This volume explores the significant connections between the Quaker community and the abolitionist cause in America. The case studies that make up the collection mainly focus on the greater Philadelphia area, a hotbed of the abolitionist movement and the location of the first American abolition society founded in 1775. Despite the importance of Quakers to the abolitionist movement, their significance has been largely overlooked in the existing historiography. These studies will be of interest to scholars of slavery and abolition, religious history, Atlantic studies and American social and...

This book is the first to examine in detail the onset of the American Revolution through the prism of friendship, focusing on the friendship between future US president John Adams and leading American Loyalist Jonathan Sewall. It is part biography, exploring how Adams and Sewall consciously shaped each other's development, and part political history, exploring their intriguing quest to clean up colonial politics. It is also part literary history, examining how the writings of both men culminated in an extraordinary series of public letters published in 1774 and 1775 on the eve of the...