THERE IS DEATH IN THE POT - The University of Texas at Arlington

Quakers and the Free Produce Movement
Abstention from the products of slave labor began with American Quakers John
Woolman and Anthony Benezet as they worked to separate the Society of Friends from
slaveholding. In the wake of the Quaker reformation of the eighteenth-century, tensions
remained between the Society of Friends and the slaveholding society in which they lived
and worked. 12 In the South, Friends’ testimony against slaveholding placed them outside
the mainstream of society; yet, Friends’ economic activities required engagement with
the slave-based economy of the region. Southern Friends often found themselves
weighing economic practices against spiritual values. Similarly, in the North, growing
dependence on the products of slavery required similar compromises of Friends. In the
eighteenth-century, Woolman and Benezet attempted to separate Quakers from the
economy of slavery by advocating abstention. In the 1780s and 1790s, several American
Quakers became involved in business ventures to promote the production of maple sugar
Beacon Press, 1968), 8-20. Ironically, as historians recover more of the story of women’s anti-slavery
activism, Chandler seems to disappear from the discussion. I differ from these assessments and instead
argue for a return to Lundy’s analysis which suggests Chandler’s reticent attitude derived from her desire
for “usefulness.” For example, when she wrote “so like a drop in the ocean are my puny efforts,” historians
have viewed this as an example of Chandler’s self-effacing attitude. See Marcia J. Harenga Mason’s
explanation of this passage in RTD, 408. Rather than self-effacement, comments by Chandler reflect
instead her despair at the magnitude of the cause before her and other abolitionists. Chandler worried that
her efforts and those of other abolitionists were not “useful” enough in the cause of emancipation. See
Lundy, Poetical Works, 39.
12 There is an extensive body of work examining the relationship between the Society of Friends
and slavery including: Stephen B. Weeks, Southern Quakers and Slavery: A Study in Institutional History
(New York: Bergman Publishers, 1968), ch. 9; A. Glenn Crothers, “Quaker Merchants and Slavery in Early
National Alexandria, Virginia,” Journal of the Early Republic 25 (2005), 47-77; Drake, Quakers and
Slavery; Hugh Barbour, Christopher Densmore, et. al., eds., Quaker Crosscurrents: Three Hundred Years
of Friends in the New York Yearly Meetings (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1995), ch. 5 and 11;
Jordan, Slavery and the Meeting House; Hugh Barbour, ed., Slavery and Theology: Writings of Seven
Quaker Reformers, 1800-1870 (Dublin, Ind.: Prinit Press, 1985). For an overview, see J. William Frost,
“The Origins of the Quaker Crusade against Slavery: A Review of Recent Literature,” Quaker History 67
(1978), 42-52. For a transatlantic perspective on Quakers, slavery, and anti-slavery, see Brown, Moral
Capital, esp. ch. 7. See also Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, ch. 5.
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