1688 Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery

1688 Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery
The petition was the first American public document to protest slavery. It was also one of the first written public declarations of universal human rights.
Created	April 1688
Location	Haverford College Quaker and Special Collections
Signatories	Francis Daniel Pastorius, Garret Hendericks, Derick op den Graeff, and Abraham op den Graeff
Purpose	Protest against the institution of slavery.

The 1688 Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery was the first protest against African-American slavery made by a religious body in the English colonies. It was drafted by Francis Daniel Pastorius and signed by him and three other Quakers living in Germantown, Pennsylvania (now part of Philadelphia) on behalf of the Germantown Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends. It was forwarded to the monthly, quarterly, and yearly meetings without any action being taken on it. According to John Greenleaf Whittier, the original document was discovered in 1844 by the Philadelphia antiquarian Nathan Kite and published in The Friend (Vol. XVIII, No. 16).

Pennsylvania was founded in 1682 by William Penn as an English colony where people from any country and faith could settle, free from religious persecution. In payment of a debt to Penn's father, Penn had received from King Charles II of England a large land grant west of New Jersey which King Charles II of England named Pennsylvania after William's father, Admiral Penn. Penn had become a friend of George Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends, called Quakers after their unique way of speaking in Meeting for Worship. Penn had converted to Quakerism and had been imprisoned several times for his beliefs. The king allowed Penn to establish a proprietary colony where Penn appointed the governor and judges but established an otherwise democratic system of government with freedom of religion, fair trials, elected representatives, and separation of church and state.