John Woolman

• John Woolman publishes two antislavery essays, 1754, 1763.

John Woolman was a Quaker minister and prophet who deeply understood the relationship of Divine connection with human action. Woolman's analyses of the roots of social evil carefully trace individual responsibility from motive to action, and follow the ever-widening consequences of that action. The `how' of social change is one of Woolman's greatest concerns; and the methods he suggests, springing from a right relationship to God, emphasize nonviolence and express love that encompasses both the wrongdoer and the wronged.

Woolman felt that slaveholding was inconsistent with Christianity and spent his life travelling, observing and advocating against slavery.

Woolman began to question and speak out against slavery while working as a scribe. His employer instructed him to write the bill of sale for a slave. Despite being troubled by this Woolman wrote the bill of sale "but at the executing of it I was so afflicted in my mind, that I said before my master and the Friend that I believed slave-keeping to be a practice inconsistent with the Christian religion" (Woolman's Journal, p. 15).