Writings of Warner Mifflin - Forgotten Quaker Abolitionist of the Revolutionary Era

This volume represents the written record of the America's most under-appreciated abolitionist, a man who became the conscience of the new nation in the aftermath of the American Revolution. In about 150 documents, readers will find the literary record of a man who devoted his life to that newly born nation, which he hoped to rescue from its continued embrace of slavery.

List of contents

Illustrations                                                                                                           

Editorial Apparatus

Abbreviations                                                                                                                          

Introduction

                                                                                                                           

Part One                                                                                                                                 

Before the Revolution                                                                                                           

Warner Mifflin's First Deed of Manumission, ca. mid-1766                                                     

To John Pemberton, September 22, 1774                                                                                

Warner Mifflin's Second Deed of Manumission, October 22, 1774                                         

Warner Mifflin's Third Deed of Manumission, January 9, 1775                                               

Part Two

The Revolutionary Years                                                                                                         

Warner Mifflin's Freedom Pass for Manumitted Slave, February 15, 1777                               

To Unknown Friend, October 16, 1778                                                                                   

To Alexander Huston, January 17, 1779                                                                                   

Mifflin's Statement Concerning His Refusal to Use and Circulate Continental Currency, August, 1779                                                                                                                                        

From Rebecca Jones, August, 1779                                                                                          

To Nicholas Waln, December 1780                                                                                         

To Henry Drinker, January 11, 1781                                                                                        

To Moses Brown, July 26, 1781                                                                                               

To John Willis, Elias Hicks, and Others, July 26, 1781                                                 

To French Naval Officers at Newport, Rhode Island, [after August 6, 1781]               

To James Pemberton, August 26[?], 1781                                                                                 

To John Pemberton, August 26, 1781                                                                                     

To Moses Brown, October 3, 1781                                                                                          

To Thomas McKean, November 5, 1781                                                                                 

From David Cooper, December 1781                                                                                      

To John Pemberton, December 5, 1781                                                                                   

Some Remarks Proposed for the Consideration of the People of Virginia, and Particularly of Those in the Legislature and Executive Powers of Government, ca. May 1782                   

To the Speaker and House of Delegates in Virginia, The Memorial of a Committee of the People Called Quakers, May 29, 1782                                                                                      

To John Parrish, August 18, 1782                                                                                           

To Henry Drinker, September 8, 1782                                                                         

To John Parrish, October 31, 1782                                                                                         

To John Parrish, January 6, 1783                                                                                             

To James Pemberton, January 6, 1783                                                                          

To James Pemberton, January 19, 1783                                                                                    

To Henry Drinker, January 19, 1783                                                                                        

To Nicholas Van Dyke, July 16, 1783                                                                          

To the United States in Congress Assembled, The Address of the People Called Quakers, October 4, 1783                                                                                                                       

To John Parrish, October 12, 1783                                                                                          

To Nathanael Greene, October 21, 1783                                                                                

From Nathanael Greene, [late November 1783]                                                                       

To John Parrish, November 4, 1783                                                                                        

Part Three

After the Revolution                                                                                                              

To James Pemberton, December 9, 1783                                                                                

To John Parrish, December 14, 1783                                                                                     

To John Parrish, May 13, 1784                                                                              

To James Pemberton, August 17, 1784                                                                            

To John Parrish, August 27, 1784                                                                                           

To Henry Drinker?, November 16, 1784                                                                             

To James Pemberton, December 11, 1784                                                                            

To James Pemberton, January 16, 1785                                                                              

To James Pemberton, February 16, 1785                                                                             

To John Parrish, August 22, 1785                                                                                         

To the General Assembly of the Delaware State~The Memorial and Address of the People Call'd Quakers Inhabitants of This State, December 27, 1785                                              

