John Woolman, died October 7, 1772

"If the white people retain a resolution to prefer their outward prospects of gain  to all other considerations,
and do not act conscientiously toward [slaves] as fellow-creatures,
I believe that burden will grow heavier and heavier,
until times change in a way disagreeable to us."

In 1761, Woolman was in Philadelphia on a visit to some Friends who had slaves, to convince them to free the slaves. There he met a group of Indians from Wyalusing. He writes that:

in conversation with them by an interpreter, as also by observations on theircountenance and conduct, I believed some of them were measurably acquainted with that divine power which subjects the rough and froward will of creature; and at times I felt inward drawings toward a visit to that place, of which I told none except my dear wife until it came to some ripeness.

In June 1763, John Woolman left his home in Mount Holly to travel on horseback to Wyalusing, Pennsylvania, because

[I had for] … many years felt love in my heart toward the natives of this land who dwell far back in the wilderness, whose ancestors were the owners and possessors of the land where we dwell, and who for a very small consideration assigned their inheritance to us…

It was a war zone. The night before Woolman left home, a delegation of Friends rode out from Philadelphia and roused him out of bed to try to talk him out of going at that time. They brought fresh news of hostilities increasing on the frontier. Woolman went the next morning, knowing this, and also clear that he was in God’s care. His actions would be for the good, even if he did not survive. One week into the journey, on a rainy morning, sitting in his tent on swampy ground, he asked himself why he was there. He wrote this answer:

Love was the first motion, and then a concern arose to spend some time with the Indians, that I might feel and understand their life and the spirit they live in, if haply I might receive some instruction from them, or they be in any degree helped forward by my following the leadings of truth amongst them.

And as it pleased the Lord to make way for my going at a time when the troubles of war were increasing, and when by reason of much wet weather travelling was more difficult than was usual at that season, I looked upon it as a more favorable opportunity to season my mind and bring me into a nearer sympathy with them.

He was traveling with his friend Benjamin Parvin and four Native American guides, one man and three women, whom he had met one month earlier while they were in Philadelphia on business. Woolman had agreed to join with them as companions for their return. In addition to the six who traveled together to Wyalusing, various Quakers housed fed the group. Indians also offered food, shelter and assistance. During the journey, further news arrived of forts taken, settlers killed and scalped, Indian families relocating and warriors on the move. 

Woolman contemplated the role of English settlers in this oppression:

In this lonely journey I did this day greatly bewail the spreading of a wrong spirit, believing that the prosperous, convenient situation of the English requires a constant attention to divine love and wisdom, to guide and support us in a way answerable to the will of that good, gracious and almighty Being who hath an equal regard to all mankind.

And here luxury and covetousness, with the numerous oppressions and other evils attending them, appeared very afflicting to me, and I felt in that which is immutable that the seeds of great calamity are sown and growing fast on this continent.

Between the English settlements and Wehaloosing we had only a narrow path, which in many places is much grown up with bushes, and interrupted by abundance of trees lying across it. These, together with the mountain swamps and rough stones, make it a difficult road to travel, and the more so because rattlesnakes abound here, of which we killed four. 

People who have never been in such places have but an imperfect idea of them; and I was not only taught patience, but also made thankful to God, who thus led about and instructed me, that I might have a quick and lively feeling of the afflictions of my fellow-creatures, whose situation in life is difficult.

Woolman yearned for his countrymen to turn away from luxury and greed before it was too late, and to follow Christ’s example by living simply and abundantly in equality and love.

At our Yearly Meeting at Philadelphia this day, John Smith, of Marlborough, aged upwards of eighty years, a faithful minister, though not eloquent, stood up in our meeting of ministers and elders, and appearing to be under a great exercise of spirit, informed Friends in substance as follows: "That he had been a member of our Society upwards of sixty years, and he well remembered that, in those early times, Friends were a plain, lowly-minded people, and that there was much tenderness and contrition in their meetings. That, at twenty years from that time, the Society increasing in wealth and in some degree conforming to the fashions of the world, true humility was less apparent, and their meetings in general were not so lively and edifying. That at the end of forty years many of them were grown very rich, and many of the Society made a specious appearance in the world; that wearing fine costly garments, and using silver and other watches, became customary with them, their sons, and their daughters.

. . . Having hired a man to work, I perceived in conversation with him that he had been a soldier in the late war on this continent; and he informed me in the evening, in a narrative of his captivity among the Indians, that he saw two of his fellow-captives tortured to death in a very cruel manner.

This relation affected me with sadness, under which I went to bed; and the next morning, soon after I awoke, a fresh and living sense of divine love overspread my mind, in which I had a renewed prospect of the nature of that wisdom from above which leads to a right use of all gifts, both spiritual and temporal, and gives content therein. Under a feeling thereof, I wrote as follows: --

"Hath He who gave me a being attended with many wants unknown to brute creatures given me a capacity superior to theirs, and shown me that a moderate application to business is suitable to my present condition; and that this, attended with His blessing, may supply all my outward wants while they remain within the bounds He hath fixed, and while no imaginary wants proceeding from an evil spirit have any place in me? 

. . . Doth pride lead to vanity? Doth vanity form imaginary wants? Do these wants prompt men to exert their power in requiring more from others than they would be willing to perform themselves, were the same required of them? 

