As we talked about in class, the Quakers were vehemently abolitionist.
Dating all the way back to 1657, the founder of the society, George Fox, wrote to his "To Friends beyond the sea" condemning slavery. In 1676, he published a book of his preachings against slavery, invoking the Golden Rule (as we also talked about).
The abolitionist movement spread to America. Soon, all Quakers were banned from owning slaves, or they were kicked out of the society. The Quakers organized many campaigns and petitions against slavery as well.
Just as a thought...whenever I hear people say that it's not really "fair" to judge people for being in favor of slavery because they "didn't know better," and it's "all they knew"...does that argument actually have any merit at all? To me it doesn't. I know other people might claim that "hindsight is 20/20" and all that, but seriously? OWNING ANOTHER PERSON? Or even just allowing that kind of structure to exist? Clearly there were people opposing slavery and the slave trade from very early on (the Quakers), so why was it so difficult for everyone else to get on board? And as for the argument about "knowing better," I wonder what people in the future will think when they ruminate upon the early 2000s. What about us will they find fault with?
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Same here, Ally. I know you blogged this about a week ago, but here's my belated response: Personally I don't think the argument has any merit even though I often try to consider all perspectives; in cases like these, I don't want to imagine what it would be like to live as a slaveowner. I don't want to pretend even for a short while that owning another person is all right because that isn't who I am and imagining such a thing would make me feel conflicted compared to other mindsets I could possibly adopt for, say, a play or for writing a story (I'd never wanna write a story about that time or act in some sort of production that took place in that time period, no thanks). I hope that people in the future will be informed to an extent about our history BEFORE the 2000s and will be able to draw THIS conclusion: We evolved into slightly better people. I say slightly because I kinda don't like American politics and a bunch of other things, but I'm not gonna open Pandora's box.
Completely agreed! I know you’re talking about specifically slavery here, but Europeans were also cruel in other ways, brutally colonizing Africa as they saw fit, with no regard to the human life already there. I kind of imagine them just gazing at this nebulous idea of “Africa” with money signs in their eyes. As we talked about, Europeans would wage “war” against native people, though their (for lack of a better word) victims were quite unevenly matched. The fact that they saw their culture and beliefs as the only “right” way isn’t the only thing that makes me mad; as Mrs. Quinet talked about, all that Christianizing was sometimes somewhat of a front for the true British interests of getting resources and money from the land.
Anyway, I 100% agree with you both. Subjecting another human to ownership and torture is just inhumane and inexcusable. To me, it doesn’t matter what time period you live in. So what if everyone else was doing it? As the saying goes, if all your friends jumped off a bridge…
Funny that I just saw this post, because I was talking to my (our) mom in the car about this exact topic. She said that our children/grandchildren/descendants would probably view the wage gap as terribly, unthinkably unjust as well…though of course, that’s not at all comparable to the horror of slavery.
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