The Fearless Benjamin Lay

The Fearless Benjamin Lay PDF Author: Marcus Rediker
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807035939
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
The little-known story of an eighteenth-century Quaker dwarf who fiercely attacked slavery and imagined a new, more humane way of life In The Fearless Benjamin Lay, renowned historian Marcus Rediker chronicles the transatlantic life and times of a singular man—a Quaker dwarf who demanded the total, unconditional emancipation of all enslaved Africans around the world. Mocked and scorned by his contemporaries, Lay was unflinching in his opposition to slavery, often performing colorful guerrilla theater to shame slave masters, insisting that human bondage violated the fundamental principles of Christianity. He drew on his ideals to create a revolutionary way of life, one that embodied the proclamation “no justice, no peace.” Lay was born in 1682 in Essex, England. His philosophies, employments, and places of residence—spanning England, Barbados, Philadelphia, and the open seas—were markedly diverse over the course of his life. He worked as a shepherd, glove maker, sailor, and bookseller. His worldview was an astonishing combination of Quakerism, vegetarianism, animal rights, opposition to the death penalty, and abolitionism. While in Abington, Philadelphia, Lay lived in a cave-like dwelling surrounded by a library of two hundred books, and it was in this unconventional abode where he penned a fiery and controversial book against bondage, which Benjamin Franklin published in 1738. Always in motion and ever confrontational, Lay maintained throughout his life a steadfast opposition to slavery and a fierce determination to make his fellow Quakers denounce it, which they finally began to do toward the end of his life. With passion and historical rigor, Rediker situates Lay as a man who fervently embodied the ideals of democracy and equality as he practiced a unique concoction of radicalism nearly three hundred years ago. Rediker resurrects this forceful and prescient visionary, who speaks to us across the ages and whose innovative approach to activism is a gift, transforming how we consider the past and how we might imagine the future.

The Fearless Benjamin Lay

The Fearless Benjamin Lay PDF Author: Marcus Rediker
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807035939
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Get Book

Book Description
The little-known story of an eighteenth-century Quaker dwarf who fiercely attacked slavery and imagined a new, more humane way of life In The Fearless Benjamin Lay, renowned historian Marcus Rediker chronicles the transatlantic life and times of a singular man—a Quaker dwarf who demanded the total, unconditional emancipation of all enslaved Africans around the world. Mocked and scorned by his contemporaries, Lay was unflinching in his opposition to slavery, often performing colorful guerrilla theater to shame slave masters, insisting that human bondage violated the fundamental principles of Christianity. He drew on his ideals to create a revolutionary way of life, one that embodied the proclamation “no justice, no peace.” Lay was born in 1682 in Essex, England. His philosophies, employments, and places of residence—spanning England, Barbados, Philadelphia, and the open seas—were markedly diverse over the course of his life. He worked as a shepherd, glove maker, sailor, and bookseller. His worldview was an astonishing combination of Quakerism, vegetarianism, animal rights, opposition to the death penalty, and abolitionism. While in Abington, Philadelphia, Lay lived in a cave-like dwelling surrounded by a library of two hundred books, and it was in this unconventional abode where he penned a fiery and controversial book against bondage, which Benjamin Franklin published in 1738. Always in motion and ever confrontational, Lay maintained throughout his life a steadfast opposition to slavery and a fierce determination to make his fellow Quakers denounce it, which they finally began to do toward the end of his life. With passion and historical rigor, Rediker situates Lay as a man who fervently embodied the ideals of democracy and equality as he practiced a unique concoction of radicalism nearly three hundred years ago. Rediker resurrects this forceful and prescient visionary, who speaks to us across the ages and whose innovative approach to activism is a gift, transforming how we consider the past and how we might imagine the future.

The Fearless Benjamin Lay

The Fearless Benjamin Lay PDF Author: Marcus Rediker
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807035920
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
The little-known story of an eighteenth-century Quaker dwarf who fiercely attacked slavery and imagined a new, more humane way of life In The Fearless Benjamin Lay, renowned historian Marcus Rediker chronicles the transatlantic life and times of a singular man—a Quaker dwarf who demanded the total, unconditional emancipation of all enslaved Africans around the world. Mocked and scorned by his contemporaries, Lay was unflinching in his opposition to slavery, often performing colorful guerrilla theater to shame slave masters, insisting that human bondage violated the fundamental principles of Christianity. He drew on his ideals to create a revolutionary way of life, one that embodied the proclamation “no justice, no peace.” Lay was born in 1682 in Essex, England. His philosophies, employments, and places of residence—spanning England, Barbados, Philadelphia, and the open seas—were markedly diverse over the course of his life. He worked as a shepherd, glove maker, sailor, and bookseller. His worldview was an astonishing combination of Quakerism, vegetarianism, animal rights, opposition to the death penalty, and abolitionism. While in Abington, Philadelphia, Lay lived in a cave-like dwelling surrounded by a library of two hundred books, and it was in this unconventional abode where he penned a fiery and controversial book against bondage, which Benjamin Franklin published in 1738. Always in motion and ever confrontational, Lay maintained throughout his life a steadfast opposition to slavery and a fierce determination to make his fellow Quakers denounce it, which they finally began to do toward the end of his life. With passion and historical rigor, Rediker situates Lay as a man who fervently embodied the ideals of democracy and equality as he practiced a unique concoction of radicalism nearly three hundred years ago. Rediker resurrects this forceful and prescient visionary, who speaks to us across the ages and whose innovative approach to activism is a gift, transforming how we consider the past and how we might imagine the future.

