It is not a time for delay

What happened

John Woolman had come to the yearly meeting of 1758 with a heavy heart. Some Friends that summer had bought slaves in the face of the meeting's advice, and Philadelphia's monthly meeting had asked the yearly meeting to settle the matter. Woolman prayed through the sittings and held his tongue on everything else. When the case came up at last, several faithful Friends spoke, and some asked that the meeting wait for the Lord to open a way. Woolman stood and said that many slaves on this continent were oppressed, that their cries had reached the ears of the Most High, and that it was not a time for delay. Friends who held slaves, he said, should set aside self-interest and the desire of getting estates. Nobody opposed him in public. The meeting passed a fuller minute than any before it and named Friends to visit the slaveholders. Rothbard says the lone Quaker swept the day and calls what followed the voluntary abolition of slavery by a church, a beacon to all Americans. By 1774 every willing Quaker in Pennsylvania and New Jersey had freed his slaves, and by 1780, Rothbard says, every Quaker had.