodists, 8–­9, 69–­70, 158 militarism, 62–­66, 81–­82, 88–­89. See also citizen-­soldier; nationalism: violent nature of; pacifism Moravians, 9 Mormons, 9, 223n2, 231n2, 238–­39n21 Murray, Lindley, 18, 53, 78, 102, 109 Nantucket, 20, 22, 36, 49–­55, 179–­82. See also Rotch, William Napoleonic Wars, 49–­51, 84–­86, 133–­37, 185–­ 90, 223–­24n5. See also French Revolution nation: as fused with religion, 4–­7, 9, 63; as imagined community, 5–­7, 32, 42–­43, 46–­47; other religious sects’ response to, 8–­11; as temporal in nature, 160, 192. See also holy nation; nationalism; nation-­state nationalism: and activism, 133–­36, 143–­44, 162–­64; as confined within geopolitical boundaries, 31–­34, 48–­55; as emerging concept, 1–­11, 25; future of, 217–­18; and Hicksite schism, 205–­13; as homogeniz­ ing force, 31–­34, 37–­43, 112; as incul­cated through education, 103–­9, 129; pageantry associated with, 8, 74–­75; re­jection of cosmopolitanism and, 168, 182–­94; relationship of to religion, 1–­11, 31–­48, 78–­ 80, 217–­18; as requiring loy­alty, 43–­48, 77–­80; violent nature of, 62–­66, 73–­81. See also cosmopolitanism; holy nation; nation-­state; patriotism; Zion nation-­state: as challenged by activism, 142, 152–­57; as educating citizens, 96–­100, 103–­5; as emerging concept, 1–­11; Quaker attempts to reapproach, 10, 116–­ 17, 141–­42, 207–­8; as requiring military service, 62–­64, 73–­75, 88–­92; and role in Hicksite schism, 206–­8; and turn away from cosmopolitanism, 188–­92. See also nation; nationalism New England, history of Friends in, 20, 36, 45, 49, 52–­53, 70, 90, 103, 124, 128–­29, 213 New Garden boarding school, 103, 128

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New York, history of Friends in, 20, 24, 137, 154, 201. See also Hicks, Elias; Nine Partners school Nine Partners school, 20, 102–­3, 120, 122 nonviolence. See pacifism North Carolina, history of Friends in, 21, 86, 103, 128, 156–­57. See also New Garden boarding school Ohio, history of Friends in, 20–­21, 34, 103, 213 Orthodox Friends, 18, 197, 202–­13 pacifism: in conflict with state, 9, 64–­65, 73–­ 76, 79–­81, 88–­91; as criticized by others, 40–­48, 186–­88, 227; as divine directive, 61, 67–­68, 71, 77–­79, 84–­89; history of, 240n37; in opposing war, 2, 39–­41, 91; scriptural basis for, 238–­39n21; as taught to children, 116, 119; as vision for world, 168–­69, 171, 191–­92, 194–­95. See also citizenship: linkage of to military service; conscientious objection Paine, Thomas, 47, 48, 74, 159, 182–­83, 209 patriotism: definition of, 226n15; emerging ethos of, 4–­8; instillation of within children, 95–­100, 103–­4, 107–­14; linkage of with support of war, 63–­64, 168, 183–­90; required displays of, 73–­75, 77–­79, 188, 218; as strategy for improving reputation of Society, 10, 116–­17, 141–­42, 200. See also American Revolution; French Revolution; Napoleonic Wars; nationalism peace witness, Quaker, 38, 45, 62, 68, 73, 77. See also pacifism pedagogy: as explicitly antinational in Quaker schools, 99, 109–­13; and instillation of patriotism in mainstream schools, 107–­9, 111–­12; and promotion of racism and sexism in mainstream schools, 117–­19; and promotion of social justice in Quaker schools, 98–­99, 109–­16, 119–­22, 124–­26. See also education Pemberton, Israel, 20, 38, 41, 140–­41 Pemberton, James, 20, 53 Pemberton, John, 20, 23, 44, 47, 57, 82, 102, 173 Penn, William, 19, 167, 169, 177, 183, 184, 186 persecution, of Friends by governments and compatriots, 33, 43–­48, 86, 71

Philadelphia: as center of Quakerism, 19; as ideal republic in French mind, 167, 183 philanthropy. See activism prophesy, 3, 33, 38, 52, 56–­58, 60, 157 Prussia, history of Friends in, 19, 34, 35, 55, 99, 103, 112, 114, 150, 171, 172, 259 Public Friends, 10, 15, 17, 22–­25, 54, 72, 106–­ 7, 147–­52, 163, 191, 214 Puritans, 9, 11, 69–­70 Quaker Party, 39–­42 Quaker Reformation, 11, 17–­18, 31–­32, 36–­39, 69–­76, 83, 198–­99, 210–­11 Quakers. See Society of Friends Quietism, 3, 17, 171, 194, 215, 223, 230, 263 Reformation, Quaker. See Quaker Reformation religion: fusion of with military, 6–­7, 65, 69–­71, 79–­81; fusion of with nation and nationalism, 1–­11, 31–­48, 63, 78–­80, 107, 217–­18; Quakerism perceived as rational example of during Enlightenment, 179–­ 82; role of in activism, 133–­34, 157–­60; role of in education, 104–­5, 107; and universalism, 171–­76. See also holy nation; Zion; and names of individual sects Rhode Island. See New England Ripley, Dorothy, 24, 150–­52, 158 Rotch, William, 45, 49–­50, 52, 57, 112, 171, 174 Rush, Benjamin, 95–­99, 104–­7, 116, 122–­25, 130, 159–­60, 162, 182 Russia, history of Friends in, 19, 34, 55, 99, 103, 112, 114, 150–­51, 171–­72. See also Alexander, Czar Savery, William, 78, 85, 102, 112, 172, 174, 182 schools. See Ackworth School; education; New Garden boarding school; Nine Partners school; pedagogy; Westtown School Scotland, history of Friends in, 17–­18, 22, 55, 72, 120 Scott, Job, 20, 52, 57, 61–­62, 68, 72, 91–­92, 106, 174, 196 sedition. See disloyalty Seven Years’ War: as altering members’ perception of the Society, 31, 39–­43, 140; and necessitating Friends withdraw from

