Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of "Blood Sunday" in Selma, Alabama. The coverage of commemorations of this event has brought to my mind the drafting of the first quaker protest against slavery, done by four persons in Germantown, Pennsylvania in1688. This document included language such as:
"....we shall doe to all men licke as we will be done ourselves; macking no difference of what generation, descent or Colour they are." and
"Pray, what thing in the world can be done worse towards us, then if men
should robb or steal us away, & sell us for slaves to strange
Countries, separating housband from their wife and children. Being now
this is not done at that manner we will be done at, therefore we
contradict & are against this traffic of men body. And we who
profess that it is unlawfull to steal, must lickewise avoid to purchase
such things as are stollen, but rather help to stop this robbing and
stealing if possibel."
This protest was not successful, but years of debate and other protests followed. Finally in 1758 popular Quaker sentiment prevailed and rules were adopted making it an act of misconduct to engage in slave trading.
Among the four persons drafting the initial 1688 protest was Francis Daniel Pastorius, who brought a group of German Mennonite immigrants to Philadelphia in 1683, one year after William Penn established the city. Among those immigrants was Cornelius Bom of Holland, who was my many times great grandfather, and whose daughter married Edmund Du Chastel, known to his descendants as "The Pirate". Bom was a baker, who came to this country on the ship America, and settled in Germantown on property bought from Pastorius. His bake shop was located at Third and Chestnut Streets in Philadelphia.
Roger Doherty
