USA > New York > Queens County > Flushing > Bi-centennial anniversary of New York Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends at Flushing, Long Island, 1695-1895 > Part 4
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Ann Moore says in 1778: " We were at Flushing meeting on the 1Sth, which was held at Walter Frank- lin's, the meeting-house being made a hospital for soldiers. From thence we attended meeting at Cow Neck, then went to Thomas Seaman's and staid there until the 21st. Then went to Westbury meeting, and on the 22nd had a meeting at Oyster Bay. The 23d went to Matinecock meeting, visiting a lame Friend on the way." On the 24th she again attends Monthly Meeting at Westbury, on the 26th, meeting of Bethpage, refers later to Jericho and Jerusalem, also says : "On the 27th we had a comfortable meeting at the widow Mott's. It was an awful, heart-rending time." We may well believe it, with the wounded and dying soldiers about them in that dark period which tried the stoutest of souls.
It was very natural for women thus nurtured to reason that if there were equality and liberty in the higher walks of life, it must extend down through all the minor ways of progress, and we therefore should never have been surprised to find these women among the most advanced in asserting it to be the unmistakable birthright of women to do anything which God gave them power to do in any field to which they were called by the voice in their own souls. What wonder that they heard the human cry, and came down from the mountains to labor in the valleys,-the cry that drew Elizabeth Fry into the horrors of Newgate prison, and
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over civilized Europe to plead with kings and queens, potentates and rulers, in behalf of suffering and guilty humanity ! Carlyle, who once went with her to New- gate, said : " Mrs. Fry, and one or two Quakeresses who were with her, looked like a little spot of purity in a great, sweltering mass of corruption." It was the cry that made an Abby Kelley Foster lift up her voice in what an old paper called " an irresistibly urgent appeal in behalf of the wronged and cruelly outraged slave woman." What marvel that Sallie Holley, hearing her, felt " called by a Divine voice" to plead the same cause, and to the hitherto undreamed-of command said, " I will." It was the way the tide rolled on. The same paper says, "Later, when Abby Kelley Foster heard the eloquence of this other woman, she went to her and said with a voice choked with feeling, ' I have lain prostrate before the throne of God all this even- ing, weeping with thankfulness and joy that, when I am worn out, He has raised up one who pleads for the slaves as you have done so powerfully to-night.'" And the paper adds, " It was a revelation of the deeps of her strong and tender soul."
It was this fervency of spirit relieved from suppres- sion, this abandonment of soul to the great cause of freedom for the slave, that gave another impetus for the good that was to come into the world through womanly hands and womanly hearts; and through which all women were to be drawn toward a higher plane of thought and action.
And yet these women were not wanted by many of the men who were their co-workers in the early days of anti-slavery agitation ; in which view, at first, even Elizabeth Cady Stanton acquiesced. In 1840, when she went with her husband to that World's Convention in London which barred out Lucretia Mott, she says of her, " Mrs. Mott was to me an entirely new revelation of womanhood ; " and we know how fully she came, thereafter, to believe in the woman's movement. A correspondent of the Dublin Herald says of the same occasion ; " The convention was largely made up of
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dissenting ministers and plain Quakers, who, whatever may be the case elsewhere, form a large proportion of the pledged philanthropy of England ;" and further, " Opinions differed materially as to whether Clarkson, Buxton, O'Connell, Garrison, Thompson, Sturge or Birney were the greatest men, but nobody doubted that Lucretia Mott was the lioness of the Convention."
And so the building went on in many channels of which our early Friends may not have perceived all the good, where, indeed, there may have been chaff to be winnowed ; but let us never forget that they laid the stone which is the head of the corner in our womanly world. It was the seed of a movement fraught with world-wide significance, for in estimating the civilization of every nation there exists to day no truer test than the status of its women. The men who committed the terrible Armenian massacres were the sons of mothers in Turkish harems. The seedtime of life is in earliest youth, and the mother who waters the tender plants in the Lord's garden must be morally, mentally and physically equal to the highest standard of her generation if she would produce the best results.
