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Quakers and Abolition. Edited by Brycchan Carey and Geoffrey Plank. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014. Pp. 246. Cloth, $45.00.)Reviewed by Jane E. CalvertQuakers have long been acknowledged as an important part of the abolitionist movement. But "outside specialist circles," as the editors of this important new volume explain, "the Quakers' involvement in debates over slavery is underappreciated" (5). So is the complexity of their often-fraught relationship with abolitionism. Outsiders are often shocked that Quakers themselves owned slaves, held racist views, and were, at times, bitterly divided over abolition. This collection takes a broad approach to remedying these misunderstandings, with fourteen brief essays on a variety of topics related to Quakers and abolition in both American and trans-Atlantic contexts. With its rich offerings and accessible prose, this collection is bound to spark lively conversations among scholars and in classrooms alike.The collection is divided into three sections: The first deals with periods of agreement and disagreement among Friends on their anti-slavery stance; the second treats race relations within Quaker meetings; and the third explores the Quakers' influence and public perception of their activity. This brief review can only highlight a few of the work's many compelling aspects.As J. William Frost notes, only between the 1760s and 1820s did Quakers agree about their collective stance on slavery (29). A powerful early impulse to refoim first oneself and then the world is represented by Joshua Evans, as described by Ellen M. Ross, and Anthony Benezet, as described by Maurice Jackson. Thomas Hamm's illuminating essay unravels the complexities of antebellum Quakers' ambivalence to abolitionism, and explains why Friends ultimately withdrew from the veiy movement they founded. It had become tainted, some believed, by the mercenary enthusiasm of evangelical preachers, more interested in lining their own pockets than saving souls. Especially here we see clearly the tragic irony of Quaker abolitionism: eighteenth-century Quakers founded abolitionism to purify themselves; later Quakers withdrew from abolitionism to remain pure.Yet many Quakers did continue in abolitionism. When some individuals found that their reformist impulses could not be fulfilled within the confines of meetings that had retreated from the cause, they left or adapted. Amy Kirby Post, for example, found that to embrace fully the Quaker teachings by which she had been raised, she had to forsake her meeting of 20 years (73). As Nancy Hewitt explains, Post founded a new meeting that was devoted to the social causes that had historically defined Quakerism. In their essays, Christopher Densmore and James Emmet Ryan document ordinary Quakers' approaches to abolition and interactions between them and African Americans. One such relationship is also highlighted in Andrew Deimer's examination of Moses Shepherd's and Samuel Ford McGill's joint efforts at African colonization.Across the Atlantic, British Quakers as a group were going strong, side-by-side with evangelicals and other fellow-travelers, such as Thomas Clarkson, about whom there are two essays, one by James Walvin and the other by Emma Lapsansky-Wamer and Dee Andrews. Amia Vaughan Kett shows how British Quakers found creative ways to reconcile their participation in the new capitalist economy with their abolitionism. Women especially used the power of the purse to make statements, as when they bought "free-labor" textiles. Kett argues that for Quakers resisting slavery, using "free produce" was "sacralized as fonn of Christian worship," reminding us that for Friends, even mundane actions were imbued with religious puipose (68). …

John Dickinson cannot be understood by focusing narrowly on his actions at the time of independence. Neither can his thought be deduced from the few of his writings that have been reprinted in modern editions. But this fascinating, complex, and unique figure left an extensive written record

If the progress toward the Revolution in Pennsylvania was untidy, the realization of it was decidedly ugly. This chapter examines the extremely troubled period between the Revolution and the Constitutional Convention in order to shed light on John Dickinson's hopes for the new state and nation and his fears as national problems were magnified in Pennsylvania. Earlier arguments both in this study and elsewhere maintain that party lines were drawn based on religion and that theology has a significant “explanatory potential” that needs to be elucidated. We have already seen that, since the campaign for royal government in 1764, three Quaker-informed factions existed in Pennsylvania. Influenced by the conflict with Britain, two of them were gradually moving away from traditional Quaker theologico-politics – one toward individualistic, democratic, and armed radicalism; the other toward a withdrawn, passive stance, based on a new, narrower interpretation of the peace testimony. These factions were now set against one another with resistance to the British the apparent point of conflict. The radical group, in its beginnings hostile to Presbyterians in the campaign for royal government, now united with them, ostensibly to further the American cause. The withdrawing group of Quakers retreated from civic engagement and adopted a neutrality that was historically uncharacteristic of their Society when rights were threatened.

