Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery (1688)

The Germantown Quaker petition against slavery was a short protest written in 1688 by four members of the Quaker meeting in Germantown, a settlement of Dutch- and German-speaking immigrants near Philadelphia. Addressed to their fellow Quakers, it argued that buying, selling and holding Africans in slavery was wrong. It is the earliest known written protest against slavery in the English colonies of North America.

Background: Germantown and the Quakers

In 1681 King Charles II granted William Penn the colony of Pennsylvania, which Penn intended as a refuge for Quakers and other religious minorities, as described in William Penn and the founding of Pennsylvania. In October 1683 a group of families from Krefeld in the Rhineland, many of Mennonite background who had joined the Quakers, arrived and founded Germantown, just north of Philadelphia. Their leader and agent was the lawyer Francis Daniel Pastorius.

Slavery was legal and growing in the English colonies. Enslaved Africans were brought to Philadelphia, and some Quakers, including prominent members of the Philadelphia meeting, owned enslaved people. For most colonists, slavery was an accepted part of economic life, sustained by the transatlantic trade described in the Middle Passage.

The petition

The petition was addressed to the monthly meeting of Quakers held at the house of Richard Worrell. It was signed by Garret Hendericks, Derick op den Graeff, Francis Daniel Pastorius and Abraham op den Graeff, and is generally believed to have been drafted by Pastorius. It is dated the 18th day of the 2nd month of 1688. At that time Quakers counted March as the first month of the year, so the date corresponds to 18 April 1688, although many older accounts give 18 February.

The text is written in plain, sometimes awkward English. Its arguments are simple and direct. The signers invoked the Golden Rule, that people should treat others as they would wish to be treated, and asked who among the colonists would accept being sold into slavery. They argued that colour made no difference to this principle.

They also pointed out that people in Pennsylvania enjoyed liberty of conscience, and argued that there ought also to be a liberty of the body, except for wrongdoers. They noted that the trade separated husbands, wives and children, and warned that slavery brought dishonour on the Quakers and on the colony in the eyes of Europe. They even asked whether enslaved people would not have the right to fight for their freedom.

Reception

The monthly meeting at Dublin (Abington) considered the petition and passed it on, judging it too weighty to decide. The Philadelphia Quarterly Meeting likewise forwarded it to the Yearly Meeting, held that year in Burlington, New Jersey. The Yearly Meeting concluded that it was not proper for it to give a positive judgement in the case, because the matter affected other parts of the Quaker community. No action followed.

The petition was then largely forgotten. It was rediscovered in the 1840s by a Philadelphia Quaker antiquarian and published, at a time when the American abolition movement was gathering strength. The original manuscript survives in Quaker archives in the Philadelphia area and was conserved in the early 21st century.

Quakers and slavery after 1688

The Germantown petition did not change Quaker practice immediately, but it was part of a long debate. In 1693 followers of George Keith published an “Exhortation and Caution” against buying and keeping enslaved people, often regarded as the first printed antislavery tract in America.

During the 18th century Quaker reformers such as Benjamin Lay, John Woolman and Anthony Benezet pressed the issue. The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting condemned involvement in the slave trade in 1758 and, from 1776, moved to disown members who still held people in slavery. Pennsylvania passed the first gradual abolition law in the United States in 1780, and Quakers played a central role in later movements such as the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade in Britain.

Myths and facts

The petition is sometimes described as the first antislavery statement anywhere. It was not: individual critics of slavery had written in Europe and elsewhere before 1688. Its importance lies in being the earliest known written collective protest against slavery in English-speaking North America.

Timeline

• 1681, March: Charles II grants Pennsylvania to William Penn.
• 1683, October: Families from Krefeld found Germantown near Philadelphia.
• 1688, 18th day of 2nd month: Four Germantown Quakers sign the petition (18 April in modern reckoning).
• 1688: The petition passes through the monthly and quarterly meetings to the Yearly Meeting at Burlington, which declines to rule.
• 1693: George Keith’s followers print an antislavery “Exhortation and Caution”.
• 1758: The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting condemns Quaker participation in the slave trade.
• 1780, March: Pennsylvania passes its Gradual Abolition Act.

Why it matters

The Germantown petition shows that slavery was challenged on moral grounds from the earliest years of English colonial America. Though ignored in its own time, its arguments about the Golden Rule and liberty of the body anticipated the abolitionist movement of the following centuries.