John Woolman

John Woolman 1720-72, American Quaker leader, b. near Mt. Holly, N.J. Originally a tailor and shopkeeper, Woolman was recorded a minister (1743) by the Burlington, N.J., Meeting. Thereafter he made many journeys throughout the colonies, preaching and advancing the antislavery cause. Keenly aware of social injustice, Woolman was one of the first protesters against slavery. He personally boycotted products made by slave labor, and was responsible for convincing many Quaker communities to publicly denounce slavery. He died at York on a visit to England. Among his published works is Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes (1754, 1762, repr. 1969). Woolman is best remembered for his journal (1774; ed. by J. G. Whittier, 1871, and P. P. Moulton, 1971).

Bibliography: See study by R. Reynolds (1981).

Woolman, John (1720–72), American Quaker preacher. From 1743 he led a long campaign against slavery, travelling among the Quaker communities in America in support of Negro rights. His Journal, beginning in 1756, records his ‘Life, Gospel-Labours and Christian Experience’.

Woolman, John (1720–1772), Quaker minister, antislavery activist, essayist.Born in West Jersey (now part of New Jersey) and married in 1749, he gave up his successful tailor shop in order to simplify his life. He became convinced that, in their pursuit of wealth, the rich exploit the labor of the poor and cultivate an unhealthy appetite for idleness and luxury. Such a system, he noted in the posthumously published A Plea for the Poor (1793), sacrifices all lives to spiritually debilitating activities. Avoiding business entanglements, he earned enough to live on by tailoring, school teaching, and drafting wills and bills of sale.

Woolman examined the most heinous form of that acquisitive system in his two‐part essay, Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes (1754, 1762), which denounced the institution of slavery as inconsistent with the ideal of human brotherhood and the “natural Right of Freedom.” Yet, as detailed in his Journal (1774), a spiritual autobiography, his most effective antislavery work took place during extensive travels throughout British North America, where he spoke with people in meetings, in taverns, and in homes. Believing that “conduct is more convincing than language,” he strove to make his life consistent with his principles. He declined to write bills of sale or wills for the transfer of slaves, and he eschewed the use of rum, sugar, molasses, and dyed clothes, all products of West Indian slave labor. A moving example of the peace born of a simplified life, the Journal also reveals how, for Woolman, spiritual development was inextricably intertwined with social responsibility. Praised by such writers as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Charles Lamb, the Journal secured Woolman's status as one of the Colonial Era's major essayists and opponents of slavery.
See also Religion; Society of Friends.

Bibliography

Janet Whitney , John Woolman: American Quaker, 1942.
Paul Rosenblatt , John Woolman, 1969.

Emily Schiller