'WE ARE AGAINST THE TRAFFIK OF MEN-BODY': THE GERMANTOWN QUAKER PROTEST OF 1688 AND THE ORIGINS OF AMERICAN ABOLITIONISM

Abstract

April 18, 1688, a group of Quakers in the new settlement of Germantown authored a petition the traffik of men body.1 This protest against slavery was the first of its kind on the American continent and preceded the official Quaker abolition of slavery by ninety-two years. In their petition, the Germantowners argued that the oppression of blacks was no more acceptable than the oppression of Quakers in Europe, that the existence of slaves in Pennsylvania deterred potential European settlers from emigra tion and that slave revolts posed a major threat to Quaker welfare. The Germantown Quakers presented their protest to the Monthly Meeting at Abington, where it was deemed too weighty an issue and referred to the Philadelphia Quarterly Meeting.2 The members of the Quarterly Meeting again deferred judgment and sent the Germantown Protest to the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, the reigning Meeting in Pennsylvania.3 There, the motion was rejected for having so General a Relation to many other Prts [sic].4