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SOUTH DAKOTA
SCHOOL OF MINES
& TECHNOLOGY
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John Woolman
From The Journal of John Woolman, much can be learned about his personal life and about his part in the Quaker religion. “Woolman’s teachings and his life were inspired by the religious principles that had moved radicals . . . to form Societies of Friends. They were soon named Quakers.” It is mentioned in the text that the Quakers were harshly persecuted because of the ways they chose to behave. They refused to pay tithes and to take oaths. In the eighteenth-century during the rise of religious tolerance, America’s widespread persecution of the Quakers began to cease. This movement was led by the “quiet pity and humanitarianism exemplified in John Woolman.” Woolman’s journal is a journal of his spiritual journey. He began when he was thirty-six and continued until his death. He had a plain writing style, which was similar to the plain style of the Quakers meetinghouses. He words are filled with “forceful expression [like] that of his own gentle character. Woolman spoke out for simplicity, piety, and goodness.” Woolman was also against slavery and spoke for its abolition. Woolman was so opposed to slavery that on his deathbed he refused any medicines that may have come from the “oppressed hands of slaves.” He also spoke for the “rights of all people to enjoy a fair share of society’s wealth.” In his life and through is writing he was the beginner of humanitarianism of the nineteenth-century. His ideas have been continually renewed throughout the following centuries.
September 17, 2001
Cassady Marshall
Contact: Cassady Marshall
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Last Modified: 12/15/2001 |
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