12/20/2023 0 Comments Slave underground railroad storyThe Bible said, "render, therefore, unto Caesar, the things which are Caesar's and unto God the things that are of God." (Matthew 22:21 KJV). They had determined that slavery was absolutely wrong, but lived in the United States lived within a society and under a government that held that people could be property. Ny human being who has not forfeited his liberty by his crimes, has a right to be free-and that whosoever forcibly withhold liberty from an innocent man, robs him of his rights and violates the Moral Law. According to Jonathan Dymond, an English Quaker: Philadelphia Quaker John Parrish's will in 1807 left a bequest for "the use of Africans and their descendants.as a reward for the advantages I have received with others from their labors." Another Quaker former slave-owner, Richard Humphries, left a similar bequest which laid the foundations for what is now Cheyney University.įor Quakers, human slavery was not merely wrong it was incompatible with moral and natural law. It was not enough to clear the Society of Friends of the sin of slave-holding but to look to the education of the freed people. Quakers of the 18th and 19th century were very aware that Quakers had once held slaves, people who had worked for Quakers but had not been paid for their labors. Since in North America, slavery became almost exclusively connected with race, and people of African descent were therefore considered by many of the 18th and 19th century as "other" what was to be the status of freed people? Were they citizens? Could they vote? Did they have the same rights, including access to the legal system, as whites? Where did they fit in the economy? The transition from slavery to freedom, particularly within a society where slavery is both legal and normative, raises questions about the position of the newly freed. ![]() It wasn't just illegal it was subversive, even treasonous. Harboring a "fugitive from labor" was a violation of both the United States Constitution and of Federal Law. In the middle were many people who may have had reservations about slavery but accepted its existence as the law of the land and part of the national compact. What is to be done? On one side were people who believed slavery to be right and proper, and on the other were those who denied any legitimacy to the institution. " house divided against itself shall not stand.". Slavery was, in Quaker eyes, a "national evil." ![]() More than a century before Dred Scott, in 1754, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends told its members "To live in ease and plenty, by the toil of those whom violence and cruelty have put in our power, is neither consistent with Christianity nor common justice." By the 1770s, all of the Quaker Yearly Meetings in North America were united on the proposition that the enslaved had a "natural and just right of liberty" and no Quaker should think to claim a human being as property. In 1857, the Supreme Court of the United States, in the Dred Scott decision, stated that " person of African descent, whether emancipated or free, has no right which a white man is bound to respect." The United States Constitution, adopted written in 1787, while avoiding the use of the word "slave" required that "fugitives from labor," meaning enslaved people, escaping from one state to another, must be returned to their so-called owners. Quakers and the Underground Railroad: Myths and Realities By Christopher DensmoreĬurator, Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College
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