A Quaker and the Civil War: The Life of James Parnell Jones

A QUAKER AND THE CIVIL WAR: THE LIFE OF JAMES PARNELL JONES By Peter H. Curtis* The outbreak of the Civil War put considerable stresses on the Society of Friends. As a reUgious body historically committed to both ending slavery and abolishing war, Friends could only find the events of the early 1860's deeply troubling. Torn by seemingly conflicting testimonies, many Quakers felt the same confusion and division that were traumatizing the entire nation. Thomas E. Drake, in his study of Friends and slavery, notes that while no mass enUstments of Quakers occurred, numerous individual Friends took up the sword. "Freedom was almost worth fighting for; so was the Union."1 One Friend who joined up was James Parnell Jones, a young member of one of America's most prominent Quaker fam- üies. His short but remarkable Ufe reflects well the pressures of the tumultuous 1850's and 1860's on an active and briUiant young Quaker.2 James Parnell Jones was the oldest son of the distinguished Quaker ministers and missionaries, EU and Sybil Jones. He was a cousin of Rufus M. Jones and an older brother of Richard Mott Jones, principal of WilUam Penn Charter School in Philadelphia from 1874 to 1917. Born in 1835 in Dirigo, Maine, James grew up in a warm, close and deeply religious environment. He was a member of South China Preparative Meeting and China Monthly Meeting. Numerous aunts, uncles and cousins in the area where he grew up were also active Friends.8 •Acquisitions Librarian, Eleutherian Mills Historical Library, Greenville, Delaware. 1.Thomas E. Drake, Quakers and Slavery in America (Gloucester, Mass., 1965) p. 197. 2.Insight into Jones' thinking comes from 34 newly discovered letters from him to various friends and relatives. Uncovered at a Jones family home in South China, Maine, these were kindly made available to me by Mary Hoxie Jones. They are now in the Quaker Collection of the Haverford College Library. 3.See the description of life in South China in Augustine Jones, "The Autobiography of Augustine Jones," typescript copy in Haverford College Quaker Collection, especially pp. 1-80. 35 36QUAKER HISTORY Yet from early in his Ufe the two factors that eventually were to drive him from membership in the Society of Friends clearly intruded . The Joneses were active opponents of slavery, and a nearby uncle's home "was an underground station for negroes."4 The experience of seeing firsthand fugitives from oppression surely must have made a profound impression on the youngster. Another neighbor "had been a soldier in the war of 1812" writes James's cousin and boyhood friend, Augustine Jones. "James and I used to visit him evenings and sit before his roaring fire. . . , and hear stories so marvelous that they never went into history." Augustine Jones goes on to comment that the family believed that James "caught his martial spirit" from this old soldier.5 There is Uttle reason to doubt that this boyhood experience did have a strong influence on the Quaker lad. This "martial spirit," however, was not yet apparent when James went off to the Friends college at Haverford. In 1851, at the age of sixteen, the youthful scholar made the long trip from Maine to Philadelphia and enrolled as a freshman. He was an exceptionally intelUgent person, and quickly proved a success in the classroom. In June of 1852 he wrote to his parents that he was in a "holding" period, waiting for the rest of his classmates to catch up with him. He noted that he was not wasting time, however, but was reading the works of, among others, Racine, Macaulay, Carlyle, Moliere and Descartes.6 He also participated in Friends activities, attending the 1852 Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. In a letter to his grandmother the young man gives a thoughtful, complete account of the proceedings. He also has an acid comment on John Wilbur and his followers. "In meeting this afternoon about 20 entered their protest against J[ohn] W[ilbur] sitting in the meeting. Nathan Kite thought it was a pity to persecute that just man !"7 In other letters home Jones revealed his continuing intense concern for slavery and those who suffered from it...