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Wealth, War and Religion: The Perfecting of Quaker Asceticism 1740–1783
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
Extract
Athough Quakers had always cautioned their brethren about the perils of wealth, in late eighteenth-century America a generation of Quakers arose that criticized wealth far more severely than any of its forebears had. These critics included John Woolman and Anthony Benezet, two of the most renowned Quakers since George Fox, as well as a score of Friends who were the liveliest members of the church in the eighteenth century. That these men should focus their critical attention on the spiritually corrosive effect of wealth, when their predecessors had not, may be explained in part by the passing of a century in which Friends used the time to accumulate fortunes, in part by some deeply quietistic Friends' discovery of an inherent conflict between materialism and spiritual religion and in part by the political situation of late eighteenth-century American Friends, which illuminated the tension between Friends' devotion to their property and their devotion to their religious ethics.
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- Copyright © American Society of Church History 1974
References
1. Others included John Pemberton, John Griffith, Joshua Evans, John Smith of East Marlborough, Pennsylvania, John Hunt of Moorestown, New Jersey, Benjamin Ferris, Warner and Anne Mifflin, and Jacob Linley. Still other Friends not listed here criticized Friends’ preoccupation with the “world” but did not mention wealth explicitly.
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8. In the fall of 1746, during King George's War, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting recorded a strong advice against “the inordinate pursuit of worldly Riches”, which, it believed, obstructed “the progress of the Work of religion.” The Meeting did not, however, specify that wealth specifically obstructed the progress of pacifism, or that wealth was linked to the current war in any other way. Philadelphia Yearly Meeting minutes, September 23, 1746, Friends Records Department, 302 Arch Street, Philadelphia.
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17. Ibid., pp. 19, 255. It is worth noting that the subtitle of A Plea for the Poor is A Word of Remembrance and Caution to the Rich, which switches the emphasis from aiding the poor to reforming rich people. Some manuscript drafts of the Plea bore only the latter title. Ibid., p. 284. A Plea for the Poor was published until 1793. From the fact that all writings which reflected upon Quaker faith or practice had to be censored by a committee of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting before publication, one may speculate that in the 1760's the Plea did not meet the approval of the censors or even of Friends generally. Only after the experiences of the Revolution did Quaker opinion presumably find Woolman's thoughts congenial. Woolman wrote in 1758 that the censors removed from his essay Considerations on Pure Wisdom and Human Policy four pages critical of wealth (which now appear separately as Considerations on Trade). Nevertheless, the anxiety of the censors about criticism of wealth does not appear clear, for the Considerations on Pure Wisdom of 1758, approved by the censors, laments those “who give way to the Love of Riches, conform to expensive Living, and reach forth for Gain to support Customs which our Holy Shepherd leads not into.” Gunmere, Amelia M., ed., The Journal and Essays of John Woolman (New York, 1922), pp. 382, 396, 397, 401.Google Scholar
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21. Ibid. George Churchman's Journal, 1:43, Quaker Collection, Haverford College Library.
22. Brooks, George S., Friend Anthony Benezet (Philadelphia, 1937), pp. 337, 75.Google Scholar Benezet to Moses Brown, December 25, 1773 and July 1, 1780; Benezet to George Dillwyn, April, 1780, Anthony Benezet Letters, Quaker Collection, Haverford. Slavery, war, poverty, the American Indians, education and temperance were some of his major concerns.
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25. Minutes of Meeting for Sufferings of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, January 19, January 24, October 20, 1775, January 20, 1776; Philadelphia Yearly Meeting minutes, September 29, 1775, September 28, 1776, Friends Records Department, 302 Arch Street, Philadelphia. Votes and Proceedings of the House of Representatives of the Province of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Archives, Eighth Series (Harrisburg, 1931–1935), 8:7326–7329.Google Scholar The Society did not adopt the injunctions that Friends must refuse to use Continental currency and refuse to pay general taxes. It had no explicit doctrine to guide it on the currency issue and its doctrine regarding taxes was that Friends ought to pay them as long as Friends did not control the disposal of the tax revenue. Beginning in the French and Indian War reformist Friends tried to change the tax paying policy and succeeded so far as to prevent meetings from censuring or disciplining Friends who refused to pay or espoused the refusal. The Friends who refused to accept Continental currency did so because in using it they tacitly acknowledged the legitimacy of a revolutionary regime, they defrauded other people because the currency depreciated so quickly, and they were in effect paying a war tax when they circulated the currency. Marietta, pp. 4–5, 20–21, 23–24. Philadelphia Yearly Meeting minutes, September 20 to October 4, 1777, September 25 to 30, 1780. “Journal of Samual Roland Fisher, of Philadelphia, 1779–1781,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 41 (1917): 149, 163, 291, 401–402, 431.Google Scholar Moses Brown to John Pemberton, April 30, 1776, Pemberton Papers 34:32, Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Brock, Peter, Pioneers of the Peaceable Kingdom (Princeton, 1970), pp. 164–166.Google Scholar
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27. Ibid., 7338–7339.
