"A Cruel and Malicious War": The Society of Friends in Civil War Loudoun County, Virginia

"A Cruel and Malicious War": The Society of Friends in Civil War Loudoun County, Virginia Michael S. Mangus* Economic, political, and theological adversities beyond all expectations besieged the Society of Friends in Loudoun County, Virginia, during the American Civil War. Many Quakers violated theirpeace testimony and took up arms for both the North and the South depending, primarily, on their status as slaveholders. A majority of the county's Quakers professed their neutrality, a decision for which they suffered. Their Confederate neighbors labeled them as Unionists because they did not vocally support the Confederacy , while Union soldiers feared that they were Confederates. Caught between two massive armies struggling for control ofnorthern Virginia, the Quakers endured harsh treatment from both sides. The Loudoun County Friends emerged from the war with many of their physical belongings destroyed and their faith severely tested. Divided into Hicksite and Orthodox factions since the 1820s, the Quakers would set aside their theological differences and reunite in 1865. Forced from Pennsylvania by a land shortage and discord within their meetings, the Quakers first arrived in Loudoun County in the early eighteenth century and situated themselves upon some of the richest soil in Virginia. Located between the Bull Run Mountains on the east, the Blue Ridge Mountains on the west, and the Potomac River on the north, yeomen farmers of German or Swiss extraction principally inhabited the region. Less than one percent of the South's populace was Quaker according to the census for 1 860, but twenty-five percent ofVirginia's six thousand Quakers resided in Loudoun, totaling ten percent ofthe county's white population. Blacks constituted approximately thirty percent of Loudoun County's population in 1860 (Bureau of the Census, Population Statistics)} Mirroring the nation's populace at large, Loudoun County Friends differed over slavery. In 1853 Samuel Janney, a member of the Society of Friends, proclaimed that slavery was nonexistent among his fellow Quakers in Loudoun County (Life ofGeorgeFox466-472). Janney's claim regarding the Quakers and their ownership of slaves was delusory. Throughout the early nineteenth century, elders dismissed numerous Friends from Loudoun County's two meetings forowning slaves. Quakerminutes commonly listed notations such as "reported as holding slaves" or "extreme cruelty to a black ?Michael S. Mangus receivedhis doctorate from The Ohio State University in 1998 and is currently serving as an instructor of history at The Ohio State University at Newark. L'A Cruel and Malicious War"41 boy & girl" as reasons for dismissal (FMM(H)M 1802, 15 January 1834, 16 June 1841, 12 December 1855). The property tax records of Loudoun County in 1860 listed Janney, himself, as owning a slave with William Holmes, a fellow Quaker (Tavenner 27). Why Janney owned this slave is unclear. Perhaps he purchased the slave from an abusive master, similar to his acquisition in 1856ofaslave woman andchild. Perhaps warm memories of the slave woman who cared for him as a young child motivated Janney to own this slave (SMJ to Jane Johnson, 20 February 1856; Memoirs 1-8, 25-48). Whether the minister violated Quaker precepts against slavery is unclear. What is clear is that slavery was a very divisive issue among the Quakers of Loudoun County.2 Most Loudoun County Friends did not deviate from their anti-slavery beliefs. Angeredby fellow Quakers owning slaves, some leftVirginia. John J. Janney, Samuel Janney's distant cousin, moved to Ohio in 1832 because of his disappointment with slavery's influence on his fellow Quakers. He concurred with his cousin that bondage was not "a means of civilizing the Africans." He argued that slavery only enhanced the profit, ease, and convenience ofthe slaveowners (JFP). John Janney did notleave the Quaker faith but united with an Ohio meeting.3 Slavery was not the only issue dividing Quakers in the nineteenth century. In 1828 the sect split into two factions—the Orthodox and the Hicksite Friends. Hicksites held that salvation depended upon living in a godly manner, apartfrom the sinful influences ofthe outside world. Quakers should concentrate on the Inner Light present in all Friends because the Inner Light alone led to salvation. Elias Hicks, the founder ofthe Hicksites, rejected original sin, believing that anyone could attain salvation by focusing...