While it is true that nations who do not accept light remain in bewildering darkness, it is as surely true that those who do receive and follow must stand upon the grains of gold refined and garnered by those who have gone before to have their best increase. The new struggles on with the old, and in the rubbing of one with the other the dross disappears. By this friction are laid the solid foundations of generally accepted truths. Holiest of these are those that come from the ministrations of that spirit of love which is pure, gentle and persuasive. New York Yearly Meeting did not lack its spiritual mothers, and we look back to their faithful service among us with tender memories, and believe with our dear poet that
" We, of all others, have reason to pay The tribute of thanks and rejoice on our way,
For the counsel that turned from the follies of youth,
For the beauty of patience, the whiteness of truth,
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For the wounds of rebuke when love tempered its edge ; For the household's restraint and the discipline's hedge."
Time warns 'us that we may no longer tarry among the pleasant and beloved memories of a departing generation, but we may turn from them with a feeling of devout thankfulness for the blessedness that lingers about the simple name of the Society of Friends.
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WHAT FRIENDS HAVE DONE FOR THE WORLD.
BY AARON M. POWELL.
" By their fruits ye shall know them " is a righteous rule of judgment. By this rule Friends may properly be judged. What have Friends done for the world ?
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.
Their first great service was to achieve for them- selves and others a larger measure of religious liberty. George Fox, the founder and pioneer of the Society, appeared at a time when the reign of externalism in matters pertaining to religion was well-nigh supreme. The spiritual view had been almost wholly lost sight of. He and his early compeers were ostracised and persecuted alike by representatives of the Church and State. Of the sufferings and hardships of this martyr period, through which early Friends were called to pass, we of this generation can have little conception. Our present religious freedom was, indeed, purchased at great cost. The persecution was perhaps more wholesale in England, but, if possible, more violent in New England. Sewell states that there were upwards of 4,200 Quakers, both men and women, crowded in the English prisons at one time ! Many of these had been grievously beaten, or their clothes torn or taken away from them ; many were confined in dungeons in- describably loathsome. Some were crowded so full of both men and women, that there was not room for all even to sit down. There were ear-croppings, burnings. and all imaginable methods of torture, and hundreds of deaths in consequence. But in this astonishing record of cruelty and persecution for opinion's sake, New Eng-
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land had a bad pre-eminence. Even Bostonians were extensively engaged in imprisoning, whipping, starv- ing, and hanging innocent, devout women and men. Under a Massachusetts " vagrant law " of that period, if a Quaker was found in Boston, no matter what the errand,-even if, as in the case of Edward Wharton, to visit a sick friend,-he or she might be arrested, im- prisoned and punished by the lash on the naked body. Nor was this statute a dead letter. For such a visit to a sick friend in Boston, Wharton was arrested, and by order of Governor Endicott was led to the market- place, stripped and bound to a cart wheel, and pun- ished with thirty lashes. So cruelly was the punish- ment inflicted that, as was testified, "peas might lie in the holes that the knots of the whip had made in the flesh of his back and arms." That was Puritan Bos- ton a little more than two centuries ago ! Mary Dyer, a true and noble woman, whose only offence was plead- ing the cause of religious freedom, was hanged in Bos- ton by order of Governor Endicott. Her brave, se- rene death has no modern parallel. It was through such suffering and martyrdom, on the part of early Friends, that the foundations were laid for the larger measure of religious liberty which is now enjoyed in all civilized lands.
APPLIED CHRISTIANITY.
Friends, from the earliest period in their history, have been distinguished for their varied and largely useful labors in the sphere of what, in modern phrase, we know as " applied Christianity." At the outset of his public labors as teacher and evangelist, George Fox was concerned to help the poor and needy, to comfort the bereaved and sorrowing, to improve human condi- tions. Friends recognized the Divine presence in the human soul, and that all men were brethren. This cardinal principle is thus interpreted by John Wool- man :
" There is a principle which is pure, placed in the
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human mind, which in different places and ages hath had different names : it is, however, pure, and proceeds from God. It is deep and inward, confined to no forms of religion nor excluded from any, when the heart stands in perfect sincerity. In whomsoever this takes root and grows, they become brethren."
