A Colonial Resolution Against Slavery

In February of 1688, four German men penned the first recorded protest against racialized chattel slavery in the North American English colonies. All four men were either Mennonite or Quaker. And all four decided to protest the presence of racialized chattel slavery in Pennsylvania before the Pennsylvania legislature or any Pennsylvania court sanctioned slavery in the colony. They aimed to be ahead of any legislative or judicial curve.

Garret Hendrich, Derick op den Graeff, Francis daniel Pastorious, and Abraham op den Graeff began their argument against “the traffick of men-body” with a rhetorical question: “Is there any that would be done or handled at this manner? viz., to be sold or made a slave for all the time of his life?” This question carried discursive weight for its intended, self-identifying Christian audience, for the question implicitly appealed to one of Jesus’s teachings: “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you, for this is the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 7:12). The men then pivoted to a common fear among Europeans and European colonists—being captured and enslaved by non-Christian “Turks.”

How fearful and faint-hearted are many on sea, when they see a strange vessel, -being afraid it should be a Turk, and they should be taken, and sold for slaves into Turkey. Now what is this better done, as Turks doe?

This second rhetorical question presumes a religious and transnational xenophobia. The German men essentially ask, “Do you, European colonial Christians, want to act like those barbarous, strange, non-Christian Turks?” Their presumed answer: “Surely not!”

The four men tighten their argumentative screws by speaking in an explicitly Eurocentric, Christian discourse. Consider this extended quotation.

Yea, rather it is worse for them, which say they are Christians; for we hear that ye most part of such negers are brought hither against their will and consent, and that many of them are stolen. Now, tho they are black, we can not conceive there is more liberty to have them slaves, as it is to have other white ones. There is a saying that we shall doe to all men like as we will be done ourselves; making no difference of what generation, descent or colour they are. And those who steal or robb men, and those who buy or purchase them, are they not all alike? Here is liberty of conscience wch is right and reasonable; here ought to be liberty of ye body, except of evil-doers, wch is an other case. But to bring men hither, or to rob and sell them against their will, we stand against. In Europe there are many oppressed for conscience sake; and here there are those oppressed wh are of a black colour. And we who know than men must not comitt adultery, -some do committ adultery, in separating wives from their husbands and giving them to others; and some sell the children of these poor creatures to other men. Ah! doe consider will this thing, you who doe it, if you would be done at this manner? And if it is done according to Christianity? You surpass Holland and Germany in this thing. This makes an ill report in all those countries of Europe, where they hear of, that ye Quakers doe here handel men as they handel there ye cattle.

Race-consciousness, Jesus’s teaching, theologies of liberty, Eurocentrism, and intra-ecclesiastical shaming—the four German Christian men employ each in this series of arguments denouncing racialized chattel slavery.

If you’ve time and interest, you can read the remainder of their resolution here.