A Disease in the Public Mind Read Online Free PDF Page B

century would pass before anyone else heard of it.
    In 1700, Samuel Sewall, a Massachusetts judge who was deeply troubled by his role in the 1692 witch trials, freed a black man named Adam. The slave was able to prove that his master, John Saffin, had promised him freedom if he worked hard for seven years. Saffin reneged on the promise, claiming the slave had often been disobedient and defiant. The ex-master objected to Sewall’s verdict and the judge responded in a pamphlet, The Selling of Joseph , that condemned the injustice of enslaving any human being, black or white. “It is most certain that all men, as they are sons of Adam . . . have an equal right unto liberty and all other outward comforts of life,” Sewall wrote.
    John Saffin responded in turn with a crude poem that made him one of the first Americans to argue that racial inferiority justified slavery.
    THE NEGROES CHARACTER
    Cowardly and cruel are these blacks innate
    Prone to revenge, imp of inveterate hate
    He that exasperates them, soon espies
    Mischief and Murder in their very eyes
    Libidinous, deceitful, false and Rude
    The spume issue of ingratitude
    The premises consider’d, all may tell
    How near good Joseph they are parallel. 6
    Four decades passed before another American spoke out against slavery—and made a difference in the way many people perceived it.
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    John Woolman was a twenty-two-year-old clerk in a dry goods store in Mount Holly, New Jersey. One day in 1742, he looked up from his desk,where he was adding up the day’s receipts, when his employer said, “John, I’ve sold Nancy to this gentleman. Draw up a bill of sale for her.”
    His employer and the man beside him were both Quakers—the same faith into which John Woolman had been born. Quakers believed they should try to live as if every man and woman were a priest, with a direct relationship—and responsibility—to Jesus Christ and his teachings. Reading the Bible and meditating on the sacred words often brought a message from God—“a new light”—into their lives.
    John Woolman got out a fresh sheet of paper and his quill pen. But something seemed to paralyze his arm. He could not write a word. What was happening to him? Why was a voice in his soul telling him that selling Nancy was wrong ?
    Nancy was a black slave who worked in his employer’s house. Woolman did not know her well. In 1742, thousands of American Quakers owned slaves. Neither Woolman nor anyone else knew about the Germantown Quakers of 1688.
    Suddenly John Woolman heard himself saying, “I believe slave-keeping to be a practice inconsistent with the Christian religion.”
    Both the buyer and the seller told Woolman this was a “light” that had not yet reached them. Would he please write the bill of sale? With great reluctance, John Woolman completed the document. By evening, Nancy was gone from Mount Holly. For the next few weeks John Woolman remained deeply troubled. In his journal he reproached himself for not asking to be excused from writing the bill of sale “as a thing against my conscience.” 7
    Born on a farm in the Rancocas River valley in western New Jersey, John Woolman was a happy child who responded to the beauty of nature and a growing sense of God’s presence in his soul. By the time he began working in Mount Holly, he had decided to devote himself to preaching God’s word as it was revealed to him.
    A few months later, when another Quaker asked Woolman to draw up a bill of sale for a slave, he refused. This man confessed that keeping a slave disturbed his conscience too. The men parted with “good will,” Woolman noted in his journal. 8
    Slavery continued to trouble John Woolman. One day a close friend said he was drawn by the Spirit to make a journey to Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas to preach. He asked Woolman to join him. Woolman