ABOLITION OF SLAVERY.
It was this inward principle which led George Fox very early in his ministry, in 1671, to oppose slavery. It was Elizabeth Heyrick, an English Quaker woman, who at a later period enunciated the doctrine of im- mediate and unconditional emancipation as the right of the slave and the duty of the master. Such, however, was the character of the preaching in early Friends' meetings by Fox and others, that the slave-holders of Barbadoes, as early as 1676, moved by the slave-hold- er's shrewd instinct, were so much alarmed as to make a law to prevent the attendance of negroes at these meetings. Clarkson, in speaking of his preaching against negro slavery in the West Indies, says : "Thus was George Fox probably the first person who publicly declared against this species of slavery." Clarkson, who was not himself a Friend, also pays to Friends a most hearty, affectionate tribute, for their faithful and generous help in the anti-slavery and anti-slave trade struggle in England.
In America opposition to slavery on the part of Friends antedated, by something more than a century, the modern abolition movement represented by Garri- son, Phillips, Whittier, Lucretia Mott and others. It was as early as 16SS that a meeting of German Friends, who had settled at Germantown, Pennsylvania, ad- dressed a memorial against " the buying and keeping of negroes " to the Yearly Meeting of the Pennsylvania and New Jersey Colonies, and commenced the prelim- inary labors within the Society which ended in mak- ing it a disciplinary offense for a Friend to own or hire a slave, and incorporated it as a standing counsel in
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the Book of Discipline to abstain from, the use or pur- chase of anything wronght by the labor of slaves. This early memorial that Yearly Meeting took into consideration, but declined to express judgment thereon. .
It 1696 it advised against " bringing in any more negroes," and in 1714, in its Epistle to London Friends, it expressed a wish that Friends would be " less concerned in buying or selling slaves."
In the New England Yearly Meeting the subject of slavery also claimed carly attention. Elihu Coleman and other Friends in Nantucket bore testimony against it, and the Monthly Meetings of Dartmouth and Nan- tucket, as early as 1716, declared that it was " not agreeable to truth to purchase slaves and keep them during their term of life." The Yearly Meeting, how- ever, took no definite action until 1727, when the prac- tice of importing negroes was censured. In 1758 a rule was adopted prohibiting Friends within the limits of New England Yearly Meeting from engaging in or countenancing the foreign slave trade.
Pre-eminent among the early opponents of slavery in the Society of Friends was John Woolman. It was in 1742, when, as a young man, in the employ of a Friend, the keeper of a small store at Mount Holly, New Jersey, his employer sold a negro woman, and he was requested to make a bill of sale of her. "On taking up his pen," says Whittier, writing of him, " the young clerk felt a sudden and strong scruple in his mind. The thought of writing an instrument of slavery for one of his fellow-creatures oppressed him. God's voice against the desecration of his image spoke in his soul. He yielded to the will of his employer, but, while writing the instrument, he was constrained to declare, both to the buyer and seller, that he believed slave-keeping inconsistent with the Christian religion." This circumstance was the beginning of a life-long, most effective testimony against slavery. By his per- suasive voice in the ministry, personal visits and ap- peals among Friends who were the owners of slaves, and by his pen, he did much to promote the entire abo-
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lition of slavery in several Yearly Meetings of Friends, and he also exerted a powerful anti-slavery influence among others not members of the Society of Friends.
He travelled extensively, visited, and labored in the several Yearly Meetings. It was in 1758 that the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting took the decisive step, declaring that Friends who held slaves " should set them at liberty, making a Christian provision for them." Four Friends, of whom John Woolman was one, were approved of as suitable persons to visit and treat with such as kept slaves within the limits of the Yearly Meeting.
Anthony Benezet, a Friend who came from France to this country and settled in Pennsylvania, was another most earnest and influential anti-slavery pioneer, whose faithful, conscientious labors did much to promote the abolition of slavery among Friends, and to create a sentiment against it on the part of others.
It was in 1769 that the New England Yearly Meet- ing, at the suggestion of the Rhode Island Quarterly Meeting, expressed its sense of the wrongfulness of holding slaves, and appointed a large committee to visit those members who were implicated in the practice.
