Polemical Pain: Slavery, Cruelty, and the Rise of Humanitarianism

1 Self-Denial, Martyrdom, and the Formation of Quaker Humanitarianism

chapter one Self-Denial, Martyrdom, and the Formation of Quaker Humanitarianism At first glance eighteenth-century Quakers seem unlikely humanitarians. Pain appalled few early eighteenth-century Americans, but in the young Society of Friends it upset fewer still. Instead of finding su√ering repugnant, many eighteenth-century Quakers gloried in the idea (if not the practice) of martyrdom. The Society’s theology encouraged members to embrace and even relish the opportunity to testify to the truth by enduring pain patiently. The earliest records of the Society of Friends recounted stories of members who heroically su√ered persecution for the sake of their beliefs. Quaker theology also taught Friends that bodies mattered little; the flesh tempted and distracted the soul. Their religion focused on the incorporeal soul and its spiritual destiny, treating the flesh as an obstacle to spiritual fulfillment. Quakers, undismayed by pain and suspicious of bodies, might initially seem unlikely to attack cruelty. Yet, over the course of the eighteenth century, Quakers did precisely that. Their testimonies paradoxically supported the attack on slaveholding cruelty, precisely by a≈rming that su√ering was either good or irrelevant. Quakers’ views of the value of su√ering and martyrdom gradually grounded criticisms Self-Denial, Martyrdom, and the Formation of Quaker Humanitarianism 17 of slavery as cruel. Quakers who cared little about pain itself increasingly criticized its infliction as unchristian. Quaker concern about the cruelty of slavery did not begin with moral qualms about bodily pain; instead, Friends addressed the issue of pain only indirectly, through the problem of cruelty. Quakers, like most white Americans , knew that enslaved people su√ered, but Quakers also took slave pain for granted. It might inspire a twinge of regret, but few whites invoked the su√ering of slaves as a reason in itself to challenge slavery. What would later become the essence of cruelty—the deliberate infliction of unnecessary pain—remained peripheral to Quakers’ initial moral qualms about cruelty. Instead, denunciations of slavery’s cruelty rested on the immoral purposes that inflicting pain served. Antislavery Friends worried more about the worldliness and sinfulness of slaveholders than the pain endured by enslaved laborers . Antislavery Quakers linked slave pain to Quakers’ sins, particularly worldliness , abuse of power, and a rejection of Friends’ proper role as a ‘‘su√ering people.’’ They thus categorized this infliction of pain as morally evil.∞ The pain itselfwasnotthepoint.Butoverthecourseoftheeighteenthcentury,Quakers and others broke down the moral neutrality of inflicting pain by persistently associating that pain with Quakers’ failure to live morally. By denouncing their own infliction of pain as cruelty, Quakers helped reshape the meaning of cruelty. In the broader Anglo-American world cruelty lacked a stable, universal meaning. Causing another to su√er did not, by itself, amount to cruelty. Nor was inflicting bodily pain the defining ingredient in seventeenth-century usage of ‘‘cruelty.’’ Cruelty turned on the abuse of power, not the abuse of bodies. The moral meaning of pain, violence, and bodily harm depended on the circumstances, and inflicting pain might be entirely legitimate. The same act of torture might count as cruelty, judicial necessity, or well-deserved punishment. Acts of physical violence walked a fine line between ‘‘justice’’ and ‘‘cruelty’’; the neat distinction turned on context and the identity of the perpetrator, especially in the case of religious violence. Religious violence did not outrage most people—unless it was the violence of their enemies, directed at their own religious beliefs. In 1679 an English anti-Catholic broadside could illustrate nearly identical acts but describe one as the evil cruelty of the pope and his minions, while labeling the equally violent acts of the Protestant king as justice. In the sixteenth century Pope Sixtus V wept over the violence done to Catholic martyrs but still authorized its use against Protestants. The purpose, not the harshness, of the 18 Polemical Pain act mattered most.≤ Cruelty described the acts of people who were already labeled wicked and who harmed those who seemed good, innocent, and helpless. Cruelty, in short, described the excessive wickedness or violence of enemies. In eighteenth-century Quaker circles, the definitions of su√ering and cruelty began to shift in substantial but subtle ways; Quakers began to apply the label of cruelty to other Quakers’ actions rather than limiting the term to their enemies. As Friends embraced the identity of a su√ering people, reformers pointed out...