Publication Date

Summer 6-19-2026

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Quaker Studies

Volume

31

Issue

1

DOI

10.16995/qs.23655

Abstract

Charles C. Burleigh (1810-1878), an important American Abolitionist speaker, agent, and theorist, was also an advocate for non-violent resistance. He had many opportunities across his 30+ years fighting slavery to test his non-violent principles, due to mob violence against Abolitionist gatherings. At some of the most significant of these events, such as the destruction of the Abolitionist's Pennsylvania Hall in 1838, Burleigh witnessed the strength and resolve of African-American and white women in upholding non-violence and moral suasion.

While Burleigh never became a member of the Society of Friends, his life and thought run parallel to ideas and practices of the Quakers. He was influenced by British Quaker philosopher Jonathan Dymond, and ensured that the Black students at Prudence Crandall's Canterbury Academy had access to Dymond's work. His most substantial written work, Thoughts on the Death Penalty, extols the Quaker ethos of respecting the humanity of each person as being in need of universalization. His work in Pennsylvania found him adopting Quaker dating systems, respecting Quaker lifeways, befriending Quaker Abolitionists including Lucretia Mott, and marrying a Quaker woman, Gertrude Kimber. Yet he never joined the Society. Instead, the article concludes that he incorporated some general Quaker doctrines and practices into his own religion, based of free speech and free thought, institutionalized in his last years in the Free Congregational Society of Florence, Massachusetts that he co-founded (along with Gertrude) and presided over for its first decade. This is an example of the refraction of Quaker principles, in which the speed and direction of the Light changes as it moves through a different medium.

Keywords

Charles Calistus Burleigh, Immediate Abolition, non-violence, peace testimony, Jonathan Dymond, Capital Punishment

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Department

Humanities

Download

Share

COinS