1688 Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery

The 1688 Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery was the first protest against enslavement of Africans made by a religious body in the Thirteen Colonies. Francis Daniel Pastorius authored the petition; he and three other Quakers living in Germantown, Pennsylvania (now part of Philadelphia), signed it on behalf of the Germantown Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends. Clearly a highly controversial document, Friends forwarded it up the hierarchical chain of their administrative structure—monthly, quarterly, and yearly meetings—without either approving or rejecting it. The petition effectively disappeared for 150 years into Philadelphia Yearly Meeting's capacious archives; but upon rediscovery in 1844 by Philadelphia antiquarian Nathan Kite, latter-day abolitionists published it in 1844 in The Friend, (Vol. XVII, No. 16.) in support of their antislavery agitation. Historical background The colony of Pennsylvania was founded in 1682 by William Penn as a place where people from any country and faith could settle, free from religious persecution. In payment of a debt to Penn's father, Penn had received from King Charles II a large land grant west of New Jersey which Charles II named Pennsylvania after William's father, Admiral William Penn. Penn had become a friend of George Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends, who were pejoratively nicknamed "Quakers" because they described themselves as quaking and trembling in fear of the Lord. Penn had converted to Quakerism and had been imprisoned several times for his beliefs. Charles II allowed Penn to establish a proprietary colony where Penn appointed the governor and judges but established an otherwise democratic system of government with freedom of religion, fair trials, elected representatives, and separation of church and state. From 1660 to 1680, several Quakers including William Penn visited the United Provinces and the Rhine valley of what would later become Germany, and organized gatherings where they preached the Quaker testimony. Many people, including some who had been Mennonites in Krefeld and Kriegsheim (now part of the modern Mennonite congregation of Monsheim, Germany), in the German "Palatinate", converted to the new Quaker faith. Among them was Francis Daniel Pastorius, a young German born near Würzburg to a family of elite officeholders.