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Early Modern · 18 February 1688
The Germantown Petition Against Slavery
Francis Daniel Pastorius and the Germantown Quakers
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What it is
Four Quakers ask what right anyone has to buy and keep men as slaves, and whether the golden rule is not as binding for black people as for white.
Why it lasted
The first formal protest against slavery in the American colonies. The meeting passed it upward and no one acted on it for decades.
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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