1763 Makes a five months' tour of the northern colonies for the purpose of inspecting the post-offices. 1764 Defeated by the Penn faction for reelection to the Assembly; sent to England as agent for Pennsylvania. 1765 Endeavors to prevent the passage of the Stamp Act. 1766 Examined before the House of Commons relative to the passage of the Stamp Act; appointed agent of Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Georgia; visits Göttingen University. 1767 Travels in France and is presented at court. 1769 Procures a telescope for Harvard College. 1772 Elected Associé Etranger of the French Academy. 1774 Dismissed from the office of Postmaster-General; influences Thomas Paine to emigrate to America. 1775 Returns to America; chosen a delegate to the Second Continental Congress; placed on the committee of secret correspondence; appointed one of the commissioners to secure the cooperation of Canada. 1776 Placed on the committee to draft a Declaration of Independence; chosen president of the Constitutional Committee of Pennsylvania; sent to France as agent of the colonies. 1778 Concludes treaties of defensive alliance, and of amity and commerce; is received at court. 1779 Appointed Minister Plenipotentiary to France. 1780 Appoints Paul Jones commander of the "Alliance." 1782 Signs the preliminary articles of peace. 1783 Signs the definite treaty of peace. 1785 Returns to America; is chosen President of Pennsylvania; reelected 1786. 1787 Reelected President; sent as delegate to the convention for framing a Federal Constitution. 1788 Retires from public life. 1790 April 17, dies. His grave is in the churchyard at Fifth and Arch streets, Philadelphia. EDITOR.] INTRODUCTORY NOTE JOHN WOOLMAN was born at Northampton, N. J., in 1720, and died at York, England, in 1772. He was the child of Quaker parents, and from his youth was a zealous member of the Society of Friends. His "Journal,” published posthumously in 1774, sufficiently describes his way of life and the spirit in which he did his work; but his extreme humility prevents him from making clear the importance of the part he played in the movement against slaveholding among the Quakers. During the earlier years of their settlement in America, the Friends took part in the traffic in slaves with apparently as little hesitation as their fellow colonists; but in 1671 George Fox, visiting the Barbados, was struck by the inconsistency of slaveholding with the religious principles of his Society. His protests, along with those of others, led to the growth of an agitation which spread from section to section. In 1742, Woolman, then a young clerk in the employment of a storekeeper in New Jersey, was asked to make out a bill of sale for a negro woman; and the scruples which then occurred to him were the beginning of a life-long activity against the traffic. Shortly afterward he began his laborious foot-journeys, pleading everywhere with his co-religionists, and inspiring others to take up the crusade. The result of the agitation was that the various Yearly Meetings one by one decided that emancipation was a religious duty; and within twenty years after Woolman's death the practise of slavery had ceased in the Society of Friends. But his influence did not stop there, for no small part of the enthusiasm of the general emancipation movement is traceable to his labors. His own words in this "Journal," of an extraordinary simplicity and charm, are the best expression of a personality which in its ardor, purity of motive, breadth of sympathy, and clear spiritual insight, gives Woolman a place among the uncanonized saints of America. THE JOURNAL OF JOHN WOOLMAN (1720-1772) CHAPTER I 1720-1742 His Birth and Parentage-Some Account of the Operations of Divine Grace on his Mind in his Youth-His first Appearance in the Ministry-And his Considerations, while Young, on the Keeping of Slaves. I HAVE often felt a motion of love to leave some hints in writing of my experience of the goodness of God, and now, in the thirty-sixth year of my age, I begin this work. I was born in Northampton, in Burlington County, West Jersey, in the year 1720. Before I was seven years old I began to be acquainted with the operations of Divine love. Through the care of my parents, I was taught to read nearly as soon as I was capable of it; and as I went from school one day, I remember that while my companions were playing by the way, I went forward out of sight, and, sitting down, I read the twenty-second chapter of Revelation: "He showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb, &c." In reading it, my mind was drawn to seek after that pure habitation which I then believed God had prepared for his servants. The place where I sat, and the sweetness that attended my mind, remain fresh in my memory. This, and the like gracious visitations, had such an effect upon me that when boys used ill language it troubled me; and, through the continued mercies of God, I was preserved from that evil. The pious instructions of my parents were often fresh in my mind, when I happened to be among wicked children, and were of use to me. Having a large family of children, they used fre |
