Quaker protests against slavery in the 17th century

As early as 1657, George Fox the founder of Quakerism in a letter of caution To Friends beyond the sea, that have Blacks and Indian slaves reminded Quaker slave owners that everyone was equal in the sight of God.

After visiting Barbados in 1671 he later wrote that slaves should be better treated, and pointed out that the slave-owners would not like it if they were treated so cruelly. But he didn't go so far as to condemn slave holding. This was later published as  Gospel Family-Order, Being a Short Discourse Concerning the Ordering of Families, both of Whites, Blacks and Indians (1676).

Title page of Gospel Family Order... 1676 [Box 29/16]

'…if you were in the same condition as the Blacks are…now I say, if this should be the condition of you and yours, you would think it hard measure, yea, and very great Bondage and Cruelty.
And therefore consider seriously of this, and do you for and to them, as you would willingly have them or any other to do unto you…were you in the like slavish condition.'
George Fox, 1676

In the same year, 1676, William Edmundson, an Irish Quaker also spoke out against slavery. During the late 1600s and into the early 1700s several other Quakers began to do likewise, such as George Keith and William Southeby.

The schismatic George Keith (1638 - 1716) was a vigorous pamphleteer who had visited America and seen slavery first-hand. In 1693, two years before his disownment by Friends, he wrote An exhortation and caution to Friends concerning the buying and selling of Negroes.

Three years later the American Quaker William Southeby (died 1720) (with whom William Edmundson had stayed on his visit to Philadelphia) demanded a ban on slave ownership and importation. He continued to publish attacks on slavery until his death in 1720, and is credited with being the first native-born, white American to condemn slavery.

Early colonial Quakers protest against slavery