Friends and the 1876 Centennial: Dilemmas, Controversies, and Opportunities

FRIENDS AND THE 1876 CENTENNIAL Dilemmas, Controversies, and Opportunities By Margaret H. Bacon* To live in the world, but not of the world, has never been easy for the Children of the Light. When the nation of which they are part experiences some great crisis of war or peace, tragedy or affirmation, they often find themselves on the periphery of events, wondering what role they should assume. This has been somewhat the case in the recent celebration of our nation's Bicentennial. It was very definitely the case in 1876, when the United States celebrated the 100th anniversary of its birth. That celebration, although national in character, centered in Philadelphia. Here, not only were events held in Independence Hall on July 4, but an International Exhibition was conducted on the west bank of the SchuylkiU from May 10 to November 10. As a result, visitors flocked all summer to the City of Brotherly Love. For Friends in general, and PhUadelphia Friends in particular, the exhibition posed a whole series of dUemmas debated in private letters and diaries, as well as in the Quaker pubUcations of the day. Not only was there no unity between the Orthodox and Hicksites— which was to be expected-—there was no unity within either branch. Some of the points of disagreement will sound quaint to the ears of modern Friends. Others wiU seem familiar; the very points in fact which we debated in the course of planning for the Bicentennial celebration of 1976. The first dilemma was overarching. Ought Friends in fact to participate at all in a celebration of an historic event which was indisputably of a miUtary character? There was no dodging the fact that the Revolutionary War had been long and bloody. Friends in 1776 had found no way to take part in the struggle for independence without violating their cherished peace testimony. Some in fact had not been in sympathy with the cause at all. Many *Margaret H. Bacon, a special writer for die American Friends Service Committee, has written several books and numerous articles on Quaker history. She is now working on a biography of Lucretia Mott. This paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Friends Historical Association, November 29, 1976. 41 42QUAKER HISTORY contemporary men and women had heard accounts of the suffering caused by the Revolutionary War from their own parents or grandparents . In the intervening years, Friends had made it a practice not to celebrate the 4th of July.1 Why should they now turn about and take part in what was after all simply a gigantic birthday party memoriaUzing that bloody struggle? This point of view found expression both in The Friend published in Philadelphia by Orthodox Quakers, and in the Friends Intelligencer , the organ of the Hicksites. In an editorial in The Friend of May 20, 1876, the editor reminded his readers of the Quaker tradition against the observance of the 4th of July, and said that he had been hoping that some Friend would "feel called upon to place before our readers the inconsistencies of Friends contributing articles for exhibition, or participating in any way with the arrangements . And indeed I have my doubts whether we ought to countenance it so much as even to visit the grounds."2 Although no Orthodox Friend evidently responded to this plea, Gideon Frost, a Long Island Hicksite active in the Universal Peace Union, wrote a moving denunciation of the Centennial for the Intelligencer. He enumerated the sufferings of the American Revolution , as described in the history books as weU as told to him by his own mother, and pointed out that the War for Independence liad left the nation saddled with the institution of slavery. That institution in turn had produced a whole series of calamities culminating in the recent, bloody Civil War. The Centennial Exhibition would not only celebrate these events with patriotic music and flag-waving, but would "exhibit the weapons of carnage" as objects of curiosity. For these reasons he had "scruples about participancy in the approaching celebration."3 Against the argument that the exhibition celebrated war, however , Friends reminded themselves that it might be a fine opportunity to make peace. The...