Quakers in the abolition movement

George Fox, founder of Quakerism, visited the island in 1671 and immediately appealed for better treatment of slaves.

In that year, four German settlers (the Lutheran Francis Daniel Pastorius and the three Quakers, the brothers Derick and Abraham op den Graeff and Garret Hendericks), issued a protest from Germantown, close to Philadelphia in the newly founded American colony of Pennsylvania.

This action, although seemingly overlooked at the time, ushered in almost a century of active debate among Pennsylvanian Quakers about the morality of slavery which saw energetic anti-slavery writing and direct action from several Quakers, including William Southeby, John Hepburn, Ralph Sandiford, and Benjamin Lay.

Nevertheless, there were local successes for Quaker anti-slavery in the United States during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.

"[citation needed] Elias Hicks penned the Observations on the Slavery of the Africans and Their Descendants and on the Use of the Produce of their Labour in 1811, urging the boycott of the products of slave labor.

The Bundy family operated a station that transported groups of slaves from Belmont to Salem, Ohio.

Colorful former Quaker and slave trader Zephaniah Kingsley defended slavery benevolently practiced.