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A QUAKER'S ANTISLAVERY CRUSADE: ANTHONY BENEZET By Roger A. Bruns* In October 1780 Francois Jean de Chastellux wrote of the old Quaker abolitionist Anthony Benezet,1 "This Mr. Benezet may rather be regarded as the model than as a specimen of the sect of Quakers."2 Benezet's intense and passionate abolitionist crusade during the period of the American Revolution, asserting the humanity and intellectual equality of the black race and demanding the natural rights of freedom for the black slave, was also a call to the Society of Friends for reform and rededication to Quaker principles . Benezet's numerous books and pamphlets, his unremitting correspondence with legislators and religious leaders and, indeed, his entire antislavery propaganda effort was a forceful challenge to members of his sect to abandon the riches of the counting house. His fight for the black slave was a fight for the Quakers' ideals as he saw them. It had been long ago that Quakers had withered in prison for their beliefs. Individuals still wore the plain clothes; they still said "thee" and "thou"; they still held simple meetings in simple buildings . The fervor, however, of a George Fox or a Robert Barclay was not generally evident among the socially respectable eighteenth- *Assistant Executive Director, National Historical Publications and Records Commission. 1.Andiony Benezet's influence in the eighteenth-century abolition movement was vital. His numerous pamphlets and books established him as the most prolific propagandist against slavery in this period, and his importance was not only felt within the Society of Friends and in America but extended to the British movement to end slavery. There is still a need for a careful treatment of Benezet's antislavery work. The most recent biography of Benezet, George Brookes, Friend Anthony Benezet (Philadelphia, 1937), is most notable for its excellent selection of Benezet's correspondence. A very early biography, Roberts Vaux, Memoirs of the life of Anthony Benezet (Philadelphia, 1817), has minimal value. 2.Francois Jean de Chastellux, Travels in North America in the years 1780, 1781, and 1782, Vol. 1 (Dublin, 1787), 276. 81 82QUAKER HISTORY century Quakers.3 Benezet remarked, "It's amazing what an Influence the Love of the World, its Esteem & Friendships, and the Desire of amasing Wealth, living themselves and Children in Delicacy and Shew, in Conformity to the World, has upon so many in our Society . . ."4 To Benezet they had become "quite unquakered,"5 and he even suggested that some were no better than thieves.6 The Society of Friends had become a very rich community. The self-disciplined honesty of the Friends and their testimony against idleness and waste had brought commercial success. The Quaker merchant, manufacturing and banking families built luxurious homes in Philadelphia. Quaker grandees invested heavily in land, apparently emulating the Whig oligarchs of contemporary England.7 Many wealthy Quakers had left the Society for the Church of England , and by the 1770's the Quakers embraced only one-seventh of the total population of Philadelphia.8 One disillusioned Friend even observed that "Sottishness and immorality" seemed to be on the increase.9 Many Quakers paid taxes for military purposes during the Revolution . Indeed, John Adams spoke of whole companies of armed uniformed Quakers in Philadelphia.10 When Patrick Henry mentioned to Benezet that many Quakers were advocating violence against the British, Benezet could only remark that they had no other claim to the Friends' principles than the fact that they were their children or grandchildren.11 3.Rufus Jones described the Quakers in this period as more concerned with preserving a system within their own circle than in relating to die external world. See The Quakers in the American Colonies (New York, 1962), introduction. Calling this a period of "Quietistic introspection," Frederick Tolles saw the eighteenth-century Quaker rebelling from his seventeendicentury image. Quakers and the Atlantic Culture (New York, 1960), 91-102. 4.Benezet to John Pemberton, March 29, 1784, copy, Impey MSS, Part 1/33, Friends House Library, London. 5.Benezet to Jonah Thompson, August 28, 1759, copy, Swarthmore MSS 6/116, Friends House Library, London. 6.Benezet to John Fothergill, April 28, 1773, Gibson MSS 1/27, Friends House Library, London. 7...

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