In 1863, Sarah Josepha Hale rejoiced that after a decades-long campaign, Thanksgiving had become a national holiday. Hale was not alone in her desire to unite patriotism with spiritual devotion. In her personal correspondence with the president, Eliza Gurney also spoke of the blessings God had bestowed on the nation. Gurney, a devoted Quaker, had met with Lincoln in 1861 to give him spiritual comfort and had continued writing with him ever since. After his public proclamation of Thanksgiving, Gurney wrote to him to demonstrate her “cordial approval of thy late excellent proclamation appointing a day of thanksgiving” despite the fact that as a Quaker she did “not set apart especial seasons for returning thanks.”Footnote ¹ Gurney saw the holiday as an effective means of making less devout Americans conscious of their God-given blessings and thus supported the federal holiday even while she refused to celebrate it.

Gurney's ability to condone a holiday she would not celebrate demonstrates the success of Jefferson's wall of separation. It also shows that Quakers' century-long struggle to be accepted as citizens while staying true to their faith had worked. Between 1774 and 1800 Quakers argued continually that thanksgivings and fast days were not religio-political events but were religious events alone and as such should not be used to judge patriotism. In other words, Quakers argued that by proclaiming days of thanksgiving the state overstepped its bounds.

Quaker challenges to thanksgivings and fast days led to changes in America's understanding of the relationship between church and state. While Pennsylvania had no history of celebrating regular thanksgiving and fast days, as the Continental Congress began issuing proclamations for nationwide holidays, non-Quaker Pennsylvanians called for citizens to conform to this religio-political day of celebration. For their refusal to participate, Quakers were labeled loyalists, fined, imprisoned, and had their personal property damaged. Quakers and their sympathizers then began a campaign to shape public opinion by publishing handbills and arguing that thanksgivings and fasts were more religious than political. As the war ended, many denominations, like the Presbyterians, began to organize their own thanksgivings and fast days rather than waiting on the state. Finally, by the early 1790s, public discourse made a clear distinction: Quakers could refrain from participating in civic days of thanksgiving and fasting but they could not interfere with non-Quaker celebrations. In other words, Quakers could be good citizens and follow their religious beliefs but could not expect others to follow the Quaker example.

This forum examines how minority religious groups challenged the developing notion of separation of church and state in the early American republic. For Quakers in the late eighteenth century, this was an unexpected place to be as Pennsylvania had long been seen as a bastion of religious liberty in the British North American colonies. While Spencer McBride's essay addresses a direct appeal to the federal government and Jennifer Dorsey's work examines Shaker challenges to American tax structures, this essay argues that Quakers sought to persuade Americans to view the role of government, and the role of religious rituals, differently. As Americans actively debated what it meant to be a good American citizen, Quakers argued that the government should reward religious scruples over political patriotism.

Thanksgivings and fast days were important tools of the early-modern state for creating a shared religious experience amongst citizens. As Sarah Purcell has observed, “Thanksgiving days brought together the two most important American institutions of community authority, the government and the church, to invest an occasion with official meaning.”Footnote ² In North America, government-sanctioned thanksgivings and fast days occurred in every colony. When John Adams wrote to Abigail in 1775 that “millions will be upon their knees at once before their great Creator” as a consequence of the fast day proclaimed by the Continental Congress, he was not making any particular commentary on the religiosity of the American people or the new American government but was merely noting a reality throughout the European world; thanksgivings and fasts united religious devotion with patriotism.Footnote ³ Many scholars have written about revolutionary thanksgivings and fast days, such as Matthew Dennis, James Hutson, David Waldstreicher, and Daniel Dreisbach. Yet these discussions often remain rooted in either the politics or the religion behind these celebrations.Footnote ⁴ The reality is that in the eighteenth century there was no clear distinction between the two categories. We can, however, see the development of distinctions between public piety and patriotism in the revolutionary experience of Philadelphia Quakers.

The same fast day that elicited excitement from John Adams gave Quakers reason for concern. Benjamin Irvin rightly notes that “colonists' tradition of public fasts had thus become thoroughly entangled in imperial politics.”Footnote ⁵ At the same time, Quakers objected to thanksgiving and fast days for the same reasons that they objected to honorific titles, established church services, and other human conventions; they saw them as human inventions rather than the requirements of the deity. These objections were long-standing and well-known, especially in Pennsylvania, but also in other states with significant Quaker populations. The consequence of this belief was that many Quakers broke the fast and refused to keep the government's mandated Thanksgiving.

As early as 1774, Quakers who opened their shops on thanksgivings and fast days found their stores, homes, and reputations damaged. As Philadelphia prepared to close their shops to fast in solidarity with the citizens of Boston upon the enforcement of the Coercive Acts, several prominent Quakers issued a statement that fasting and thanksgiving went against their religious principles. These men stressed that they were “justly sensible of the value of our religious and civil rights and that it is our duty to assert them in a Christian spirit,” but that fasting fell outside the realm of acceptable Quaker behavior.Footnote ⁶ While using the revolutionary language of rights and liberties, Quakers argued that their religious rights were being trampled in the desire to prove political loyalty. In the charged political atmosphere of Philadelphia in the summer of 1774, some Quakers decided that participating in public fast days was not only politically expedient, but was patriotic as well. Others, however, clearly continued to hold fast to their religious principles and refused to participate, using the same logic and language as those proclaiming thanksgiving and fast days.

The letter was published in the Pennsylvania Journal, Pennsylvania Packet, New York Gazette, and Norfolk Intelligencer among other papers and was signed by three prominent Quaker leaders and Philadelphia merchants: John Reynell, James Pemberton, and Samuel Noble. John Reynell was an important Philadelphia merchant who had at various times chaired both the Philadelphia Monthly Meeting's Meeting for Sufferings and the Philadelphia Merchant's Committee. James Pemberton, brother of Israel Pemberton, had resigned from the Pennsylvania Assembly in 1756 because the French and Indian War violated his pacifist beliefs but returned to politics in the wake of the Stamp Act crisis. Pemberton was also a merchant and a leader of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. Pemberton and Reynell both participated in the embargo of the Charming Polly in 1769.Footnote ⁷ Of Samuel Noble less is known. He was a tanner in Philadelphia and an old friend of Benjamin Franklin who in 1771 sent the sage a pair of shoes.

These men, Quakers and merchants, occupied a strange and dangerous place in revolutionary Philadelphia. Their allegiance was both more suspect and more noticeable than many of their Quaker or merchant colleagues. The June 1 public fast demonstrated this problem. Quaker merchants could not close their shops for the fast day, but in keeping them open they looked to most non-Quakers like they were supporting the British in their punishment of Boston. Their public statement on May 30, then, served two purposes: it reminded fellow Quakers of their theological duty to treat the day like any other and provided non-Quakers a religious rather than a political justification for their actions.

By 1776, with James Pemberton again at the helm, the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting sought to remind Pennsylvanians that Quaker objections to civic holy days were long-standing. They republished An Apology for the People called Quakers Containing some Reasons, for their not complying with human Injunctions and Institutions in Matters relative to the Worship of God, which had originally been published as the Seven Years War raged in 1756. This essay had been published to remind Pennsylvania's non-Quaker residents as well as the administrators of the British Empire that Quaker refusal to observe special days of worship was not a political statement. That religious justification was again much-needed in revolutionary Philadelphia. The history and the politics of Penn's colony had collided with the politics of the greater British Empire creating a tumultuous political landscape. For almost a century, Quaker scruples had been the de facto culture of the colony. Historians have found no colonial proclamations for thanksgivings with the exception of those called for by the King. Twice, once in 1750 and again in 1758, the governor proclaimed a day of thanksgiving. In both cases the proclamation did not require the day to be treated as a Sabbath where work was legally prohibited. Most proclamations for thanksgivings and fast days in other colonies made the day a labor holiday. In reprinting this apology, Quaker leaders, especially Quaker merchants, hoped to absolve themselves of political toryism.

Quakers did not fight this battle alone, however, as Christopher Marshall noted in his journal. On May 16, 1776, he attended a meeting at the Philosophical Hall “to consider what may be necessary respecting the Quakers on the next Fast Day.” After the subject was “maturely considered,” the committee had a handbill printed to encourage citizens not to destroy Quaker property or cause them bodily injury for opening their shops.Footnote ⁸ Marshall had previously noted that patriots had smashed the windows of Quaker homes for opening their shops on days of fasting and thanksgiving and he and others hoped to prevent such violence by again coding Quaker behavior as religious rather than political. In making this distinction, Marshall and other leaders also coded their own participation in the holiday as a religious choice. As thanksgiving and fast days became political tools for the new state and federals governments, they also became markers of the limits the people wanted these new governments to have; in protecting the Quakers' religious beliefs revolutionary leaders restricted what many others viewed as the religious needs of a nation.

As the revolution drew to an end, Quakers continued to feel pressure from other Philadelphians to conform to the new national ritual of fasting and thanksgiving. The victory at Yorktown had effectively ended the fighting in America. Yet, Quakers were still burdened by their religious beliefs being seen also as political opinions. The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting appointed six Quakers to present the President of the Supreme Executive Council and the Speaker of the General Assembly a treatise entitled Reasons why Friends do not Illuminate their Houses at the Time of public Rejoicing, nor shut their Shops for the public Fasts, Feasts and Thanksgivings.Footnote ⁹ This treatise laid out the theological objections Quakers had to fasts and thanksgivings called for by civil leaders and reminded readers, both Quaker and non-Quakers alike, that Pennsylvania was created to protect religious freedom and not to infringe upon it. As the war ended and Americans looked towards life as a new nation, Quakers continued to insist that America treat thanksgivings and fast days as religious events and not religio-political events with dual meaning.

