The Journal of John Woolman
With an Introduction by . Boston : James R. Osgood & Co.
IN John Woolman the great antislavery movement may be said to have actively begun. He was born early in the last century, at Mount Holly, New Jersey, and in due time became a tailor by trade; but he early relinquished his calling, and spent his time chiefly in going to and fro among the Quakers, to whose society he belonged, and animating them to a consciousness of the iniquity of holding slaves ; and he was mainly instrumental in their ceasing to do so. He was also “ under a concern ” to press forward in many other good works, some of which have since been taken up as reforms, and others remanded among the impossibilities. He was one of the first teetotalers, but the most rigorous water-drinker of our day would hardly be willing to follow John Woolman in retrenching and finally destroying a very modest business, because it led him into a vain and superfluous manner of living ; or in refusing coffee and sugar because they were the products of slave labor; or in wearing undyed garments because dyes were used in cloth to conceal dirt, “and hiding that which is not clean by coloring our garments seems contrary to the sweetness of sincerity" ; or in refusing to send letters by post, lest he should share in the guilt attaching to the cruel overworking of horses and post-boys in making the rapid trips of the stage-coaches. John Woolman was something more than incarnate conscience, he was incarnate scruple ; in his endeavor to make his life Christ-like and blameless he went, like other ascetics, further than Christ himself taught by example. But he was a saintly soul, however painful. At the bottom even of his absurdities there was a grain of sense, and in all he did his motive was truly loving and good.
His intuitions in regard to slavery were vivid and unerring. Long before Jefferson had phrased it he had said “ that liberty was the right of all men equally ”; and no observer of Southern society since has had a keener eye for the bad effects of slavery upon the general character. In that day even Quakers dealt in slaves, and Woolman writes : “ I saw in these Southern Provinces so many vices and corruptions increased by this trade and way of life, that it appeared to me as a dark gloominess hanging over the land ; and,” he adds with prophetic forecast of evils that have since befallen, “though now many willingly run into it, yet in future the consequences will be grievous to posterity.”
John Woolman’s Journal, beyond most books, may be read with edification and pleasure. It is good to be in the intimacy of so singularly pure, truthful, and serviceable a soul, and it is amusing to find such intense scrupulosity set forth in terms so quaint and sincere. The Journal is a well of the best English, and in reading it one feels all Henry Crabb Robinson’s amazement : “An illiterate tailor, he writes in a style of the most exquisite purity and grace. His moral qualities are transferred to his writings.” There is in the whole, also, a flavor that makes it inexpressibly fascinating. Thinking of marriage, he says : “ My heart was turned to the Lord with desires that he would give me wisdom to proceed therein agreeably to his will, and lie was pleased to give me a well-inclined damsel,” to whom he was married. He was sorely tried about wearing dyed raiment of any kind, but he says : “I felt easy to wear my garments heretofore made, and continued to do so for about nine months, .... when, being deeply bowed in spirit before the Lord, I was made willing to submit to what I apprehended was required of me, and when I returned home got a hat of the natural color of the fur.”When about to sail for England, he “feels a draught in his mind towards the steerage of the ship ” ; and being pressed for his reasons against going in the cabin, he answered that he had observed “on the outside of that part of the ship where the cabin was sundry sorts of carved work and imagery,” and in the cabin “ some superfluity of workmanship of several sorts ” ; and as these things enhanced the cost of passage, “ he felt a scruple with regard to paying money to he applied to such purposes.” In this way, without intending it, John Woolman is a humorist of the rarest quality ; and we cannot help suspecting that the love borne him by Charles Lamb, who said, “Get the writings of John Woolman by heart,” was quite as much for the devoted reformer’s unintended humorousness as because of gifts in exhortation, though of course he must have loved a soul so lowly, so simple, and so brave, and must have enjoyed the beauty of his religious thought.
The Introduction to this edition, by Mr. Whittier, is written with a tender appreciation of Woolman’s character and writings, and is a satisfactory study of his circumstances as well as of his work. In a word, Mr. Whittier speaks of him with the reverence which you expect from one of the truest Friends of our day for one of the best of any day; with the grateful honor due from an Abolitionist to the first of the Abolitionists. When you read “John Woolman’s Journal,” you think that it needs no comment; when you read Mr. Whittier’s Introduction, you feel that it needed just that.