index government, 9, 19, 72–­73; and transforming Friends’ relationship to government, 2, 74. See also subjecthood Sion. See Zion Society of Friends: customs of, 5, 14–­17; and discipline, 199–­201 (see also Quaker Reformation); estimated numbers of, 21–­ 22; and gender (see masculinity; women, Quaker); general history of, 17th century, 11–­13, 71–­72, 83, 100; general history of, 18th century, 17–­21, 100–­101; general history of, 19th century, 20–­21, 197–­213; internal divisions among, 197–­213 (see also Hicksite schism); maintaining transatlantic connections among, 48–60, 62, 66, 76–­79, 106–­7, 139, 146–­52, 159–­ 60, 197; and meeting structure, 12–­16; and rejection of national customs, 7, 50, 74–­75, 214–­15; role of economics in, 17, 23, 200, 203–­4, 208. See also activism; cosmopolitanism; education; holy nation; Zion sovereignty. See Zion: as universal and sovereign law state: activism as response to power of, 133–­ 37; challenge to by Friends, 39–­43; and education, 97, 103–­5, 127–­29; Friends’ rejection of model of, 4; as fused with religion, 5–­7, 9; increasing power of, 10, 187–­90, 207–­8; persecution by, 43–­50; required service to, 63, 73–­78. See also nation-­state subjecthood: as opposed to citizenship, 25, 36, 39, 47, 63, 73, 86, 199; passive nature of, 36, 39–­43, 51. See also citizenship; Great Britain: Empire as overarching identity for Quakers suffering, Quaker experience of. See persecution Tories, accusations of Friends as, 102. See also disloyalty; persecution Tortola. See Caribbean transnationalism: activism as outgrowth of, 139, 153, 157–­62; as challenge to nationalism, 4, 9–­10, 25; continued possibilities of, 217–­18; instillation of within youths, 105; linkage of with universalism and cosmopolitanism, 171–­76, 190–­94; as result of diaspora, 48–­55; transition from

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transatlantic to, 9, 54. See also cosmopolitanism; nationalism treason. See disloyalty United States: American colonies and Seven Years’ War, 37–­42; education in, 95–­101, 103–­5, 107–­9; as emerging American nation, 41–­43; general history of Friends in, 17–­22; and Hicksite schism, 197–­213; history of philanthropy in, 135, 140–­46, 153; and military service, 73–­89, 116; persecution against Friends by, 43–­48; role of religion in historiography of, 4–­7; and visits to by French authors, 165–­67, 178–­82, 184. See also American Revolution; Seven Years’ War universal church. See universalism universalism, 11, 139, 159–­62, 172–­76, 218. See also cosmopolitanism; transnationalism Virginia Exiles, 45, 49, 77, 234n39 Virginia Yearly Meeting, 21, 128 Voltaire (François-­Marie Arouet), 84, 167, 177–­80, 193 war, Quaker opposition to. See pacifism; peace witness, Quaker war for independence, American. See American Revolution War of 1812, 5, 67, 76, 85, 145, 234 Washington, George, 111, 157 Webster, Noah, 104, 108–­9, 111–­12 Westtown School, 102–­3, 106, 109, 114, 116, 119–­20, 127, 129 Wilberforce, William, 144, 146, 151, 191 Wilburite-­Gurney split, 213 women, Quaker: and activism, 147, 150, 258n36, 259n44, 259–­60n45; in church militant, 64, 67, 81–­83, 86; comment on attractiveness of, 183; and involvement in education, 121–­25; role of in Society of Friends, 13–­15, 23, 67, 81–­83, 228n30, 228–­29n31 Worcester, Noah, 87, 119–­20, 124, 126, 148, 150–­52, 158, 160 York, England, 18, 36, 45, 52, 141, 188 youths, Quaker: competition for during Hicksite schism, 204–­5; and concern for boys transitioning into manhood, 85–­86;

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youths, Quaker (cont.) education of, 95–­130. See also education; pedagogy Zion: as articulation of Quaker Reformation, 36–­37, 62; as attractive to outsiders, 54–­55, 157–­61; destruction of, 138, 198, 209–­12; education in tradition of, 98–­99; Friends as embodiment of, 32, 34, 57–­59;

inspiration of by Jewish faith tradition, 1–­ 3, 11, 31–­39, 40–­49, 55–­60; philanthropy in service of, 136–­38, 152–­53; in response to war and nationalism, 2–­4, 34–­35, 39–­ 40, 51–­54, 59; scriptural basis for, 35–­36; service in army of, 64–­65; as universal and sovereign law, 66, 77–­80, 88–­89, 209, 212. See also chosen people; diaspora; holy nation; persecution; prophesy