In 1771 New York Yearly Meeting, in response to an epistle from the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, appointed a committee to visit those who held slaves, and to advise them in relation to emancipation.
In 1784 it was made a disciplinary offense by this Yearly Meeting to buy, sell, or hold slaves on any condition. In 1784 but one slave was to be found in the limits of New York Yearly Meeting ; and in the same year, by answers from the subordinate meetings, it was ascertained that an equitable settlement for past services had been effected between the negroes and their former masters in all save three cases.
In 1784 the Virginia Yearly Meeting finally made slaveholding a disciplinary offense, and with its action slavery ended in the Society of Friends. Though it had taken many years to accomplish this beneficent result, it was, and still is, a striking object lesson,
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illustrating, as Whittier says, "The power of truth, urged patiently and in earnest love, to overcome the difficulties in the way of the eradication of an evil system, strengthened by long habit, entangled with all , the complex relations of society, and closely allied with the love of power, the pride of family, and the lust of gain."
In 1790 memorials from the Society of Friends against slavery were laid before the first Congress of the United States. Friends of that day also took an active part in the formation of the earlier abolition societies of New England, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia. All this was antecedent to, and helped to prepare the way for, the modern aboli- tion movement. It was through Benjamin Lundy, who was taught in the school of Woolman, that William Lloyd Garrison became interested in the great work to which his life was dedicated, and of which he was the successful, and, finally, honored leader.
The future impartial historian, in seeking the original source of the influence which finally wrought the overthrow of slavery, will find its beginning in the conscientious moving against the great wrong within the body of the Society of Friends, in obedience to the teaching of simple, spiritual truth, a practical recognition of the Fatherhood of God and the brother- hood of man.
THE INDIANS.
The service of Friends has been not less conspicuous and helpful in behalf of the Indian than the negro. The world has never had a more striking illustration of the power of Christian example than in the experi- ence of William Penn and his compeers in their rela- tions with the Indians. Wendell Phillips used to say in discussing the Indian question : " Show the Indians civilization before you expect them to enjoy it. Do justice if you expect to receive it." This is what Friends, in their contact with the Indians, have done. They recognized the Indian as a child of God, treated
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him justly and kindly, and were serupulously careful both as to making and performing promises. Treaty obligations on the part of Friends and Indians have been faithfully and honorably observed by both. Wil- liam Penn's great treaty of amity with the Indians, in 1682, has challenged world-wide admiration, and it has been said of it that it was " the only league between those nations and the Christians which was never sworn to and never broken." Cruel and revengeful as the Indians have been towards others who have treated them with bad faith, they have always been kindly and trustworthy towards Friends, whom they have recog- nized as their friends. Penn, in his letter of instruc- tions, in 16S1, to Commissioners who were to act as his representatives prior to his arrival among the In- dians, said :
" Let them know that you are come 'to sit down lovingly among them. Let my letter and conditions with my purchasers, about just dealing with them, be read in their tongue, that they may see we have their good in our eye, equal with our own interest, and after reading my letter and the said conditions, then present the kings with what I send them, and make friendship and a league with them, according to those conditions, which carefully observe, and get them to comply with."
Thus was inaugurated by 'Penn a successful peace policy at the very outset of his dealings with the In- dians,-a policy based upon kindness, justice and good faith. The Indians were quick to resent injustice and bad faith, but toward Friends, who were just and truthful in their dealings with them, they manifested a kindly confidence, of which there were many pathetic instances. While deadly, relentless Indian wars were in progress, and many white settlers (not Friends) were cruelly slaughtered, Friends would pass to and fro among them unarmed and unharmed.
In one of his letters William Penn mentions a Friends' family living isolated and quite apart from other white settlers, and wholly surrounded by Indians. and when the parents would go to Yearly Meeting and
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leave the children at home, during their absence the Indians would care for and protect the children from harm !
