Nonviolent resistance c : the American Tradition

1661 declaration to King Charles II Early Quakerism * Acting as individuals when ‘prompted’ in silent worship * Emigrated to America from 1656 – Pennsylvania founded 1681

Why were Quakers in North America unable to consolidate their ‘peaceable kingdom’? Edward Hicks, The Peaceable Kingdom (1826) * dominated Pennsylvania assembly until 1756 * persecuted e.g.by Massachusetts puritans ‘The central problem was that the pacifist state was part of a larger colonial system that vehemently rejected nonviolence’ - Mark Kurlansky, Nonviolence: the History of a Dangerous Idea (New York, 2006), p.65 * Seen as unpatriotic, and ‘enemies of liberty’

Why is John Woolman ( ) important to the history of nonviolent resistance? ‘The most significant figure in the early history of nonviolence in the North American colonies’ - Staughton and Alice Lynd, Nonviolence in America: A Documentary History (New York, 1995), p. 3 Woolman speaking against tax used for military purposes *Convinced many Quakers that slaveholding was “a practice inconsistent with the Christian religion” and refused to pay taxes used “for carrying on wars” * Sought to identify the inherent violence in many things – used persuasion and his own lifestyle to oppose it – built a movement

Revolutionary America Nathaniel Currier, The Destruction of Tea at Boston Harbour (1846) 1765 Stamp Act – 1767 Townshend Duties – 1773 Tea Act – 16 December Boston Tea Party – 1774 Coercive Acts

Could America have gained independence from Britain in the late eighteenth century without the use of violence? ‘Probably at no other time in U.S. history was nonviolence so alien to the mainstream of this country’s social thought as in the Revolutionary generation.’ - Lynds, pp. xvi-xvii * Militant patriotism – patriotic clergy – the United States born out of this great military victory? ‘The case can be made that it was not the American Revolution that secured independence from Britain…’ - Kurlansky, p. 5 * 80,000 involved in ‘nonviolent sects’ – successful nonviolent resistance to Stamp Act and Townshend Acts – blocking of Massachusetts court September 1774 * Provincial boycotts of British products > Continental Congress met September- October 1774 > Continental ‘Association’, adopted by all colonies except New York and Georgia * Britain, over-committed in Europe, conceded independence of the colonies – crucial role of France and Spain – seeing as a mass nonviolent resistance would have also been costly for Britain, this may have happened anyway (Kurlansky, p. 80)

Post-revolutionary America “overcome evil with good” Anglo-American War, led to questioning of morality of Revolutionary War e.g. War Inconsistent with the Religion of Jesus Christ by David Low Dodge Nonviolence became embedded in abolitionist movement: New England Non- Resistance Society established in 1838

What is the significance of Henry David Thoreau ( ) in the history of nonviolent resistance? Henry David Thoreau in 1856 Civil Disobedience published in Written after night in Massachusetts prison in July 1846 for not paying poll tax for 6 years as doing so was “a bloody and violent measure” “Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavour to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? - convinced that withdrawing support from government and its agents could change things Influenced Tolstoy, Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr