A TESTIMONY GIVEN FORTH FROM OUR YEARLY-MEETING, HELD AT PHILADELPHIA, FOR PENNSYLVANIA AND NEW-JERSEY, BY ADJOURNMENTS, FROM THE 29TH DAY OF THE NINTH MONTH TO THE 4TH OF THE TENTH MONTH INCLUSIVE, 1777.
[Philadelphia: 1777]. Printed broadside, 10-1/4" x 7-3/4." Docketed in ink on verso, with some bleedthrough affecting a couple of letters and with several blank margin pinholes. Else Very Good. Signed in type "by Order and on Behalf of the Yearly Meeting, by ISAAC JACKSON, CLERK."
Philadelphia Quakers issued this rare broadside in the midst of Revolution, in support of civil liberty, religious freedom, and the Quaker Exiles. "A Number of our Friends having been imprisoned and banished, unheard, from their Families, under a Charge and Insinuation that 'they have in their general Conduct and Conversation evidenced a Disposition inimical to the Cause of America;' and from some Publications intimating that 'there is strong Reason to apprehend that these Persons maintain a Correspondence highly prejudicial to the public Safety. . . we think it necessary publicly to declare, that we are led out of all Wars and Fightings by the Principle of Grace and Truth..."
On religious grounds, Quakers refused to swear allegiance to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. "These Quakers were imprisoned for security reasons by the Revolutionary Council of Pennsylvania" [Howes P191]. "These freemen, principally Quakers, were imprisoned in consequence of their refusal 'not to depart from their dwelling-houses and engage to refrain from doing anything injurious to the United States, by speaking, writing, or otherwise'..." [Sabin 59610].
When British forces threatened invasion of Philadelphia in 1777, Quakers refused to aid in the city's defense. In the Fall of 1777 a fabricated letter, purportedly from a 'Yearly Meeting,' disclosed that Quakers had aided the British. The Second Continental Congress ordered the arrest and exile of twenty prominent Quakers. From September, 1777 through April, 1778, they were incarcerated without trial in the frontier town of Winchester, Virginia, near the site of an American prisoner of war camp.
Sabin 94920. Evans 15302. Hildeburn 3638. Not at AAS online site. Item #39866
Price: $5,000.00