Friends discovered also very early the danger in-, volved in the use of intoxicants by Indians, and took occasion to discourage the sale of liquors to the Indians. About 1687, a conference with the Indians was held by Friends in Pennsylvania, wherein there were eight In- dian kings present, one of whom, after narrating that the Dutch and Swedes came among them and sold them strong liquor, that they had no eyes to see the harm it did to them, making them mad, causing them to throw each other in the fire and kill each other, added : " But now there is a people come to live amongst us that have eyes, they see it to be for our hurt, they are willing to deny themselves the profit of it for our good. These people have eyes ; we are glad such a people are come among us ; we must put it down by mutual consent, the cask must be sealed up, it must be made fast, it must not leak by day or by night, in light or in dark," and then were given " four belts of wampum " to be witnesses between them of this agreement.
Friends also in many instances were helpers and friends of the Indians as religious teachers and coun- sellors, and with excellent results. If all who profess the Christian name had but exemplified the truly Christian spirit towards the Indians, civilization might long ago have supplanted the destructive savagery and barbarism which have characterized the two centuries of conflict. Alas ! that the Indian's contact with white people in general, representatives of a so-called Chris- tian nation, should suggest and reveal to him so little of the true spirit of Christian brotherhood.
While, however, human history is read by men, the record of the exceptional fraternal relation maintained by Friends with the Indians will be a most honorable, praiseworthy tradition, and a helpful lesson for man- kind.
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PRISON REFORM.
In prison reform, and in the humane movement for the abolition of the death penalty, Friends have also been pioneers and influential helpers. George Fox. William Penn, and many of the early Friends, were themselves so often imprisoned, sometimes passing long periods in jail for conscience' sake, that they often became only too painfully familiar with the filthy and unwholesome condition of the prisons in which they were incarcerated, and which they made known to the authorities and the general public. The labors of Elizabeth Fry wrought a revolution in English prison management, and were influential throughout Europe in arresting public attention to the urgent need of reform in prison administration. Her beneficent in- fluence helped greatly to promote the thought that the true function of the prison is not alone punitive, but also reformatory.
Believing in the inviolability of human life, Friends have been earnest and constant in opposition to the vet lingering relic of barbarianism, the death penalty. Their labors in this direction have helped greatly. in England and in this country, to lessen the number of capital offences. In the separation of the young from older offenders and criminals in prisons, in more care- fully guarding women prisoners by placing such under the care of women, Elizabeth Fry and other Friends long ago taught important lessons in prison manage- ment which the world has not even yet fully learned.
PEACE AND ARBITRATION.
Friends from the beginning have been actively and prominently identified with efforts for peace and arbi- tration, and opposed to the war method of settling difficulties. This fundamental lesson of Christian truth they have taught, as a people, by both example and precept. Among themselves, when differences bave arisen, care has been taken speedily to end them, rather by friendly arbitration than by recourse to litigation er
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force. Thus have they, historically, led the way for the modern movement, of which Friends of to-day are also a part, and which is indicative of the growth of a higher civilization, in favor of arbitration, local, State, National, and International. Indeed, a universal Quaker civilization would render superfluous armies and navies, and would do away with all war and preparations for war. By much suffering in times past Friends have attested their faith in the peace principle. That testimony was perhaps more relaxed in connection with the late slaveholders' rebellion in our own coun- try than ever before, owing to its peculiar relation to slavery. But what then became inevitable in the ab- sence of moral stamina in the nation, does not at all affect the soundness of the fundamental teaching by Friends that, with a due regard for our brother's wel- fare, as well as our own, war becomes unnecessary, and, indeed, impossible.
TEMPERANCE.
In connection with another of the world's great evils. intemperance, Friends have rendered signal service. In the early days of Quakerism the drinking usages com- mon to the period were in a degree also prevalent among Friends. But as Friends became more fully enlightened, they also became cognizant of the evil in- volved in the use of intoxicants. The necessary limits of this paper preclude a detailed chronological presen- tation of the successive steps in different Yearly Meet- ings on both sides of the Atlantic, discouraging the use of strong drink, and also its manufacture and sale by Friends, until finally all beverage use of intoxicants is counselled against, and all traffic in them for beverage purposes by members of the Society is prohibited. As in the case of slavery, much patient and persevering labor was required to overcome the force of traditional social drinking usages and the love of gain which in some instances bound Friends to the evil traffic. While even now Friends are not always and everywhere clear of all complicity, legal and otherwise, with the still
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widely prevalent drink evil, it may be safely assumed that they are much more nearly so than most other re- ligious bodies. An intemperate Quaker, or a Quaker rumseller, is, indeed, very rarely known. As with the overthrow of slavery, so also in connection with the temperance reformation, Friends have been largely helpful, by their example and teaching, with others, beyond the limits of their own membership.
