Contrary to conventional wisdom, American Quakers before the Civil War were hardly in the vanguard of the abolitionists' crusade. Ryan P. Jordan's cogently argued exploration of Quakerism's tortured relationship with the problem of slavery goes far to explaining why this was so. In the process, this fine study also probes deeply into the larger dilemmas of religion's role in American politics, and the limits of religious vision in achieving social reform.
At first blush, it seems a puzzle that the vast majority of antebellum American Quakers ultimately rejected the radical abolitionists. One of their numbers, England's Elizabeth Heyrick, had been the first to espouse that movement's most fundamental tenet — immediate, unqualified, and uncompensated slave emancipation. Before that, during the late 18th century and into the 19th, Quakers in England and the United States had created an abolitionist vanguard that had purged their own denomination of slaveholders, rallied opinion against the African slave trade, and effected the gradual dismantling of slavery in the new Republic's northern states. In the 1820s, in the slaveholding south, Quakers had worked quietly to combat the institution, and when radical abolitionism burst on to the scene in the early 1830s, it quickly attracted highly visible Quakers such as Angelina and Sarah Grimke, Lucretia Mott, and John Greenleaf Whittier. The cause of the slave, quite clearly, had counted for much in Quaker traditions and continued to hold deep attraction for individual members as radical abolitionism grew from the 1830s onward.
Yet, as Jordan stresses, other traditions and creeds proved far more influential in determining a shared position on slavery than the Quakers' antislavery past. As radical abolitionism spread after 1830, orthodox Quakers became increasingly protective of the pro-slavery status quo, particularly after radicals among them began seceding to form their own schismatic churches where immediatism served as a central doctrine and where one could work directly for religious and political for equality.
What, precisely, motivated this once so antislavery-minded religion turn against its heritage by adopting such deeply conservative positions? What does such conservatism imply about the relationship of religious activism to republican doctrines regarding freedom of conscience and the separation of church from state? These are Jordan's central questions, and his manner of addressing them yields illuminating results.
Jordan, above all, takes religious doctrine seriously, stressing the importance of creedal convictions, not social or economic circumstances, in shaping the Quaker responses to abolitionism. In his convincing telling, it was traditional doctrines of non-violence, reasoned debate, consensus building, and apolitical spirituality that combined to drive the majority of American Quakers away from the cause of the slave. From orthodox perspectives, the agitations of immediate abolitionists, fellow Quakers among them, produced not “peaceable kingdoms,” but instead mob violence in the North and fears of slave insurrection in the South. Their efforts to convert churches into bastions of abolitionism and to petition the government on behalf of the slave dangerously compromised church/state separation and endangered the Union. Their vocal condemnations of southern planters violated Quaker values of friendly persuasion and freedom of conscience. So, most significantly, did the abolitionists' most troubling doctrine of all — that Quaker meetings themselves should embrace immediatism and racial equality. To the orthodox, such a demand profoundly threatened the cohesion of the Quaker congregations.
Responding these convictions, Orthodox Quakers were not hesitant to act in concert against the abolitionist dissidents within their midst who now began calling themselves Progressive Friends. During the 1840s, Orthodox Quakers expelled Progressives from their meetings or censured them so heavily that they departed voluntarily. Orthodox opinion endorsed the American Colonization Society's approach of purchasing slaves' freedom piecemeal and “returning” those so liberated to West Africa, a position that was anathema to immediatists. As Progressive Friends increasingly practiced civil disobedience while protecting fugitive slaves, Orthodox Quakers demanded law and order. As this dissident minority expanded its vision to incorporate equality for women and blacks, Orthodox Quakers stood foursquare for traditional values and cultivated support for these conservative positions among their influential British counterparts.
Jordan is deeply aware of the disturbing ironies that developed from these ongoing conflicts. The greatest strength of this book is the care and insight with which he explores contradictions such as these: Orthodox Quakers who sought to protect their apolitical purity ultimately made themselves slavery's political defenders; the same religious democratization championed by the Progressive friends led ultimately to a strengthened pro-slavery orthodoxy; the classic liberal insistence on upholding “freedom of conscience” and separation of church from state ultimately gave license to a tyranny of the majority. This modest sized book offers a rich and cogently argued analysis that scholars of American religion and of American political culture will find most rewarding.
