“It is a Terror . . . That Men should be Handeled so in Pennsylvania”: Early Quaker Reasoning, Debate, and the Abolitionist Influence of the Germantown Friends’ Protest Against Slavery

abstract:This article concerns the 1688 Germantown Friends’ Protest Against Slavery. The document was written and signed by Francis Daniel Pastorius and three like-minded Quakers. Pastorius’s protest sparked early abolitionist debate in the American colonies, leading to other antislavery protests, such as Cadwalader Morgan’s and George Keith’s protests in the following decade. The Protest is a key example of early American diplomacy as it saw slavery as a contentious point with the potential to damage the new colony’s relationship with Europe and subsequent immigration. The Protest was not initially successful, garnering little response from contemporary Quakers. However, its long-term influence has provided the path for abolitionist legislation in the late 1700s and led to the shunning of pro-slavery Quakers.