The Appeal Of The Religious Society Of Friends In Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Etc., To Their Fellow-citizens Of The United States On Behalf Of The Coloured Races

Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends; William Evans

Philadelphia : Friends' Book-store, 1859

[Abolitionist Literature] Rare Quaker pamphlet.  Bound in publisher's printed orange wraps. Wraps mostly sound, with a small piece of the spine cover lacking.  48 pages.  At their 1858 annual meeting, the Quakers of the mid-Atlantic states issued a call to all U.S. Citizens (North and South) to abolish slavery.  The core argument made by the Friend's was that "Man is created a free agent.  The divine law by which he is to be governed is written in his heart by the Spirit of Truth and in the Holy Scriptures. Good and evil are set before him with the inevitable consequences of happiness or misery, and he is called to choose the good and refuse the evil, but with liberty to make his election.  The institution of slavery interferes with his liberty, and makes the will of the master absolute over the actions of the slave, and paramount to the law of God." (p.12-13)  In essence, the Friends argue "that Christianity and Slavery are irreconcileable."