North Carolina Quakers, Anti-Slavery, and the Underground Railroad: Books/Articles/Teaching Guides

Levi Coffin, noted as "The President of the Underground Railroad," writes about his adventures and exploits during that daring time prior to and during the Civil War.
xxv, 390 p. : ill. ; 22 cm.

The Unbearable Lightness of Scones

Series: Johns Hopkins University studies in historical and political science., Extra volumes ;, 15.
eBook

Addison Coffin was a Quaker.
570 pages : illustrations, portrait ; 20 cm

Series: Friends ancient and modern, no. 18.
40 p.

Levi Coffin, noted as "The President of the Underground Railroad," writes about his adventures and exploits during that daring time prior to and during the Civil War. This edition has been abridged and edited for modern readers.
xxvi, 402 p. : ill. ; 22 cm.

This brief biography of the reputed President of the Underground Railroad tells yesterday's story and raises questions for today. The author looks briefly at Levi Coffin's early efforts against slavery in North Carolina and later in Newport (now Fountain City), Indiana. The book's major focus is Levi Coffin's abolitionist activities in Cincinnati, Ohio from 1847 through the Civil War, and his work on behalf of freed blacks after the war.
x, 74 p. : map ; 22 cm.

Includes a biographical sketch of each reformer.
134 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm

63 pages 19 cm

352 pages ; 19 cm

is book explores the growth of abolitionism among Quakers in Pennsylvania and New Jersey from 1688 to 1780, providing a case study of how groups change their moral attitudes. Dr. Soderlund details the long battle fought by reformers like gentle John Woolman and eccentric Benjamin Lay. The eighteenth-century Quaker humanitarians succeeded only after they diluted their goals to attract wider support, establishing a gradualistic, paternalistic, and segregationist model for the later antislavery movement. Originally published in 1988. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Ryan P. Jordan explores the limits of religious dissent in antebellum America, and reminds us of the difficulties facing reformers who tried peacefully to end slavery. In the years before the Civil War, the Society of Friends opposed the abolitionist campaign for an immediate end to slavery and considered abolitionists within the church as heterodox radicals seeking to destroy civil and religious liberty. In response, many Quaker abolitionists began to build "comeouter" institutions where social and legal inequalities could be freely discussed, and where church members could fuse religious worship with social activism. The conflict between the Quakers and the Abolitionists highlights the dilemma of liberal religion within a slaveholding republic.

The letters of a young soldier to his anxious family at home are the heart of this childhood memoir of a southern girl and cover the years 1941 to the soldier's death in 1944. His letters, including observations on his budding self-reliance, resourcefulness, and growing distaste for war, are written from North Africa, Sicily, England, and France. To the family at home, they serve as a lifeline to the absent son and brother. They also provide a counterpoint to his young niece's experiences growing up on the homefront. The placement of these two narratives side-by-side makes for a powerful and moving story.
xvii, 237 pages : map ; 24 cm

Photocopy of typescript.
var. paging : ill. ; 28 cm.

Ryan P. Jordan explores the limits of religious dissent in antebellum America, and reminds us of the difficulties facing reformers who tried peacefully to end slavery. In the years before the Civil War, the Society of Friends opposed the abolitionist campaign for an immediate end to slavery and considered abolitionists within the church as heterodox radicals seeking to destroy civil and religious liberty. In response, many Quaker abolitionists began to build "comeouter" institutions where social and legal inequalities could be freely discussed, and where church members could fuse religious worship with social activism. The conflict between the Quakers and the Abolitionists highlights the dilemma of liberal religion within a slaveholding republic.

In the first book to investigate in detail the origins of antislavery thought and rhetoric within the Society of Friends, Brycchan Carey shows how the Quakers turned against slavery in the first half of the eighteenth century and became the first organization to take a stand against the slave trade. Through meticulous examination of the earliest writings of the Friends, including journals and letters, Carey reveals the society’s gradual transition from expressing doubt about slavery to adamant opposition. He shows that while progression toward this stance was ongoing, it was slow and uneven and that it was vigorous internal debate and discussion that ultimately led to a call for abolition. His book will be a major contribution to the history of the rhetoric of antislavery and the development of antislavery thought as explicated in early Quaker writing.

