Persecution of the Quakers in England Led to Their Sympathy Towards the Slaves in America

New branches of Christianity formed during the seventeenth century, many of the branches started to refuse to pay tithes to the English Church. One of the new branches of Christianity, the Quakers, or Society of Friends, were among those who refused to pay which led to the persecution for their beliefs. Many groups of people have been persecuted for various reasons throughout history, some because of their religion like the Quakers in the seventeenth century. Others because of their race; like African Americans starting at least in the seventeenth century until the Civil Rights Movement. Due to persecution, groups of people allied together to help each other receive the rights and freedom they deserved. Members of the Quaker Church are an example of such cooperation. Quakers helped many African American slaves seek freedom out of the sympathy they felt for the people, due to their own history of persecution two centuries prior to the Civil War.
George Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends, held new beliefs that would cause the religion problems from its beginning. Fox was born in 1642 in the English Midlands in the town of Leicestershire, where as a young man he strived to “live a life of purity and love.” Like Muhammad in Islam, he believed that he had an experience that “opened him to the knowledge that the love and power of god were available to all people without the help of priests, ministers, or outward sacraments.” Quakers read the Bible constantly and were able to quote it in their daily lives and in their writings. William Penn once wrote on their continuous reading of the Bible, “We believe the scriptures to contain a declaration of the mind and will of God, in and to those ages in which they were written, being gi...

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...Brown. Historical Data of Friends at Salem, Iowa. (1938), 683.
Minutes of Salem Monthly Meeting of Friends.” Elbert M. Brown. Historical Data of Friends at Salem Iowa. 1938.
“Summary from Minutes of Salem Monthly Meeting of Friends,” quoted in Elbert M. Brown, Historical Data of Friends at Salem, Iowa. (1938), A-1.
Ibid, 66.
Ibid, 120.
Ibid, 162.
Ibid, 195.
Jean Leeper, and Trisha Phelps, “Salem Friends Church will celebrate its 175th anniversary,” Mt Pleasant News, (October 2013). http:// mt-pleasant-ia.villagesoup.com/p/1064585.
Lowell J. Soike, Necessary Courage: Iowa’s Underground Railroad in the Struggle against Slavery (University of Iowa Press: Iowa City, 2013), 30.
Ibid, 209.
Ibid, 33-45.
Henry W. Joy, “Hery Country Album of 1888,” (1888). Quoted in Elbert M. Brown. Historical Data of Friends at Salem, Iowa. (1938), 683.
Ibid, 33-45.