Not at any price: abolition and economics in the 1842 Indiana Quaker schism

• Published in: Fides et historia Vol. 46; no. 1; pp. 1 - 20
• Main Author: Wood, Timothy L
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Terre Haute The Conference on Faith and History 01.01.2014
• Subjects: Abolition of slavery; Abolitionists; Christianity; Economics; Emancipation of slaves; Politics; Quakers; Religion; Traditions; Indiana; United States > US
• ISSN: 0884-5379

[...]Benezet agreed with Woolman that avarice and slavery's potential as a means of amassing wealth had darkened the minds of many Americans regarding the evils of human bondage/' Another trait that defined Friends in the United States was their efforts to build a distinct and separate Quaker community. According to Thomas Hamm, many Hicksite Quakers had come to sec their Orthodox rivals (as the anti-Hicks party soon styled themselves) as "crypto-Episcopalians or Presbyterians, overly influenced by their ties to those denominations, usually in pursuit of economic or political power. [Ijn the newly connected world, in which shopping was social action-and it was Channing's signal observation to note that this would be true of all consumerist organizationscitizens could not passively observe the great social struggles of the age from the sidelines. .. Since every point of consumption was a node in a national system, an entry point that produced an immediate economic impact, every shopper's purchases were as much a moral mandate as an economic decision." Fogel and Engerman, Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1974). [...]historian Marc Egnal has pointed out that even northerners during this period were lukewarm about embracing abolitionism and completely cutting economic ties with the South-further demonstrating the strength of the institution of slavery during the antebellum period.