To Daniel Mifflin, June 6, 1786                                                                                            

To John Dickinson, August 11, 1786                                                                                    

To Governor William Smallwood, August 31, 1786                                                               

To James Pemberton, December 12, 1786                                                                          

To James Pemberton, February 3, 1787                                                                               

To John Parrish, February 9, 1787                                                                                         

To John Parrish, April 30, 1787                                                                                             

To Abigail Parrish, May 13, 1787                                                                                         

To Abigail Parrish, June 4, 1787                                                                                             

To John Parrish, June 19, 1787                                                                                              

To John Parrish, June 29, 1787                                                                                           

To the Archbishop of Canterbury, June 30, 1787                                                                    

To John Parrish, July 6, 1787                                                                                              

Testimonial for Negro Grace Hicks, August 8, 1787                                                           

To Edward Stabler?, October 14, 1787                                                                                  

To Moses Brown, December 3, 1787                                                                                     

To John Parrish, December 13, 1787                                                                                      

To Thomas McKean, December 14, 1787                                                                               

To John Parrish, December 16, 1787                                                                                    

To James Pemberton, December 21, 1787                                                                              

Part Four

The Early Republic                                                                                                                

To John Parrish, April 5, 1788                                                                                     

To John Parrish, April 16, 1788                                                                                              

To John Parrish, April 19, 1788                                                                                              

To John Parrish, May 11, 1788                                                                                 

To James Pemberton, May 28, 1788                                                                                       

To John Parrish, June 23, 1788                                                                                         

To James Pemberton, November 17, 1788                                                                        

To John Parrish, November 19, 1788                                                                                

To John Parrish, November 29, 1788                                            

About the author

GARY B. NASH is a professor of history emeritus and director emeritus of the National Center for History in the Schools at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he has taught since 1966. He was co-director of the National History Standards Project in United States and World History and editor of the standards first published in 1994 with a revised edition in 1996. Nash served as President of the Organization of American Historians in 1994-95 and is an elected member of the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Antiquarian Society, and the Society of American Historians. He was a member of the National Park Service Second Century Commission, which published its report to the U.S. President and Congress in 2010. He also coauthored Imperiled Promise: The State of History in the National Park Service (2012). He has published many books and essays in his fields of Early American History, African American History, and Native American History. Among them are Quakers and Politics: Pennsylvania, 1681-1726 (1968); Red, White, and Black: The Peoples of Early America, also published in Spanish, 7 editions (1974, 1982, 1992, 2000, 2006, 2010, 2015); The Urban Crucible: Social Change, Political Consciousness and the Origins of the American Revolution (1979); Forging Freedom: The Formation of Philadelphia's Black Community, 1720-1840 (1989); Race and Revolutions (1993); Freedom by Degrees: Emancipation and Its Aftermath in Pennsylvania, 1690-1840, co-author (1994); History on Trial: Culture Wars, and the Teaching of the Past, co-author (1998); Forbidden Love: The Hidden History of Mixed-Race America (1999; revised ed., 2010); First City: Philadelphia and the Forging of Historical Memory (2002); African American Lives: The Struggle for Freedom, with Clay Carson and Emma Lapsansky (2005); The Unknown American Revolution: The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America (2005); The Forgotten Fifth: African Americans in the Age of Revolution (2006); Friends of Liberty: Three Patriots, Two Revolutions, and a Tragic Betrayal in the New Nation: Thomas Jefferson, Tadeuz Kosciuszko, and Agrippa Hull, with Graham Hodges (2008); The Liberty Bell (2010); Revolutionary Founders, coedited with Alfred Young and Ray Raphael (2012); and Warner Mifflin: Unflinching Quaker Abolitionist (2017). He currently resides in Pacific Palisades, California.
 
MICHAEL R. MCDOWELL, for more than fifteen years, has researched eighteenth-century Delaware Quaker Warner Mifflin's antislavery activism using primary documents, including Mifflin's extensive correspondence. McDowell is a member of the board of the historic Hale-Byrnes House in Delaware and has published articles on Mifflin and an early Delaware Quaker antislavery petition in Delaware publications. He has also given presentations on Warner Mifflin's antislavery activism at Camden Delaware Friends Meeting (2005), Newark Delaware Friends Meeting (2015), and as a part of a 2013 symposium in Wilmington, "Let This Voice be Heard: 18th Century Abolitionists." McDowell also presented "Laying the Track for the Underground Railroad: Warner Mifflin's Eighteenth-Century Antislavery Legacy in the Delmarva Peninsula" at the 2016 Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Conference. He currently resides in Newark, Delaware.

Summary

Presents the correspondence, petitions, and memorials to state and federal legislative bodies, semi-autobiographical essays, and other materials of the key figure in the US abolitionist movement between the end of the American Revolution and the Jefferson presidency.

Product details

• Authors: Warner Mifflin, Gary B. Mcdowell Nash
• Assisted by: Michael R McDowell (Editor), Michael R. McDowell (Editor), Gary B Nash (Editor), Gary B. Nash (Editor)
• Publisher: Associated universities press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.05.2021
• EAN: 9781644531853
• ISBN: 978-1-64453-185-3
• No. of pages: 608
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History; Non-fiction book > History > Miscellaneous