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

atmosphere of the 1840s? Could Friends find a compromise between the needs of
conservatives and radicals? The divisive rhetoric of many abstainers in this period
clearly contributed to their alienation, particularly among those already convinced of its
irrelevance or its impracticability, as so many Garrisonians and Quakers were in the
1840s. AFPA leadership included radical Quakers who believed Friends should waste no
opportunity to speak out against slavery and who believed that the most powerful anti-
slavery statement was a consistent identification with the slave. They believed
abolitionists who failed to practice abstention were not true abolitionists. The exclusivity
of some abstainers alienated potential supporters. Conservative Quakers recognized the
sinfulness of slavery and the anti-slavery tradition of Friends but sought a more measured
response than that offered by radical abolitionists and abstainers. As Sunderland P.
Gardner of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting cautioned in 1846, “wrong may be
wrongfully opposed, and war opposed in a warlike spirit.” 41 For conservatives, “the
warlike spirit” of the core of abstainers was just too disruptive for a community that had
been wracked by divisions.
41 Sunderland P. Gardner, Address t the Youth and Children of the Society of Friends
(Philadelphia: T. Ellwood Chapman, 1846), 9-10.
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