Summary Overview

On February 18, 1688, Quakers met in Germantown, Pennsylvania, located about five miles northwest of Philadelphia, and issued the first known statement in British North America proclaiming the evils of slavery and urging the abolition of the institution. The petition, titled “A Minute against Slavery, Addressed to Germantown Monthly Meeting,” raised points that would later become the basis for eighteenth-century arguments for the abolition of slavery. The petitioners believed that slavery violated the Golden Rule, to do unto others as you would have done to you; it was theft; it inspired the growth of vices such as adultery and caused family dissolution; it detracted from the humanity of the owner; and it presented the constant threat of insurrection and rebellion by those enslaved.

The members of the Germantown Monthly Meeting drafted the resolutions in accordance with their interpretations of the belief system governing Quakers throughout the colony. Part of the most radical faction of the Protestant Reformation, Quakers acknowledged the primacy of following the divine presence known as the Inner Light and, as a consequence, relegated man-made dogmas and rites to lesser significance. The group also adhered to the concept of the “brotherhood” of all individuals and the basic equality of all souls. Finally, they agreed that individuals should work to remove all taint of sin from their souls and their lives while on earth. The significance of their beliefs and their desire to put into practice what they preach is evident in the Germantown Quakers’ statements condemning slavery.

Defining Moment

The colony in which the Germantown protesters lived was unique in many ways. Pennsylvania, meaning “Penn’s Woods,” owed its existence to William Penn (1644–1718) and his plans for a “Holy Experiment.” Penn, a member of the English elite and the son of Admiral Sir William Penn, became enamored of radical Protestant theology at the University of Oxford and converted to Quakerism at the age of twenty-three under the guidance of Thomas Loe, an itinerant Quaker minister. The Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, had organized in England during the Commonwealth period (when England was governed by Oliver Cromwell as Lord Protector rather than a king), around the spiritual teaching of George Fox, to emerge as an identifiable entity in 1652. Fox “bade them tremble at the word of the Lord,” and the trembling that members indulged in when they shared their religious thoughts gave them the derogatory nickname “Quakers,” a name they accepted with pride.

Similar to other Anabaptist sects appearing in Europe at the same time, the Society of Friends emphasized deep personal and spiritual connections to God, the brotherhood of all humans, pacifism, and the possibility that individuals could achieve grace and perfection of the soul while on earth. Quakers, Mennonites, Moravians, Dutch and German Reformists, and pietistic Lutherans, among others, rejected Trinitarian doctrines (belief in the unity of three persons in one god), the validity of man-made dogmas and creeds, and an organized clergy. In most places, with the exception of the Netherlands, Anabaptists were deemed heretics and persecuted on that basis.

Penn was politically protected by his status and family connections. Still, he recognized the vulnerability of less fortunate Quakers and sought to provide safe refuge for persecuted believers. In 1681 Penn’s father used his ties to the British Crown to acquire a proprietary grant for the territory west of the Delaware River, in payment of a debt of £16,000 owed to him by the crown. On February 28, 1681, Charles II signed the Charter for the Province of Pennsylvania, and William Penn the Quaker had his refuge.

Penn clearly understood the similarities and common plight of Quakers and other Anabaptist communities in mainland Europe, and he recruited heavily among them for immigrants to his “Holy Experiment.” By 1685 nearly eight thousand religious dissenters had joined Penn’s colonial venture. His plan called for broad-based religious toleration and the disestablishment of the church from the state. This made his colony particularly attractive to radical reformers in the Rhineland region, where the settlers destined for Germantown originated. Pennsylvania became a territory where the government had no connection to a religious faith, where there was little religious uniformity whatsoever. Here, the Quakers and other Anabaptists emphasized the search for the Inner Light, and for answers and moral guidance. Their influence brought about a colonial system where community morality was adjudicated by civil rather than religious authorities, and individuals were charged with the responsibility of moving their communities toward moral and ethical ideals.

Despite the fact that the residents of Germantown were inhabitants of an Anglo-American colony established by royal charter, the members of their community and their meeting were not English but rather German and Dutch. The immigrants to the community consisted in large part of pietistic Germans recruited by the Frankfort Land Company, established in 1683, and of Germans and Dutch Quakers organized separately from the town of Krefeld, in the Rhineland region, along the border between the German principalities and the Netherlands. The groups’ acknowledged leader, Francis Daniel Pastorius, a pietistic Lutheran, represented the Frankfort Land Company as its legal agent and was the only member of the company to venture to Pennsylvania. He organized and recruited many of the original settlers and collaborated heavily with the Krefeld contingent; he was thus in many ways the architect of the company’s Germantown settlement. They had dual goals for their experiment: to establish a spiritual and physical haven for other radical religious reformers and to ensure the success of their financial investment.