Anthony Benezet (1713-84), universally recognized by the leaders of the eighteenth-century antislavery movement as its founder, was born to a Huguenot family in Saint-Quentin, France. As a boy, Benezet moved to Holland, England, and, in 1731, Philadelphia, where he rose to prominence in the Quaker antislavery community. In transforming Quaker antislavery sentiment into a broad-based transatlantic movement, Benezet translated ideas from diverse sources--Enlightenment philosophy, African travel narratives, Quakerism, practical life, and the Bible--into concrete action. He founded the African Free School in Philadelphia, and such future abolitionist leaders as Absalom Jones and James Forten studied at Benezet's school and spread his ideas to broad social groups. At the same time, Benezet's correspondents, including Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Rush, Abbé Raynal, Granville Sharp, and John Wesley, gave his ideas an audience in the highest intellectual and political circles. In this wide-ranging intellectual biography, Maurice Jackson demonstrates how Benezet mediated Enlightenment political and social thought, narratives of African life written by slave traders themselves, and the ideas and experiences of ordinary people to create a new antislavery critique. Benezet's use of travel narratives challenged proslavery arguments about an undifferentiated, "primitive" African society. Benezet's empirical evidence, laid on the intellectual scaffolding provided by the writings of Hutcheson, Wallace, and Montesquieu, had a profound influence, from the high-culture writings of the Marquis de Condorcet to the opinions of ordinary citizens. When the great antislavery spokesmen Jacques-Pierre Brissot in France and William Wilberforce in England rose to demand abolition of the slave trade, they read into the record of the French National Assembly and the British Parliament extensive unattributed quotations from Benezet's writings, a fitting tribute to the influence of his work.

Revisiting the origins of the British antislavery movement of the late eighteenth century, Christopher Leslie Brown challenges prevailing scholarly arguments that locate the roots of abolitionism in economic determinism or bourgeois humanitarianism. Brown instead connects the shift from sentiment to action to changing views of empire and nation in Britain at the time, particularly the anxieties and dislocations spurred by the American Revolution. The debate over the political rights of the North American colonies pushed slavery to the fore, Brown argues, giving antislavery organizing the moral legitimacy in Britain it had never had before. The first emancipation schemes were dependent on efforts to strengthen the role of the imperial state in an era of weakening overseas authority. By looking at the initial public contest over slavery, Brown connects disparate strands of the British Atlantic world and brings into focus shifting developments in British identity, attitudes toward Africa, definitions of imperial mission, the rise of Anglican evangelicalism, and Quaker activism. Demonstrating how challenges to the slave system could serve as a mark of virtue rather than evidence of eccentricity, Brown shows that the abolitionist movement derived its power from a profound yearning for moral worth in the aftermath of defeat and American independence. Thus abolitionism proved to be a cause for the abolitionists themselves as much as for enslaved Africans.

is book explores the growth of abolitionism among Quakers in Pennsylvania and New Jersey from 1688 to 1780, providing a case study of how groups change their moral attitudes. Dr. Soderlund details the long battle fought by reformers like gentle John Woolman and eccentric Benjamin Lay. The eighteenth-century Quaker humanitarians succeeded only after they diluted their goals to attract wider support, establishing a gradualistic, paternalistic, and segregationist model for the later antislavery movement. Originally published in 1988. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Growing up in a Quaker family in the South in 1830, Levi Coffin did not support slavery, but he was exposed to its atrocities. Convinced that every person deserved to be free, Levi began helping slaves escape to the North along the Underground Railroad, and during the following 40 years he was able to help over 3,000 people find freedom.

Illus. in black-and-white. In this companion volume to the award-winningThe People Could Fly,Virginia Hamilton traces the history of slavery and the Underground Railroad in America. Thirty-five inspiring stories describe ingenious escapes, desperate measures, and daring protests of former slaves. "Hamilton is neither sensational nor sentimental, even as she celebrates the many acts of shining courage. This makes us all want to know more, much more, about those many thousand gone."--(starred)Booklist."A compelling book, outstanding in every way."--(pointer)Kirkus.  
151 pages : illustrations ; 26 cm

A biography of the childhood of the slave girl who became one of the most famous and successful guides on the Underground Railroad.
200 pages : color illustrations ; 20 cm.