John Woolman's Path to the Peaceable Kingdom: A Quaker in the British Empire

7. Not in Words Only: Conspicuous Instructive Behavior

C h a p t e r 7 Not in Words Only: Conspicuous Instructive Behavior He said the cause why he appeared so, was that he believed it to be his duty, to bear a testimony not in words only, but to be a sign to the people. —Anonymous account of Woolman’s travels in 1772 The Seven Years’ War made many Delaware Valley Quakers uneasy about serving in government. In New Jersey and Pennsylvania, the war forced some Quaker officer-holders into difficult dilemmas, because they were responsible for punishing other Friends who had violated provincial laws on principle. This problem was acute in Pennsylvania, where in some instances Quaker sheriffs seized property from conscientious tax evaders in their own meetings . Woolman observed that when two Quakers confronted each other in such a situation, the “difficulty was considerable.”1 In 1758 Philadelphia Yearly Meeting decided that no Quakers should accept any office “in civil society or government” that would require them to impose penalties on “their brethren or others” for upholding the Quakers’ ideals. Thus Friends were barred from participating in military drafts and collecting fines or seizing property from those who refused to join the militia. The meeting was vague about tax collection and it left open the possibility that Friends might still legitimately work as sheriffs if they did not infringe on the Quakers’ “liberty of conscience.” Nonetheless , after 1758 Quakers who worked for the government faced heightened disciplinary scrutiny. In some parts of Pennsylvania, local meetings sent delegations to the homes of all the Quakers who held government commissions. If 148 Chapter 7 an office-holder was found to have improperly punished a fellow Quaker, and if he remained unrepentant, he was prohibited from participating in meeting business.2 Woolman worried for the souls of Quakers who were “active in civil society in putting laws in force which are not agreeable to the purity of righteousness.” He observed that when Friends assumed such responsibilities, the performance of their duties had “a necessary tendency to bring dimness over their minds.”3 The Quakers’ discomfort with law enforcement had deep roots. Within their meetings they discouraged litigation, and they repeatedly expressed ambivalence about relying on the coercive power of government. As a shopkeeper , Woolman never wanted to sue his customers. He admitted that he once obtained a warrant to collect a debt from “an idle man” who was “about to run away,” but that was the only time he ever “applied to the law to recover money.” He suspected that other retailers resorted to the law more frequently. To confirm his suspicions, he asked the constable in Mount Holly how many warrants he served in a year. The constable gave Woolman his books and allowed him to count the cases. The man had served 267 warrants, delivered 103 summonses, and made arrests or seized property 79 times. The numbers troubled Woolman, because he thought Quakers should try to settle their disputes more gently.4 Since the earliest days of the religious society, Quaker ministers had cautioned against an excessive reliance on the formal mechanisms of law enforcement , but in the Delaware Valley the Seven Years’ War deepened Friends’ concerns. A turning point came in June 1756, when six Quaker members of the Pennsylvania Assembly gave up their seats. In explaining their decision, the assemblymen made it clear that they did not feel guilty about any votes they had cast, but they believed that they had abetted the evil actions of others by attending and providing the legislature a quorum. Their mere presence at the State House had made it easier for other legislators to pass pernicious wartime laws. Not all Pennsylvania Quaker assemblymen resigned in 1756, but the Friends who remained in the legislature found themselves outnumbered, and many Quakers began to think about the assembly in less sympathetic terms.5 Against this background in the late 1750s, reformers like Woolman increasingly doubted the wisdom of pursuing legislation as a strategy for effecting change. Many came to believe that they could advance their reform agenda without the aid of government. Woolman in particular began to argue that the civil authorities held far less power than most people pretended. Governments merely responded to pervasive evil tendencies in human societies. It Not in Words Only 149 was avarice, he insisted, that deadened souls and led to violence. Discussing the problem of warfare in sweeping historical terms, he described...