Between 1683 and 1690 the stable core of the Germantown community consisted of the households of thirteen of the original Krefelders, twelve of whom were Quakers. Shortly after their immigration to the colony, the leaders of the Germantown community organized their own Quaker meeting under the guidance of Pastorius. The group affiliated with the larger Philadelphia Monthly Meeting in 1684 and with the Abington Quarterly Meeting in 1688, Abingdon being the dominant meeting in the region, located in New Jersey.

Author Biographies

While the antislavery resolutions were intended as a general statement from the Quaker meeting at Germantown to the affiliate Dublin Monthly Meeting, it was signed by four specific members of the group: Gerhard (or as signed in the text, “Garret”) Henderich, Derick Opden Graff (“up de Graeff”), Francis Daniel (“daniell”) Pastorius, and Abram Opden Graff (“Abraham up Den graef”). Pastorius, perhaps the most famous of the quartet, represented the interests of the Frankfort Land Company. The two Opden Graffs were part of the original Krefeld contingent, while Henderich arrived in 1685.

Pastorius, the son of a burgher, was born in 1651 and grew up in an urban and commercial atmosphere. He attended four universities and was well traveled. By the 1680s he was practicing law in Frankfurt am Main. Pastorius was familiar with William Penn even before his arrival in Pennsylvania, having frequently served as the liaison between the residents of Germantown and the colony’s bureaucratic structures. He also became well acquainted with the colony leaders David Lloyd and James Logan, and he shared their vision of Pennsylvania as a commercial and mercantile venture. Similarly, he recognized the value of Pennsylvania as a refuge for Western Europe’s most radical Protestant reformers, the Anabaptists. Pastorius encouraged the inhabitants of Germantown to adapt to their new environment. He suggested that his fellow immigrants learn and practice English, familiarize themselves with English laws and systems of governance, and intermingle with the larger English population of the colony. Pastorius played a leading role in the organization and recognition of the Germantown Monthly Meeting and actively encouraged its correspondence and affiliation with others throughout the region. He continued to serve as spokesperson and promoter for Germantown and the larger colony until his death in 1720.

Derick and Abram Opden Graff were two of three brothers who emigrated from Krefeld to Germantown in July 1683. According to the contract negotiated in Rotterdam between William Penn and Jacob Telner, Jan Streypers, and Dirck Sipman on March 10, 1683, the proprietor promised the signers five thousand acres of land each in exchange for a guarantee of settlement. The Opden Graff trio received two thousand acres of land from Telner, after the contract was signed. The third brother, Herman, agreed to act as agent for Sipman, another Krefeld landholder who never ventured to Pennsylvania. Later that summer, Derick, Abram, and Herman Opden Graff, along with thirty other Krefelders closely tied by blood and marriage, immigrated to Pennsylvania. The brothers were among the original membership of the Germantown Quaker meeting organized later that year and housed by 1686 in the Kirchlein, a log meetinghouse.

Gerhard Henderich is the member of the group about which the littlest is known. He arrived in Germantown in 1685 on either the Francis or the Dorothy along with a number of other German and Dutch immigrants. Henderich, accompanied by his wife, Mary, and daughter, Sarah, originated in Krisheim, a community near Krefeld on the Dutch side of the border. Claiming two hundred acres purchased from Sipman upon his arrival, he was by 1688 a substantial member of the Germantown community. As a Dutch Quaker, he, too, aligned himself with the heterogeneous Quaker meeting at Germantown. By 1692, Derick and Abram Opden Graff had parted ways as the consequence of a larger religious controversy, the Keithian schism, which debated the corruption of Quakers in Pennsylvania by secular concerns. Abram, aligning with the Keithians, left Germantown for Perkiomen, the Dutch township. In 1704 Abram Opden Graff, as the last surviving of the brothers, sold the remaining 828 acres of land in Germantown. Of Henderich there is little mention after 1693, when he was recorded on a Germantown tax list.

Document Analysis

The Germantown Quakers’ Monthly Meeting felt an obligation to protest against what they perceived as immorality surrounding them. The Rhinelanders, coming from a situation in Europe in which they were actively hounded and disenfranchised for their beliefs, were particularly sensitive to the plights of others they saw as mistreated simply on the basis of who they were. In creating “A Minute against Slavery” they acted in accord with their belief system, which requires Quakers to seek independent answers to pressing social issues, to strive for moral perfection, and to abjure violence.

