1776–1789

The North Carolina Yearly Meeting set up a formal process for persuading individual Quaker slaveholders to set their slaves free. It indicated that many Friends found the decision to let go of their human property difficult to make and that the Society had to use patient persuasion over the course of years. In her examination of slave manumissions in Virginia in the first decade after American independence, Eva Sheppard Wolf finds that individual leaders and community pressure were crucial for translating personal belief in the immorality of slavery into decisions to free slaves. Individuals...

The North Carolina Yearly Meeting set up a formal process for persuading individual Quaker slaveholders to set their slaves free. It indicated that many Friends found the decision to let go of their human property difficult to make and that the Society had to use patient persuasion over the course of years. In her examination of slave manumissions in Virginia in the first decade after American independence, Eva Sheppard Wolf finds that individual leaders and community pressure were crucial for translating personal belief in the immorality of slavery into decisions to free slaves. Individuals and community played essential roles in converting conviction into action.