The following extract from Clarkson’s “Memoirs of the Public and Private Life of William Penn,” will show how the society of Friends, at a very early period, became unwarily entangled with the practice of slave holding; and also that the unchristian nature of it was immediately perceived by the more spiritual minded among them.  It will serve also to prove that the testimony of Friends against slavery is no novelty, but is coeval with its rise as a distinct religious body.  The measures proposed by William Penn on this subject, are an honorable testimony to the comprehensive benevolence of that truly great and magnanimous legislator, yet they fell short of the exigencies of the case, and of what Christian people required; consequently what good they directly effected was local and temporary.  Viewed as the germ of subsequent anti-slavery enterprises of the last century, in Europe and America, their interest and importance cannot be too highly estimated.

“I must observe, that soon after the colony (Pennsylvania) had been planted, that is, in the year 1682, when William Penn was first resident in it, some few Africans had been imported, but that more had followed.  At this time the traffic in slaves was not branded with infamy, as at the present day.  It was considered, on the other hand, as favorable to both parties:  to the American planters, because they had but few laborers, in comparison with the extent of their lands; and to the poor Africans themselves, because they were looked upon as persons redeemed out of superstition, idolatry, and heathenism.  But though the purchase and sale of them had been admitted with less caution upon this principle, there were not wanting among the Quakers of Pennsylvania those who, soon after the introduction of them there, began to question the moral licitness of the traffic.  Accordingly, at the Yearly Meeting for Pennsylvania, held in 1688, it had been resolved, on the suggestion of emigrants from Crisheim, who had adopted the principles of William Penn, that the buying, selling, and holding men in slavery, was inconsistent with the tenets of the Christian religion.  In 1696, a similar resolution had been passed at the Yearly Meeting of the same religious society for the same province.  In consequence, then, of these noble resolutions, the Quakers had begun to treat their slaves in a different manner from that of other people.  They had begun to consider them as children of the same great Parent, to whom fraternal offices were due; and hence, in 1698, there were instances where they had admitted them into their meeting houses to worship in common with themselves.[A]

[Footnote A:  “I cannot help copying into a note an anecdote from Thomas Story’s Journal for this year (1698).  ‘On the 13th,’ says he, ’we had a pretty large meeting, where several were tendered, among whom were some negroes.  And here I shall observe, that Thomas Simons having several negroes, one of them, as also