The authors of the Germantown protest—Pastorius, the Opden Graffs, and Henderich—open their statement with the title “A Minute against Slavery, Addressed to Germantown Monthly Meeting.” Here, minute refers to a formal record of matters of importance to the writers, often for a superior audience and especially in the context of a meeting. In this case, the authors drafted a statement of their arguments against slavery at the Germantown Monthly Meeting, for formal presentation at the regional Monthly Meeting held at Richard Worrell’s house in Dublin Township, Bucks County. The authors proceed to voice their protests against slavery and to present evidence supporting their points. Their prefatory statement, “These are the reasons why we are against the traffick of men-body,” clearly indicates their intent: They oppose the selling, buying, and use of human beings as slaves.

The first point raised by the Germantown protesters echoes the Golden Rule. They ask their audience, “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?” In other words, they ask their fellow colonists how many of them would appreciate being taken and sold into permanent bondage without their consent. They remind their readers of the fear inspired by the Turks and their practice of taking Christian captives in Eastern Europe and around the Mediterranean basin, and they ask if Africans facing the same danger should feel less terror or believe themselves less wronged. A bit later in the document the authors return to this theme, suggesting that the racial origin of slaves should not be a factor in determining the morality of enslaving others. Here they affirm,

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.

Thus the Germantowners explicitly invoke the Golden Rule and make reference to issues of race and equality, emphasizing the obligation to treat others, no matter how different, as they themselves would wish to be treated. They return to this point a final time in drawing a very specific comparison between the plight of those abused for the nature of their faiths—”for conscience sake”—in Europe and the plight of “those oppressed who are of a black colour” in America.

Next the protesters turn to two issues they perceive as threats to the morality of the enslavers: their participation in theft and the temptations of vice. Opening their argument on this point, they characterize those who take slaves as thieves and those who purchase the captives as accomplices, stating, “And those who steal or robb men, and those who buy or purchase them, are they not all alike?” The Germantowners suggest that in Pennsylvania there is “liberty of Conscience,” or freedom of faith, as well as freedom of “body”; thus, to steal and sell the body of a person without consent is a sin that they, the members of the meeting at Germantown, must oppose. Later in the opening paragraph they return to this point and emphasize their obligation to stop such behavior, contending, “And we who profess that it is not lawful to steal, must, likewise, avoid to purchase such things as are stolen, but rather help to stop this robbing and stealing if possible.” Here, their argument reaches its most radical and far-reaching point. They continue by suggesting, in accord with Christian obligation, not only that the trafficking of human beings should be stopped but also that the unlawfully enslaved “ought to be delivered out of ye hands of ye robbers, and set free” everywhere. This is a clear denunciation of the slave trade and of slavery in general; it is a call to abolition.

In the course of the first paragraph, the authors also worry about the exposure of their brethren to other vices, in particular those associated with the sanctity of marriage and the family. They argue that slavery presents the opportunity for adultery. They specifically cite the evils of “separating wives from their husbands and giving them to others.” They also refer to the consequences of family dissolution imposed when the offspring of slaves are sold away from their parents. The petitioners warn their audience that Christians ought not do such things, not simply because they are sins but also because those actions damage the image of the colony and threaten the morality of the whole Pennsylvania enterprise.

The Germantown protesters proceed to question both the inhumanity of slavery and the appearance of their colony in the eyes of the larger world should they permit the institution to flourish within their boundaries. They challenge the morality of all who engage in the institution of slavery, condemning not only those who own slaves and profit from their unlawful labors but also those who join in the buying and selling of slaves. The petitioners then point out that Europeans pay attention to the residents of the colonies and judge their behaviors, and they ask what the nature of European opinions will be when “they hear of, that ye Quakers doe here handel men as they handel there ye cattle.” The Germantowners then profess doubt regarding any possible defense against such judgments. In their eyes, slavery violates the most basic of Christian tenets—treat others as you wish to be treated—and they can find no way to “maintain this your cause, or pleid for it.” They also imply that colonists who participate in slavery exceed the European evils of religious and political oppression through their sinful treatment of their fellow men.

Drawing on their own experiences, they suggest to those Christians engaged in slavery, “You surpass Holland and Germany in this thing”—in the mistreatment of their fellow human beings. The protesters close the opening paragraph with clear opposition to the reduction of Africans to objects to be bought and sold and used as chattel. Referring to how morality is skewed by the presence of slavery in society, they state in closing, “Europeans are desirous to know in what manner ye Quakers doe rule in their province;—and most of them doe look upon us with an envious eye. But if this is done well, what shall we say is done evil?”

