The Journal of John Woolman

Summary

The Journal of John Woolman is the spiritual autobiography of a New Jersey Quaker tailor and minister, begun in his thirty-sixth year and continued until a few days before his death. He opens in Northampton, Burlington County, where as a child he reads the twenty-second chapter of Revelation by the roadside and, soon after, kills a mother robin with a stone and then her nestlings, an act whose horror teaches him that God has placed in every mind a principle of goodness toward all creatures. He describes a youthful turn toward wanton company, a sickness that brings him to repentance, and work as a clerk in a Mount Holly shop. When his employer asks him to write a bill of sale for an enslaved woman, he does it, then says aloud that slave-keeping is inconsistent with the Christian religion, and afterward declines such work. Later chapters follow his travels as a minister with companions such as Abraham Farrington, Isaac Andrews, Peter Andrews, John Sykes, Samuel Eastburn and John Sleeper, through New Jersey, Long Island and New England and south into Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina, where he speaks plainly with slaveholding Friends. He records his marriage to Sarah Ellis in 1749, his father Samuel's death in 1750 with words of concern for the enslaved, and his decision in 1756 to give up a growing shop so as to live free of outward cumbers. He describes the militia draft and the quartering of soldiers at Mount Holly in 1757 and 1758, the Philadelphia Yearly Meetings that moved against slaveholding, the slave trade he witnessed at Newport, and a dangerous journey in 1763 through the wilderness to the Delaware town of Wehaloosing on the Susquehanna, where the leader Papunehang says he loves to feel where words come from. In 1772 he sails for London with Samuel Emlen, choosing the steerage and grieving over the hardships of the sailors, then walks north through the English counties to Yorkshire. The Journal closes with friends' notes of his last illness at York, where he died of smallpox on 7 October 1772. The library text is the Everyman's Library edition (1910) with an introduction by Vida D. Scudder; it reprints the London abridgement printed by James Phillips in 1775, which omits a few passages found in the Philadelphia edition of 1774 and in later editions from the manuscripts, followed by Considerations on Pure Wisdom and Human Policy, On Labour, On Schools, On the Right Use of the Lord's Outward Gifts, Considerations on the True Harmony of Mankind, an Epistle of 1772, Remarks on Sundry Subjects, and the expressions of his last illness.

Top Lessons

• A conscience grows by small obediences

  Woolman writes the bill of sale for an enslaved woman because his employer asks, then wishes he had asked to be excused, and the next time he refuses. The Journal shows conscience strengthening through such single choices: refusing a profitable trade, declining to keep quartered soldiers for pay, choosing the steerage. He presents faithfulness in small matters as the training ground for larger witness.

• Speaking plainly in love

  On the southern journey Woolman talks with slaveholding Friends and a militia colonel without anger, using much plainness of speech but in good will. He believes that a hard truth spoken in tenderness may be received, and he often notes that his hearers took it kindly. His method joins candor with humility about his own weakness.

• Wealth, wants and the labour of others

  Woolman gives up a growing shop in 1756 because business has become a burden, and he traces luxury and the desire for gain to the hard labour of others, from enslaved field hands to sailors and English labourers. His later essays argue that a plain life frees a person to serve. He measures goods by what they cost the people who produce them.

• Going to learn as well as to teach

  Woolman says love was the first motion of his journey to Wehaloosing: he went that he might feel and understand the life of the Delaware people and perhaps receive some instruction from them. He describes feeling inferior in his own eyes to many among them. The visit models a humble missionary spirit that listens before it speaks.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

Smallpox frames the Journal: Woolman's sister Elizabeth dies of it at thirty-one, his fellow minister William Hunt dies of it at Newcastle, and Woolman himself contracts it at York in September 1772 and dies on 7 October. The friends' minutes of his last illness give a day-by-day lay record of the disease as they saw it: his complaint that it affected his head so that he could think only as a child, sleeplessness, failed medicines to settle his stomach, a throat so affected that he had to write rather than speak, and his questions to the apothecary about whether his body could throw off such a load of matter. His willingness to take medicine only if it did not come through defiled channels, a phrase Scudder's introduction quotes from the fuller text, shows his ethics reaching even to treatment. Elsewhere he records his father's death of a fever, a youthful sickness that brought him to repentance, the cramped air of the ship's steerage that made breathing difficult at night, and the sickness of poultry at sea. These are devotional observations, not clinical history.

• Journal, Chapter II

  The account of his sister Elizabeth, her care for the sick, and her death of smallpox.

• Journal, Chapter III

  Woolman watches by night with his father, dying of a fever in 1750, who speaks of his concern for the enslaved.

• Journal, Chapter X

  In the crowded steerage he finds breathing difficult and stands near the hatchway at midnight for fresh air, and observes the sailors' wet and close quarters.

• Journal, Chapter XI (closing minutes)

  Friends at York record the progress of his smallpox, his prayers, the attempts at medicine, his talk with the apothecary and his death.