Early modern Quakers looked to their dreams to gain spiritual insight and developed a potent system of dreamwork that acted simultaneously as a device for gaining and retaining authority and as a democratizing force. Night Journeys recounts how Quakers on both sides of the Atlantic turned their sleeping experiences into powerful stories that advanced a more inclusive--but still imperial--vision of colonial and Revolutionary America.

Quakers did not keep their dreams to themselves. On the American mainland, Caribbean plantations, and in the British Isles, Quakers were competing to shape...