Do these proceedings beget hard thoughts? Do hard thoughts, when ripe, become malice? Does malice, when ripe, become revengeful, and in the end inflict terrible pains on our fellow-creatures and spread desolations in the world?

. . . Remember then thy station as being sacred to God. Accept of the strength freely offered to thee, and take heed that no weakness in conforming to unwise, expensive, and hard-hearted customs, gendering to discord and strife, be given way to.

Woolman's final journey was to England in 1772. During the voyage he stayed in steerage and spent time with the crew, rather than in the better accommodations in cabins enjoyed by some passengers. He attended the British London Yearly Meeting, and the Friends resolved to include an anti-slavery statement in their Epistle. 

  

Stage-coaches frequently go upwards of one hundred miles in twenty-four hours; and I have heard Friends say in several places that it is common for horses to be killed with hard driving, and that many others are driven till they grow blind. Post-boys pursue their business, each one to his stage, all night through the winter. Some boys who ride long stages suffer greatly in winter nights, and at several places I have heard of their being frozen to death. 

So great is the hurry in the spirit of this world, that in aiming to do business quickly and to gain wealth, the creation at this day doth loudly groan.

In England he visited the Quarterly and subordinate meetings of Friends in seven counties, and wrote essays upon "Loving our Neighbours," "A Sailor's Life," and "Silent Worship." 

His last public testimony was in the York Meeting on behalf of the poor and enslaved. 

Woolman contracted smallpox, and was cared for at the home of Thomas Priestman:

In the night, a young woman having given him something to drink, he said, "My child, thou seemest very kind to me, a poor creature; the Lord will reward thee for it." . . . Being asked if he could take a little nourishment, after some pause he replied, "My child, I cannot tell what to say to it; I seem nearly arrived where my soul shall have rest from all its troubles."

John Woolman passed away on October 7, 1772.  He died less than two weeks before his 52nd birthday. 

Chair in which John Woolman died

He was buried in in the Friends' Burial Ground Bishophill in York on October 9, 1772.

A plaque at Littlegarth, off Marygate Lane in York, marks where he stayed and died.

The Journal of John Woolman was published posthumously in 1774 by Joseph Crukshank, a Philadelphia Quaker printer.  It is considered a prominent American spiritual work and is the longest-published book in the history of North America other than the Bible, having been continuously in print since 1774.

Woolman did not succeed in eradicating slavery within the Society of Friends in colonial America; however, his personal efforts helped change Quaker viewpoints.   In 1775, Quakers played a dominant role in the formation of the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery, the first antislavery society in America.  The Pennsylvania Gradual Abolition Act of 1780 was the first emancipation statute in the United States.  After the American Revolutionary War and independence, in 1790 the Pennsylvania Society of Friends petitioned the United States Congress for the abolition of slavery. While unsuccessful at the national level, Quakers contributed to Pennsylvania's abolition of slavery. 

In addition, in the first two decades after the war, they were active together with Methodist and Baptist preachers in the Upper South in persuading many slaveholders to manumit their slaves. The percentage of free people of color rose markedly during those decades, for instance, from less than one to nearly ten percent in Virginia.

New Jersey Advertisements for Runaway Slaves
July 1781

After the Revolutionary War, many northern states rapidly passed laws to abolish slavery, but New Jersey did not pass abolish it until 1804, and then in a process of gradual emancipation similar to that of New York. However, in New Jersey, some slaves were held as late as 1865. (In New York, they were all freed by 1827.) The law made African Americans free at birth, but required children born to slave mothers to serve lengthy apprenticeships as a type of indentured servant until early adulthood for the masters of their slave mothers. New Jersey was the last of the Northern states to abolish slavery completely. The last 16 slaves in New Jersey were freed in 1865 by the Thirteenth Amendment.

The John Woolman Memorial in Mount Holly, New Jersey is located near one of his former orchards.  The memorial and museum is located in a brick house built between 1771-1783, reportedly for Woolman's daughter and her husband.

The John Woolman Memorial in Mount Holly, New Jersey

"When we remember that all nations are of one blood; that in this world we are but sojourners; that we are subject to the like afflictions and infirmities of the body, the like disorders and frailties in mind, the like temptations, the same death and the same judgment; and that the All-wise Being is judge and Lord over us all, it seems to raise an idea of a general brotherhood and a disposition easy to be touched with a feeling of each other’s afflictions. 

But when we forget these things and look chiefly at our outward circumstances, in this and some ages past, constantly retaining in our minds the distinction betwixt us and them with respect to our knowledge and improvement in things divine, natural, and artificial, our breasts being apt to be filled with fond notions of superiority, there is danger of erring in our conduct toward them.

. . . To consider mankind otherwise than brethren, to think favours are peculiar to one nation and exclude others, plainly supposes a darkness in the understanding. 

For as God’s love is universal, so where the mind is sufficiently influenced by it, it begets a likeness of itself and the heart is enlarged towards all men. Again, to conclude a people froward, perverse, and worse by nature than others (who ungratefully receive favours and apply them to bad ends), this will excite a behavior toward them unbecoming the excellence of true religion."

~ John Woolman