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29. The Meeting for Sufferings kept regular accounts of the distraints and other losses by Friends during the Revolution and the reasons for the losses (that is, penalties, taxes, requisitions and so forth). These accounts together with narratives of some Friends' sufferings are among Meeting for Sufferings, Papers, Friends Records Department. Arthur Mekeel computed the total losses of Pennsylvania Quakers in the Revolution, and divided the losses into categories. Using his categories one may better compare the losses of Friends with those of non-pacifist Americans. 41.6 per cent of Friends' losses resulted from fines upon their refusal to serve in or assist the armed forces, and their refusal to swear oaths of allegiance to the revolutionary government. Non-pacifists did not pay such fines: they did serve or assist the Revolution, even at cost of their lives in some cases, and did swear. From Mekeel's categories one cannot discern what portion of the Quakers' fines arose from their refusal to serve the armed forces and what portion from not swearing. Whatever the portion from refusing the armed forces, one cannot regard Quakers' losses in this respect as extraordinary; non-pacifists lost an equivalent in kind. One qualification ought to be added: the revolutionaries warned that they would fine neutralists enough to persuade them that the expedient financial course was to join the revolution. If the size of the fines was great enough to accomplish that end, pacifists' losses may have exceeded those of the equivalent number of revolutionaries. All but 1.2 per cent of the remaining Quaker losses resulted from requisitions of property by the American armies and distraints and fines for non-payment of taxes. Non-pacifists escaped these losses because they accepted commissary and quartermaster certificates in exchange for the property requisitioned, whereas Friends were forbidden to accept the certificates; and non-pacifists presumably paid their taxes. Mekeel, Arthur, “Quakers in the American Revolution” (Ph. D. diss. Harvard University, 1940), pp. 155–156, 299.Google ScholarFerguson, E. James, The Power of the Purse (Chapel Hill, 1961), p. 57.Google Scholar Brock, pp. 182–183.
30. Benezet to James Pemberton et al., January 28, 1778, Brooks, p. 326.
31. Ibid.
32. Benezet to Moses Brown, July 1, 1780, Benezet Letters.
33. Philadelphia Yearly Meeting minutes, September 26, 1778 to October 5, 1778, Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings minutes, February 19, 1778.
34. “To the Commissioners of Chester County,” April 1, 1779, Parrish Collection: Pemberton Papers, Society of Friends, Historical Society of Pennsylvania. In the Revolution, Friends were occasionally elected or appointed to public offices which they could not in conscience execute. They then were fined for refusing. John Pemberton Diary (1777–1781), Pemberton Papers, Box 3, p.160, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
35. Ibid.
36. Warner Mifflin to Thomas McKean, November 5, 1781, Cox-Parrish-Wharton Collection, 9:79.
37. The Society disowned 1,695 members, 908 of them from Pennsylvania. MeKeel, p. 300. Chester Quarterly Meeting minutes, August 14, 1780, Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore. Philadelphia Yearly Meeting minutes, September 30, 1780.
38. Thomas, Gilpin, ed., Exiles in Virginia (Philadelphia, 1848), pp. 209, 213–216.Google Scholar
39. John Hunt to Elizabeth Morris, January 13, 1778, Cox-Parrish-Wharton Collection, 14:28.
40. Henry Drinker to wife, December 13, 1777, Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 15 (1891): 236.Google Scholar
41. Benezet to George Dillwyn, April 1780, Benezet Letters.