Warner Mifflin
Warner Mifflin

Author: Gary B. Nash

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2017-07-28

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 081229436X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Warner Mifflin—energetic, uncompromising, and reviled—was the key figure connecting the abolitionist movements before and after the American Revolution. A descendant of one of the pioneering families of William Penn's "Holy Experiment," Mifflin upheld the Quaker pacifist doctrine, carrying the peace testimony to Generals Howe and Washington across the blood-soaked Germantown battlefield and traveling several thousand miles by horse up and down the Atlantic seaboard to stiffen the spines of the beleaguered Quakers, harried and exiled for their neutrality during the war for independence. Mifflin was also a pioneer of slave reparations, championing the radical idea that after their liberation, Africans in America were entitled to cash payments and land or shared crop arrangements. Preaching "restitution," Mifflin led the way in making Kent County, Delaware, a center of reparationist doctrine. After the war, Mifflin became the premier legislative lobbyist of his generation, introducing methods of reaching state and national legislators to promote antislavery action. Detesting his repeated exercise of the right of petition and hating his argument that an all-seeing and affronted God would punish Americans for "national sins," many Southerners believed Mifflin was the most dangerous man in America—"a meddling fanatic" who stirred the embers of sectionalism after the ratification of the Constitution of 1787. Yet he inspired those who believed that the United States had betrayed its founding principles of natural and inalienable rights by allowing the cancer of slavery and the dispossession of Indian lands to continue in the 1790s. Writing in beautiful prose and marshaling fascinating evidence, Gary B. Nash constructs a convincing case that Mifflin belongs in the Quaker antislavery pantheon with William Southeby, Benjamin Lay, John Woolman, and Anthony Benezet.

Writings of Warner Mifflin
Writings of Warner Mifflin

Author: Warner Mifflin

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 2021-05-21

Total Pages: 613

ISBN-13: 1644531860

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In The Writings of Warner Mifflin: Forgotten Quaker Abolitionist of the Revolutionary Era Gary B. Nash and Michael R. McDowell present the correspondence, petitions and memorials to state and federal legislative bodies, semi-autobiographical essays, and other materials of the key figure in the U.S. abolitionist movement between the end of the American Revolution and the Jefferson presidency. Virtually unknown to Americans—schoolbooks ignore him, academic historians barely nod at him; the public knows him not at all--Mifflin has been brought to life in Gary B. Nash’s recent biography, Warner Mifflin: Unflinching Quaker Abolitionist (2017). This volume provides an array of insights into the mind of a conscience-bound pacifist Quaker who became instrumental in making Kent County, Delaware a bastion of free blacks liberated from slavery and a seedbed of a reparationist doctrine that insisted that enslavers owed “restitution” to manumitted Africans and their descendants. Mifflin's writings also show how he became the most skilled lobbyist of the antislavery campaigners who haunted the legislative chambers of North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania as well as the halls of the Continental Congress and the First and Second Federal Congresses. An opening introduction and introductions to each of the five chronologically arranged parts of the book provide context for the documents and a narrative of the life of this remarkable American.

The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Retirement Series, Volume 7
The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Retirement Series, Volume 7

Author: Thomas Jefferson

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2011-01-10

Total Pages: 841

ISBN-13: 1400838657

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The 526 documents printed in this volume run from 28 November 1813 to 30 September 1814. During this period Jefferson reviews the extant sources on the 1765 Stamp Act crisis to aid William Wirt, a Patrick Henry scholar; records his largely positive impressions of George Washington; and updates a reading list for law students that he had initially drawn up forty years earlier. In the spring of 1814 Jefferson becomes a trustee of the Albemarle Academy, the earliest direct ancestor of the University of Virginia. He is soon actively involved in planning for its establishment, helping to draft rules for governance of the academy's trustees and propose funding options, and he lays out an expansive vision for its future as an institution of higher learning. Jefferson also exchanges ideas on collegiate education with such respected scholars as Thomas Cooper and José Corrêa da Serra. Jefferson's wide-ranging correspondence includes a temperate response to a lengthy letter from Miles King urging the retired president to reflect on his personal religion, and a diplomatic but noncommittal reply to a proposal by Edward Coles that the author of the Declaration of Independence employ his prestige to help abolish slavery. Having learned of the British destruction late in August 1814 of the public buildings in Washington, Jefferson offers his massive book collection as a replacement for the Library of Congress. The nucleus for one of the world's great public libraries is formed early in 1815 when the nation purchases Jefferson's 6,707 volumes. Some images inside the book are unavailable due to digital copyright restrictions.

War No More: Three Centuries of American Antiwar & Peace Writing (LOA #278)
War No More: Three Centuries of American Antiwar & Peace Writing (LOA #278)

Author: Lawrence Rosenwald

Publisher: Library of America

Published: 2016-06-14

Total Pages: 1115

ISBN-13: 1598534742

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A powerful collection of essential American antiwar writings, from the Revolution to the war on terror—featuring over 150 eloquent, provocative voices for peace Library of America presents an unprecedented tribute to a great American literary tradition. War has been a reality of the American experience from the founding of the nation and in every generation there have been dedicated and passionate visionaries who have responded to this reality with vital calls for peace. Spanning from the American Revolution to the war on terror, War No More gathers the essential texts of this uniquely American antiwar tradition in one volume for the first time. Classic expressions of conscience like Thoreau’s seminal “Civil Disobedience” lay the groundwork for such influential modern theorists of nonviolence as David Dellinger, Thomas Merton, and Barbara Deming. The long arc of the American antiwar movement is vividly traced in the urgent appeals of activists, made in soaring oratory and galvanizing song, and in dramatic dispatches from the front lines of antiwar protests. The voices of veterans, from the Civil War to the Iraq War, are prominently represented, as is the firsthand testimony of conscientious objectors. Contemporary writers—including Barbara Kingsolver, Jonathan Schell, Nicholson Baker, and Jane Hirshfield—demonstrate the ongoing richness of this literature in the years since September 11, 2001. Featuring more than 150 eloquent and provocative writers in all, War No More is a bible for activists, a go-to resource for scholars and students, and an inspiring and fascinating story for every reader interested in the crosscurrents of war and peace in American history. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.