Chapter 6. Quest for Martyrdom
- Set of attitudes which fit textbook definition (myth) of American democracy
- belief in equality
- informality
- toleration
- general creed, rigidly and obstinately adhered to
- Those who ventured to New England were not warmly greeted
- Puritans wanted to keep their community pure
- encountered a similar singlemindedness of another orthodoxy
- legal penalties against intruders were increased (a misguided approach, as the store of Mary Dyer shows)
Chapter 7. Trials of Governing: The Oath.
- life in Europe had not trained Quakers to understand government responsibility
- America was a new experiment
- and, for them, a failure in this regard
- contempt for rank and custom
- refusal to remove hat
- drab costume
- became known as peculiar people
- while Quaker dogma became more fixed and uncompromising, Puritanism became more compromising
- Quakers' weaknesses and undoings in a community building program
- farmlessness
- mysticism
- insistence on personal rectitude and purity
- became too true to their teachings
- first half-century of Pennsylvania history was prosperous
- Quakers' refusal to take oaths (p. 43-48)
Chapter 8. Trials of Governing: Pacifism
- colonial wars
- becoming an integral part of European politics
- ideal environment for testing Quaker principles
- two early wars where Quakers refused to act
- King William's War -- 1689
- Queen Anne's War (War of the Spanish Succession, c. 1713
- major test
- King Georges War (war of Austrian succession)
- struggle between non-Quaker governor and Quaker community
- emergence of compromise leadership under Ben Franklin, which eventually displaced the rigid rule of Quaker minority
- Franklin's conclusions
- duty of government to protect its people
- Quakers should withdraw and let others rule and defend colony
Chapter 9. How Quakers Misjudged the Indians
- view of Indian similar to attitude toward war
- unrealistic
- inflexible
- based on false premise about human nature
- increasing, westward-flowing population
- passing like a tidal wave over Indian lands
- mighty force meeting a long-unmoved body
- Quaker policy demonstrated a spectacular lack of practical vision
- appropriation of money to Indians led to purchase of guns (by Indians) and massacre of Irish and German settlers sin western Pennsylvania
- mid 1750's led to a growing and unprecedented division of sentiment within Quaker community
- preoccupation with principles blinded them to the most obvious facts. Noble intentions only led to meddling activities.
Chapter 10. The Withdrawal
- In 1756, despite growing opposition, Quakers were still in power
- six leading Quakers in Assembly resign on June 4, 1756
- stormy 75 years of Quaker rules ended
- to many the accusation that "to govern is absolutely repugnant to the avowed principles of Quakerism" was confirmed
- abdication of political power by the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, the highest authority of Quakers in Pennsylvania
- one of Quaker's more practical decisions, though their naivete was demonstrated by their secret desire to return to power with the peace of 1760
- remained neutral during Revolutionary War
- charges of fanaticism in 1756
- charges of treason in 1776
- after withdrawal from government, Quakers turned inward to purify their sect
- attempted to build a wall against alien influences
- humanitarian currents grew stronger as political ones weakened
- joined in the abolitionist movement
- building of hospitals
- humanizing prisons and insane asylums
Chapter 11. The Curse of Perfectionism
- self-purity and perfectionism
- preoccupation (obsession) with the purity of their souls
- occasionally, Quakers in power seemed more concerned with their own principles rather than with welfare (or survival) of the province itself
- chose a solution to a problem which kept themselves pure, sometimes at the expense of others
- oaths -- sacrifice of criminal laws
- militarism -- massacre of hundreds in western Pa.
- turning inward blinded them to certain facts
- character of the Indians
- threat of western borderlands
- self-interest of other men
- Cosmopolitanism
- subject to constant persuasion, surveillance and scrutiny from afar
- powerful ruler of London Yearly Meeting
- Society of Friends had become an international conspiracy for peace and primitive Christmas perfection
- emissaries from London tried to shape Pennsylvania policy in they interests of the international Quaker community
- pushed towards rigid orthodoxy
- close ties to England
- strengthened Quakerism
- weakened influence in American society
- Insularity
- geographical
- did not move westward from original settlement
- learned or comprehended no new attitudes about their surroundings
- became "dissenters in our own country"
- instead of going to their unenlightened neighbors, they traveled from one Meeting to another to sage society from trifling faults
- made a dogma out of the absence of dogm a
- to them, a true Christian should have no creed
- haunted by fear that every compromise was a defeat, that to modity anything might be to lose everything
Related post:
The Americans: The Colonial Experience by Daniel Boorstin (Part One, Outlined). (12/8/2014)
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