Slavery and the Meetinghouse: The Quakers and the Abolitionist Dilemma, 1820-1865

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.