The Fearless Benjamin Lay

The Fearless Benjamin Lay PDF Author: Marcus Rediker
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1786634732
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
The Fearless Benjamin Lay chronicles the transatlantic life and times of a singular and astonishing man-a Quaker dwarf who became one of the first ever to demand the total, unconditional emancipation of all enslaved Africans around the world. He performed public guerrilla theatre to shame slave masters, insisting that human bondage violated the fundamental principles of Christianity. He wrote a fiery, controversial book against bondage that Benjamin Franklin published in 1738. He lived in a cave, made his own clothes, refused to consume anything produced by slave labour, championed animal rights, and embraced vegetarianism. He acted on his ideals to create a new, practical, revolutionary way of life.

Prophet Against Slavery

Prophet Against Slavery PDF Author: David Lester
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807081795
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 122

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Book Description
The revolutionary life of an 18th-century dwarf activist who was among the first to fight against slavery and animal cruelty. Prophet Against Slavery is an action-packed chronicle of the remarkable and radical Benjamin Lay, based on the award-winning biography by Marcus Rediker that sparked the Quaker community to re-embrace Lay after 280 years of disownment. Graphic novelist David Lester brings the full scope of Lay’s activism and ideas to life. Born in 1682 to a humble Quaker family in Essex, England, Lay was a forceful and prescient visionary. Understanding the fundamental evil that slavery represented, he would unflinchingly use guerrilla theatre tactics and direct action to shame slave owners and traders in his community. The prejudice that Lay suffered as a dwarf and a hunchback, as well as his devout faith, informed his passion for human and animal liberation. Exhibiting stamina, fortitude, and integrity in the face of the cruelties practiced against what he called his “fellow creatures,” he was often a lonely voice that spoke truth to power. Lester’s beautiful imagery and storytelling, accompanied by afterwords from Rediker and Paul Buhle, capture the radicalism, the humor, and the humanity of this truly modern figure. A testament to the impact each of us can make, Prophet Against Slavery brings Lay’s prophetic vision to a new generation of young activists who today echo his call of 300 years ago: “No justice, no peace!”

The Amistad Rebellion

The Amistad Rebellion PDF Author: Marcus Rediker
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 014312398X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
"Vividly drawn . . . this stunning book honors the achievement of the captive Africans who fought for—and won—their freedom.”—The Philadelphia Tribune A unique account of the most successful slave rebellion in American history, now updated with a new epilogue—from the award-winning author of The Slave Ship In this powerful and highly original account, Marcus Rediker reclaims the Amistad rebellion for its true proponents: the enslaved Africans who risked death to stake a claim for freedom. Using newly discovered evidence and featuring vividly drawn portraits of the rebels, their captors, and their abolitionist allies, Rediker reframes the story to show how a small group of courageous men fought and won an epic battle against Spanish and American slaveholders and their governments. The successful Amistad rebellion changed the very nature of the struggle against slavery. As a handful of self-emancipated Africans steered their own course for freedom, they opened a way for millions to follow. This edition includes a new epilogue about the author's trip to Sierra Leona to search for Lomboko, the slave-trading factory where the Amistad Africans were incarcerated, and other relics and connections to the Amistad rebellion, especially living local memory of the uprising and the people who made it.

Warner Mifflin

Warner Mifflin PDF Author: Gary B. Nash
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 081229436X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
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.

Let This Voice Be Heard

Let This Voice Be Heard PDF Author: Maurice Jackson
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812202341
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 398

