ABSTRACT
After the Protest of Germantown Friends against slavery in 1688 and the 'Keithian' Exhortation (see Ch. 25), the Quakers in the eighteenth century remained the prime religious source of an antislavery and abolitionist critique. The influence and writings of the austere and earnest John Woolman and Anthony Benezet, combined with a new generation of rigorously principled leaders in the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, produced in 1755 a warning to Friends against further importation or purchase of slaves. Exhortation by local meetings to slave-owner Friends, disciplinary measures and personal visits from Woolman and others had gradual effect in the following years. By 1774 the contradiction entailed in maintaining slavery while opposing British 'tyranny' pushed the Yearly Meeting to a complete ban on slave-owning amongst Friends. Yet some retained their bondsmen and women even at the time of the Pennsylvania Gradual Emancipation Law of 1780.