OATHS.
One of the severest contests early Friends were called upon to undergo to secure a recognition of the rights of conscience was in connection with the disuse of oaths. The right of simple affirmation, which all Friends and others conscientiously opposed to the oath now enjoy, was secured through great individual suffer- ing, privation, and loss. It has won for Friends a general reputation for integrity and trustworthiness, which cannot be too highly praised nor too carefully guarded.
OTHER CHARACTERISTICS.
I can allude only in the briefest summary to other characteristics peculiar to Friends, which have been in- cidentally helpful also to mankind at large. Conso- nant with their view of the spirituality of religion, Friends have borne valuable testimony against a super- stitious reverence for days, pompous ceremonies, titles, and titled officers,-as at enmity with the truth, and derogatory to healthful self-respect in the individual. In simplicity, general thrift and economy ; in the rec- ognized equality of women in the marriage relation, and in religious labor ; in the purity and sweetness of the Quaker home and social life; in the care of their poor-a Quaker inmate of a public poor-house is un- known ; in first establishing hospitals for the insane ;- these are some of the characteristics and qualities of a " peculiar people," whose presence, daily life, and con- versation have been as a beneficent, uplifting influence
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in many a community, in countries wherein Friends have lived and wrought.
We commemorate to-day a two-hundredth anniver- sary, and enter upon a third century. Our thought has been turned in retrospect and tender memory to Fox and Penn, and " The Quaker of the Olden Time : "
" O Spirit of that early day, So pure and strong and true, Be with us in the narrow way Our faithful fathers knew. Give strength the evil to forsake, The cross of Truth to bear,
And love and reverent fear to make
Our daily lives a prayer ! "
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The exercises were concluded by Mary S. Kimber, of New York, who read the following poem, composed by her for this occasion :
THE BOWNE HOUSE. 1695-1895.
O quiet house, that now reposes So peacefully beneath the trees, 'Mid clustering vines and fragrant roses, And slumberous murmur of the bees.
No towering shaft,-no sculptured fane, Records the deeds that here were wrought, The workers pass,-their works remain, The blessings of enfranchised thought.
There gathered round this ingle-side, In sixteen hundred sixty-two, An earnest band, oft sorely tried, Reviled, proscribed, yet staunch and true.
They had left English hearth and home, And all the world would reckon dear, With Him they loved, content to roam As strangers and as pilgrims here.
The woods had been their meeting-place, Their temple's arch the vaulted sky ; A living silence filled the space, Or prayer and praise ascended high. :
But when upon this chosen site His homestead rose complete and fair, John Bowne had claimed a brother's right With friends beloved, its cheer to share.
The fire-glow fell on faces pale, Grave faces schooled in calm endurance, Forms spent and worn in noisome gaol, But eyes alight with hope's assurance.
The patient faith that naught could daunt, Outlived at last the stern decree Of Endicott and Stuyvesant, And Jesus set his people free.
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Hither came in love and power, The King's ambassadors of grace ; George Fox himself in happy hour Once tarried in this favored place.
Too long the tale, though sweet, to tell Of all who wrought the blest increase, Who labored in the vineyard well, And passed to their eternal peace.
Fair lies the heritage they won, These loyal, fearless pioneers, For them their Master's own " Well done," Comes echoing down two hundred years.
Let us, who enter on the fields So dearly bought for our possessing, Garner the fruit our birthright yields, And seek in faith the promised blessing.
Sing softly, bird on leafy spray,- Spring green, O grass, around this door, Breathe gently, winds from Rockaway, Spare this old house a century more.
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