WOOLMAN, JOHN. — Quaker preacher, born in New Jersey on 19 October 1720, died in York on 7 October 1772.
At the age of 26 he felt himself called by God to preach the anti-slavery gospel. He was a theoretician 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 deprived himself of sugar because it was cultivated by Black slaves and renounced colored fabrics because the dyeing process 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 that he sensed in it the sweetness of the fragrance of violets; by Channing and Emerson; and, in England, by Charles Lamb, who declared to an American visitor that it was the only book by an American author that he had read twice.