This treatise pointed out clear and contemporary reasons why this attitude towards civic holy days was needed. Violence against Quakers throughout the revolution and especially the recent “outrages and violences committed on the property . . . by companies of licentious people parading the streets” as they celebrated the victory at Yorktown had forced Quakers again to attempt defining thanksgivings as religious and not political events. Quakers “could not subject themselves in the worship of Almighty God to the will and commands of men.” This was, “their constant conscientious practice” and not the result of “a spirit of singularity, obstinacy, and a desire to be contrary to others” as they were often charged.Footnote ¹⁰

After establishing both the Quaker theological objections to special holy days and Pennsylvania's long history of accommodating Quaker beliefs, the essay then turned to the contemporary treatment of Quakers. “It must therefore appear strange and extraordinary, in the view of candid enquirers, that so evident a change and contrast have taken place” the committee opined, “that we . . . who have never forfeited our birth-right, should now be vilified, persecuted, imprisoned, and excluded from our just liberties and privilege, not only by laws . . . but [by] scurrilous publications, and other invidious means.”Footnote ¹¹ Pennsylvania had changed. It was no longer a haven for Quaker sensibilities but was a part of a nation that encouraged religio-political celebrations for the nation.Footnote ¹² While men like Christopher Marshall and Sam Adams called on politicians and citizens alike to respect the theology of minority religious sects, the reality was that most Americans viewed these holidays as both religious and political.

Quakers alone could not change the engrained understanding of thanksgivings and fast days as religio-political civic rituals. But, in the decades before the Constitution, Protestant denominations began to develop organizations that spread outside state bounds and were in some instances more powerful than the fractured national government. So, for example, the Anglican Church held a general conference in Philadelphia in 1785 that included delegates from across the nation in order to quickly create new liturgical standards. Among these standards was the declaration that the first Thursday of November always be held as a day of general thanksgiving for God's blessings and that the 4^th of July be held as a thanksgiving specifically for “the inestimable blessings of Religious and Civil Liberty vouchsafed to the United States of America.”Footnote ¹³ As the state-established church structure crumbled, the Anglican Church in America saw calling for and celebrating thanksgivings as a duty for the ecclesiastical and not the civic authorities. Throughout the 1790s, other denominations including the Presbyterians, Methodists, and Lutherans did the same. In response to a cholera epidemic in Philadelphia and other major cities, the Pennsylvanian presbytery called for a day of fasting and prayer in 1797. Similarly, March 4, 1796 was observed by the “Methodist Episcopal thro'out the United States of America as a most solemn day of fasting, humiliation, prayer and supplication; and was recommended to be attended to with Sabbatical strictness.”Footnote ¹⁴ Quakers were now not alone in seeing thanksgiving as a religious event.

Denominations continued to appropriate these holidays throughout the 1790s, making thanksgivings and fast days more of a religious tradition and less indicative of political allegiance. Keeping thanksgivings and fast days became a mark of piety. At the same time, the federal government and many state governments increasingly stepped away from proclaiming days of thanksgiving and fasting. The federal government lost the respect of many citizens during the tumultuous fast days of 1798 and 1799. Incidentally, those fast days also became politically charged for Quakers as their refusal to close their shops was taken as a statement about Adams' administration. Thanksgivings and fast days called for by the government were increasingly seen as political ploys rather than as part of the duty of devout citizens.

One result of the late eighteenth-century challenges to state-proclaimed thanksgivings was that these holidays became increasingly associated with New England rather than European tradition and rarely proclaimed by federal or state governments. Another result was that patriotism became unhinged from religious devotion; while the contested presidential election of 1800 demonstrated that religion was still central to electability, it was conceivable that one's religious scruples did not necessarily infringe on good citizenship. Finally, by the middle of the nineteenth century thanksgivings and fast days were so removed from political allegiance that Quaker leaders could give sermons about the importance of personal thanksgiving and fasting. For Quakers, the fall of the state thanksgiving gave the sect the ability to demonstrate their patriotism outside theologically charged rituals—through 4th of July speeches, decorative arts, and published treatises. No longer were thanksgiving and fast days viewed as religio-political events. They were religious acts that Quakers could participate in when they felt so called by God. While Sarah Josepha Hale campaigned for a national thanksgiving day in the hopes that it would make piety a national characteristic, by 1863, it was entirely plausible that a Quaker could support but not celebrate a national thanksgiving and just as likely that the Anglicans, Presbyterians and others who celebrated the holiday would see Quaker behavior as a religious and not a political statement.