“A Minute against Slavery, Addressed to Germantown Monthly Meeting”

Questions for Further Study

• 1.: Why—and how—did the Quakers become the leaders of the abolitionist movement in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries?
• 2.: In what way was the Pennsylvania colony ethnically distinct from the other American colonies? How and why did this occur? What impact did this difference have, if any, on the early abolition movement?
• 3.: On what basis did the men who signed the minute oppose slavery?
• 4.: Why do you believe the audience for “A Minute against Slavery” refused to act on it?
• 5.: Compare this document with John Woolman’s Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes (1754). What similar arguments are made? How do the documents differ?