John Woolman
John Woolman (1720-1772) was an influential American Quaker theologian and social advocate known for his strong anti-slavery stance and commitment to social justice. Born into a prominent New Jersey family, he received a limited formal education but was shaped by religious texts and a deep sense of morality that developed from personal experiences, including a childhood incident that spurred his ethical reflections. Woolman became a tailor and an itinerant preacher, traveling extensively throughout the East Coast colonies where he witnessed the impacts of slavery and materialism, leading him to advocate for abolition within the Society of Friends.
He published significant works, including "Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes," which argued against slavery and emphasized spiritual integrity. Woolman's moral philosophy extended beyond abolition to include opposition to war and materialism, reflecting his belief that the pursuit of wealth was morally corrupting. Despite struggles with health, he continued his advocacy, leaving a lasting legacy through his writings, which influenced various American literary and social movements, including transcendentalism and later civil rights activism. His journals and essays are regarded as important contributions to both Quaker thought and American literature. Woolman's life and work exemplify a commitment to ethical living and social responsibility.
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Subject Terms
John Woolman
Quaker
- Born: October 19, 1720
- Birthplace: Rancocas Creek, New Jersey
- Died: October 7, 1772
- Place of death: York, England
Biography
Eighteenth century American Quaker theologian and social advocate John Woolman was born in 1720, the eldest of thirteen children in an established, prominent, and deeply religious New Jersey family. His grandfather, an English immigrant, had been a proprietor of the colony and his father, Samuel, became a candidate for the provincial assembly during John’s adolescence. Samuel Woolman had an extensive library, which provided the core of his son’s learning, as John received no formal education beyond that available at the local Quaker school. Particularly influential works on the quiet and meditative child, other than the Bible, included Thomas à Kempis’s Imitatio Christi (c. 1427; The Imitation of Christ, c. 1460-1530) and François Fenélon’s Quietist writings.
Woolman’s late adolescence was marked by inner conflict over the nature of belief. He had, as a small child, killed a mother robin—and then killed her young as well, because they could not live without her. The ensuing crisis of conscience and deep remorse instilled in Woolman a strong sense that the human mind contains an inherent “divine principle” which tends toward the good. This conviction would inform his faith and both the mystical and social philosophy which grew out of it.
At the age of twenty-one, Woolman became a clerk and bookkeeper and apprenticed as a tailor in Mount Holly, New Jersey. He married Sarah Ellis in 1749 and they had a daughter, Mary, the following year. He had begun trading as a tailor in 1746, the same year he became an itinerant preacher, undertaking travels throughout all the East Coast colonies from New York to North Carolina. These pilgrimages, one of which covered over sixteen hundred miles, imprinted upon Woolman’s conscience an awareness of the evils of slavery and the corruption of materialism. He described the slave-owning South as siezed with a “dark gloominess” and became adamant that the Society of Friends should speak against slave-holding, especially among its own membership.
In 1754, Woolman published the first volume of his treatise Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes. By 1758, he was active in the leadership of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, pushing the organization toward its historical attempt to abolish slavery among the Society of Friends. Woolman spoke passionately at this meeting and at the New England Meeting—held in Newport, Rhode Island, which at that time was a center of slave- trading—and was successful in getting the Philadelphia Assembly to adopt resolutions against the trade.
Although Woolman is best remembered for his abolitionist activism, his politics had broader implications: he opposed all war, particularly war taxation and conscription, and he was a passionate anti-materialist, believing that the pursuit of wealth was corrupting socially, morally, and spiritually. He abandoned his tailoring business when it became so financially lucrative that he felt it was a distraction from spiritual matters. The second part of Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes was completed in 1762, and the work as a whole has marked literary and thematic coherency.
Despite his poor health throughout the 1760’s, Woolman continued to make pilgrimages throughout the colonies and produced several more influential treatises on faith and social issues, including labor and education. His 1793 Plea for the Poor is the clearest statement of his anti-materialism and influenced both Thomas Paine’s 1797 Agrarian Justice and Henry Thoreau’s Walden (1854).
In 1772, despite struggles with his health, Woolman left on a mission trip for England. The voyage was rough, and four months after arriving in London, Woolman contracted smallpox and died among the laboring poor to whom he was ministering. On the voyage and while in London, he had written five essays on his signature themes, which were gathered together and published after his death. Also published posthumously were the journals he had kept throughout his life, which are often compared to Augustine’s Confessions.
John Woolman’s legacy in his lifetime was one of political action and spiritual motivation. He is perhaps the most significant American writer in the Augustinian tradition and assuredly one of the most significant Quaker theologians. The influence of his works on American secular literature is also significant. In addition to a strong presence in the works of the transcendentalists, Woolman’s works are cited in Theodore Dreiser’s The Bulwark (1946) and his influence on the American realist’s understanding of poverty runs throughout Dreiser’s works. Woolman is also an acknowledged influence on John Greenleaf Whittier and William Ellery Channing, and much later, Martin Luther King, Jr.