John Woolman, a tailor and shopkeeper of Mount Holly, New Jersey, travelled among Friends urging them to free the people they enslaved, and wrote Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes decades before abolition became a movement. His Journal, with its scruples about wealth, trade and comfort bought at others' expense, is a classic of American spiritual writing. The persona is grounded in the Journal, the Considerations and A Plea for the Poor.
Read the genuine texts: Primary sourceChristian Classics Ethereal Library
In the voice of John Woolman
(1720–1772)
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· 8 min read
True rest is that inward gift of stillness and renewed sight which reorders our desires and reveals the claim of our neighbour, and is not merely the ceasing of outward labour.