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Book Description
Anthony Benezet (1713-84), universally recognized by the leaders of the eighteenth-century antislavery movement as its founder, was born to a Huguenot family in Saint-Quentin, France. As a boy, Benezet moved to Holland, England, and, in 1731, Philadelphia, where he rose to prominence in the Quaker antislavery community. In transforming Quaker antislavery sentiment into a broad-based transatlantic movement, Benezet translated ideas from diverse sources—Enlightenment philosophy, African travel narratives, Quakerism, practical life, and the Bible—into concrete action. He founded the African Free School in Philadelphia, and such future abolitionist leaders as Absalom Jones and James Forten studied at Benezet's school and spread his ideas to broad social groups. At the same time, Benezet's correspondents, including Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Rush, Abbé Raynal, Granville Sharp, and John Wesley, gave his ideas an audience in the highest intellectual and political circles. In this wide-ranging intellectual biography, Maurice Jackson demonstrates how Benezet mediated Enlightenment political and social thought, narratives of African life written by slave traders themselves, and the ideas and experiences of ordinary people to create a new antislavery critique. Benezet's use of travel narratives challenged proslavery arguments about an undifferentiated, "primitive" African society. Benezet's empirical evidence, laid on the intellectual scaffolding provided by the writings of Hutcheson, Wallace, and Montesquieu, had a profound influence, from the high-culture writings of the Marquis de Condorcet to the opinions of ordinary citizens. When the great antislavery spokesmen Jacques-Pierre Brissot in France and William Wilberforce in England rose to demand abolition of the slave trade, they read into the record of the French National Assembly and the British Parliament extensive unattributed quotations from Benezet's writings, a fitting tribute to the influence of his work.

Outlaws of the Atlantic

Outlaws of the Atlantic PDF Author: Marcus Rediker
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 080703410X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
This maritime history "from below" exposes the history-making power of common sailors, slaves, pirates, and other outlaws at sea in the era of the tall ship. In Outlaws of the Atlantic, award-winning historian Marcus Rediker turns maritime history upside down. He explores the dramatic world of maritime adventure, not from the perspective of admirals, merchants, and nation-states but from the viewpoint of commoners—sailors, slaves, indentured servants, pirates, and other outlaws from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth century. Bringing together their seafaring experiences for the first time, Outlaws of the Atlantic is an unexpected and compelling peoples’ history of the “age of sail.” With his signature bottom-up approach and insight, Rediker reveals how the “motley”—that is, multiethnic—crews were a driving force behind the American Revolution; that pirates, enslaved Africans, and other outlaws worked together to subvert capitalism; and that, in the era of the tall ship, outlaws challenged authority from below deck. By bringing these marginal seafaring characters into the limelight, Rediker shows how maritime actors have shaped history that many have long regarded as national and landed. And by casting these rebels by sea as cosmopolitan workers of the world, he reminds us that to understand the rise of capitalism, globalization, and the formation of race and class, we must look to the sea.

Simplicity, Equality, and Slavery

Simplicity, Equality, and Slavery PDF Author: John M. Chenoweth
Publisher: University Press of Florida
ISBN: 168340016X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
"A significant empirical contribution to the transdisciplinary study of eighteenthcentury Atlantic history and the colonial history of the Christian Church."--Dan Hicks, author of The Garden of the World: An Historical Archaeology of Sugar Landscapes in the Eastern Caribbean "Thoughtfully applies practice theory to the concept of Quakerism as a religion, while simultaneously examining how Quaker practices shaped the lives not only of practitioners but those they enslaved."--James A. Delle, author of The Colonial Caribbean: Landscapes of Power in the Plantation System "A nuanced look at Quakerism and its relationship with slavery."--Patricia M. Samford, author of Subfloor Pits and the Archaeology of Slavery in Colonial Virginia Inspired by the Quaker ideals of simplicity, equality, and peace, a group of white planters formed a community in the British Virgin Islands during the eighteenth century. Yet they lived in a slave society, and nearly all their members held enslaved people. In this book, John Chenoweth examines how the community navigated the contradictions of Quakerism and plantation ownership. Using archaeological and archival information, Chenoweth reveals how a web of connections led to the community's establishment, how Quaker religious practices intersected with other aspects of daily life in the Caribbean, and how these practices were altered to fit a slavery-based economy and society. He also examines how dissent and schism eventually brought about the end of the community after just one generation. This is a fascinating study of the ways religious ideals can be interpreted in everyday practice to adapt to different local contexts. A volume in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series

Breaking Loose Together

Breaking Loose Together PDF Author: Marjoleine Kars
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807860379
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Ten years before the start of the American Revolution, backcountry settlers in the North Carolina Piedmont launched their own defiant bid for economic independence and political liberty. The Regulator Rebellion of 1766-71 pitted thousands of farmers, many of them religious radicals inspired by the Great Awakening, against political and economic elites who opposed the Regulators' proposed reforms. The conflict culminated on May 16, 1771, when a colonial militia defeated more than 2,000 armed farmers in a pitched battle near Hillsborough. At least 6,000 Regulators and sympathizers were forced to swear their allegiance to the government as the victorious troops undertook a punitive march through Regulator settlements. Seven farmers were hanged. Using sources that include diaries, church minutes, legal papers, and the richly detailed accounts of the Regulators themselves, Marjoleine Kars delves deeply into the world and ideology of free rural colonists. She examines the rebellion's economic, religious, and political roots and explores its legacy in North Carolina and beyond. The compelling story of the Regulator Rebellion reveals just how sharply elite and popular notions of independence differed on the eve of the Revolution.