In the late-seventeenth century, Quakers originated a unique strain of constitutionalism, based on their theology and ecclesiology, which emphasized constitutional perpetuity and radical change through popular peaceful protest. While Whigs could imagine no other means of drastic constitutional reform except revolution, Quakers denied this as a legitimate option to governmental abuse of authority and advocated instead civil disobedience. This theory of a perpetual yet amendable constitution and its concomitant idea of popular sovereignty are things that most scholars believe did not exist until the American Founding. The most notable advocate of this theory was Founding Father John Dickinson, champion of American rights, but not revolution. His thought and action have been misunderstood until now, when they are placed within the Quaker tradition. This theory of Quaker constitutionalism can be traced in a clear and direct line from early Quakers through Dickinson to Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Quakers' conception of a political constitution and their understanding of acceptable forms of civil dissent were based on their theology, ecclesiology, and experiences with the English and Massachusetts governments during the Interregnum and Restoration. This chapter gives an overview of the religious structures and processes that were evolving in Quaker society in the mid-1650s through the 1670s and that informed their political thought. The Quaker ecclesiastical polity was animated by a bureaucratic process that determined how the members of the meeting related to each other and to the world outside their Society. If we think of their authority and their modus operandi in Weberian terms – legal-rational, traditional, or charismatic – it does not fit into any one of these categories; rather it rejected the second and is an amalgam of the first and the third. It was not a category Weber envisioned, and it can be described most simply as a “legal-charismatic” model. It was based on the “rule of law,” but instead of being rooted in rationality, as Weber's model is, it was based on charisma. Further, rather than this charisma being unique to one individual, it was found in each member of the group. There was a paradox in Quaker theologico-political thought and expression that is captured in the name “bureaucratic libertines.” Their bureaucratic process was designed to produce charismatically based unity and dissent in the ecclesiastical and civil polities, and with both of these things aimed at the same purpose – discovering God's law.

With the controversy over royal government decided, Pennsylvania turned its attention to the problems with Britain. In the next decade, the same issues at stake in the provincial debate over the Charter would be writ large in a national debate – how best to unify the polity and preserve rights in the face of an unjust government. This and the following chapter form a pair as they describe how the three factions of Quakerism persisted and exerted a tremendous influence on the course of national events. The traditional faction, supported by the withdrawers – who were hardly withdrawn at this point – dominated the Assembly until days before independence and infuriated the Revolutionary leaders. After the royal government controversy was decided, the radical faction temporarily lost all influence in the Assembly, and instead merged with other radical groups. As in this earlier controversy, the coming Revolution raised the question of which constitution Quakers of all sorts and their followers ultimately preferred – their local and peculiarly Quaker constitution or the remote and non-Quakerly constitution of the British Empire, or neither. Throughout it all, Dickinson would remain a mediator and counsel the same course for America as he had for Pennsylvania, adherence to the constitution and peaceful advocacy of rights. The story of Dickinson's via media between the extremes of withdrawing Quaker pacifism and revolutionary radicalism unfolds in five main episodes: The first is the period of the Stamp Act Controversy in 1765.

One of “Pennsylvania Farmer” John Dickinson’s earliest public documents, recently processed by the John Dickinson Writings Project, is titled “Letter to the Inhabitants of the Frontiers on their intended Expedition ag[ains]t the Indians under the Protection of the Gov[ernmen]t.” Dickinson wrote this seventeen-page draft to convince the Paxton Boys, who had recently slaughtered a group of peaceful Conestoga Indians, not to do the same to the Moravian Indians in protective custody in Philadelphia. Although “hidden” in plain view in the Delaware Public Archives, this document has not surfaced in past attempts to publish Dickinson’s writings, nor is it included in John R. Dunbar’s The Paxton Papers (1957). Though undated, the content of the missive indicates that it was written no earlier than January 6, 1764, and that it may have been a response to the Paxtonians’ Declaration and Remonstrance, read in assembly on February 17. The letter does not appear to have been published.

IgD is a component of the lymphocyte plasma membrane, where it functions as a receptor for antigen. It may have an essential role in triggering the proliferation and differentiation of B lymphocytes which result in a specific antibody response.

Specific and sensitive ELISA to quantitate the human IgG subclasses in cell culture supernatants are described. These assays detect a minimum of 5 ng/ml IgG1, 90 ng/ml IgG2, 8 ng/ml IgG3 and 8 ng/ml IgG4 and can generally measure IgG subclasses in lymphocyte cultures containing a minimum of 200 ng/ml of total IgG. The isotype specificity of these ELISA is demonstrated and each individual ELISA shown to react with a number of paraproteins of the relevant subclass independently of their light chain type or their (major Caucasian) allotype. These assays have been used to determine the IgG subclass response of normal human lymphocytes to pokeweed mitogen in vitro.