Colonial-era Quakers weren’t all saints when it came to opposing slavery but there are some moments we afford to look back to with a smidge of pride. In 1783, a delegation from Philadelphia Yearly Meeting walked into the Continental Congress to make good on all that “created equal” language.
Princeton villagers and members of the Continental Congress beheld the arrival of an unusual delegation of somberly dressed men astride horses. They had come from Philadelphia to raise an issue that the Continental Congress did not wish to address: the plight of half a million American residents — one-fifth of the people — who had been listening to memorable words about inalienable rights and how America would usher in a new age of freedom and justice, but who were condemned along with their children to lifelong slavery. The four men carried a parchment titled “The Address of the People Called Quakers.”
The author, Gary Nash, has a book out about Walter Mifflin, one of the four, which Friends Journal reviewed this April.
As I recall, the transatlantic slave trade went into overdrive in the newly independent United States. If the Continental Congress has listened, the complexion and character and history of the U.S. would be far different.
https://paw.princeton.edu/article/moment-nassau-hall
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