A Colonial Resolution Against Slavery: How It Ended

My last post engaged the first recorded protest against racialized chattel slavery in the North American English colonies. In 1688, four German men—Garret Hendrich, Derick op den Graeff, Francis daniel Pastorious, and Abraham op den Graeff—denounced “the traffick of men-body” in colonial Pennsylvania. Their petition reflected their Mennonite and Quaker commitments and Eurocentricsm. Thus, the protest also mirrored its intended Euro-colonial, Quaker audience.

Did this distinctively Euro-Christian abolitionist petition have its intended effect? No. The petition was not adopted by the monthly, quarterly, or yearly Quaker meetings. Members of the monthly meeting explained why they abstained from adopting the petition: “We think it not expedient for us to meddle with it here.”

Expedient: Advantageous, feasible, judicious, opportune, practicable, or prudent. 

To meddle: to intervene or interfere; to pry, intrude, or invade.

The quarterly meeting did not reject the men’s premises nor conclusions; the meeting’s members never refuted the men’s arguments. Instead, they deemed it “inopportune and imprudent” to “interfere or pry” into colonial Pennsylvania’s racialized political economy in such meetings.

While the Quaker meetings failed to champion abolition, slavers and economic allies of slaveholders pushed for de facto and de jure protections of racialized chattel slavery throughout the Quaker colony. The latter’s agenda held for nearly 100 years: The first major statute against racialized chattel slavery in Pennsylvania was the 1780 Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery. And this despite Pennsylvania’s relatively small enslaved population!

A recurring thought: Beware reasonable sounding rhetoric in the mouths of oppression-enablers.