WOOLMAN, JOHN. - Quaker preacher, b. in New Jersey on 19 Oct. 1720, d. in York on 7 Oct. 1772.
At the age of 26 he felt called by God to preach the anti-Christian gospel. He was a theorist of passive obedience, maintaining that in critical cases one should obey in the letter but not in the spirit. Thus, for example, in harmony with his principles, he abstained from sugar because it was produced by negro slaves, and he refrained from wearing dyed fabrics because the dye harmed the workers employed in II.
He set forth his opinions in *An epistle* (1772) and in his *Journal* (1774). The *Journal* was admired by E. Whittier, who wrote of sensing in it the sweetness of the perfume of violets; by Channing, by Emerson, and, in England, by Charles Lamb, who told an American visitor that it had been the only book by an American author that he had read twice.