The second paragraph of the protest contains a warning of a different sort, one that is nearly prophetic in its content. It is a statement concerning the ongoing dangers of holding people in bondage against their will. The Germantowners here assume the slaveholders’ arguments and turn them against those who employ slaves. Owners, supporting permanent bondage of Africans, voice the notion that their slaves represent the basest of all human beings and need to be enslaved. The authors thus ask what would stop these “wicked and stubbern men” from aggressively seeking their liberty and thereupon using “their masters and mastrisses as they did handel them before.” The authors go on to ask slaveholders if they would then rebel against the injustice of permanent servitude, wondering, “have these negers not as much right to fight for their freedom, as you have to keep them slaves?” These questions touch on the deepest fears of slave owners and foreshadow the slave rebellions brewing on the horizon. The Germantowners are furthermore expressing concerns over the bearing of arms in response to the threat of revolt. Ingrained in the Quaker belief system is a commitment to pacifism. The petitioners question the ability of slave-owning Quakers to resist the temptation of defending themselves, by taking “the sword at hand,” in the case of an insurrection.

The argument closes in the third paragraph with a formal request to be informed of the regional meeting’s findings concerning their protests. In good Quaker fashion, they state, “And in case you find it to be good to handle these blacks at that manner, we desire and require you hereby lovingly, that you may inform us herein.” They do not demand that their counterparts, meeting at Richard Worrell’s house in Dublin, support their cause but rather request that the members of the Dublin Meeting search their consciences and report their findings. They note that up to this point no religious authority had defined the Christian legitimacy of slavery; thus, they in Germantown needed guidance and answers to their questions. They also hoped to calm the fears of their brethren back in their “natif country”—that is, both Germany and Holland—”to whose it is a terror, or fairful thing, that men should be handeld so in Pennsylvania.”

“A Minute against Slavery” concludes as it begins, by formally addressing the protests to the next regional Monthly Meeting at Worrell’s house. The four signers of the document—Henderich, Pastorius, and the two Opden Graff brothers—follow in no particular order and with no reference to rank or status within Germantown. This presentation is very Quakerly, in that it privileges none of the participants and so emphasizes their equality. The four were, perhaps, more important for what they represented about their community. Although not indicated in the document, Pastorius’s name carried considerable weight beyond Germantown, and any petition from the community without his support would have been treated with greater suspicion. The other signers represented the diversity of Germantown and its possible factions. The Opden Graffs were German in origin and among the first wave of colonists. Henderich represented the Dutch voices in the meeting and was a fairly recent arrival. Together the men embodied the larger population of their community.

Essential Themes

In the document itself, the Germantowners address themselves specifically to the “Monthly Meeting held at Richard Worrell’s.” This gathering at Dublin, in Bucks County farther north of Philadelphia, had been settled in the initial movement to the colony, and its residents came primarily from the British Isles. They reviewed the Germantown petition on February 30, 1688, and chose not to act on it but rather to forward it to the Quarterly Meeting with which they were affiliated. Their response, signed by P. Joseph Hart, states, “We find it so weighty that we think it not expedient for us to meddle with it here, but do rather commit it to ye consideration of ye Quarterly meeting.” On April 4, 1688, that meeting, lodged in Philadelphia, agreed on the gravity of the questions raised and in turn referred the protest to the Yearly Meeting to be held in Burlington, New Jersey, on July 5, 1688. The reaction of the meeting at Burlington is ambiguous. They recognize “a Paper being here presented by some German Friends Concerning the Lawfulness and Unlawfulness of Buying and keeping Negroes” and consider it “not to be so proper for this Meeting to give a Positive Judgment in the case, It having so General a Relation to many other Parts.” That is, given their connections, commercial and personal, with slaveholding regions and individuals, they indefinitely tabled the petition.

The immediate impact of “A Minute against Slavery” was thus negligible. The protest did, however, foreshadow the wider emergence of antislavery sentiments in Pennsylvania’s Quaker communities. By 1750 there would be at least fifteen such Anglo-American statements against slavery, nearly all authored by Quakers. The earliest of these succeeding statements was issued at a 1696 Yearly Meeting wherein the membership strongly discouraged engagement in the slave trade; in 1715 that same Pennsylvania body made participation in slavery an offense subjecting the member to expulsion from the meeting. While such an action had no legal standing, a Friend’s exclusion from Quaker circles in Pennsylvania would have been a serious matter in the colonial era.

What is particularly interesting about the Germantown protest is how accurately the members defined what would become the most politically significant arguments against slavery. They drew on their belief system to construct the condemnation of an institution they considered morally and spiritually repugnant. Germantown’s Quakers asked their fellow worshippers to acknowledge their own beliefs in the brotherhood of all humanity, in the obligation to strive for moral perfection, and in the Golden Rule. They also warned their audiences of the consequences of failure to join them in renouncing the institution of slavery: slave owners and holders invited and would suffer the approbation of their European counterparts, the burdens and temptations of sin, and the threat of rebellion. While the Germantown Quakers’ immediate readers and listeners in the affiliate meetings might have rejected their petition by refusing to act upon it, the ideas that they put forth could not be permanently ignored.

—Martha I. Pallante

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