foreign lands to their neglect of the homegrown problem of slavery. Christian missionaries, he wrote, were unwilling “to extend this divine government through our own land. Here we see One million five hundred thousand of our fellow creatures unjustly held in a degrading bondage, which is entailed on their innocent posterity.”23 Gilbert, in turn, noted his own opposition to slavery, but argued that slavery was not a religious issue: “A man, on mere principles of humanity and sound policy, may be as strongly opposed to oaths, slavery, and war, as any of your society can be, yet be a deist or an atheist. What should hinder? Your opposition to these civil and political evils, therefore, does not prove you a Christian society.” Gilbert’s statement reflected the views of most mainstream Protestants, who desperately sought to avoid involvement in the debate over slavery. Yet as the Philadelphia elders worked to position their sect in the evangelical tradition, the exchange between “Paul” and “Amicus” further distinguished Quakers from other Protestants. As Lucretia recalled, the Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings, a standing committee charged with governance, issued a disclaimer and protest against Benjamin Ferris.24
The harsh reaction of the Philadelphia leadership provoked new entries into the ongoing pamphlet war, with Quaker women playing a central role in these theological and political battles. Phebe Willis was the first to publicly question Hicks’s views on the Bible. Anna Braithwaite, a British traveling minister closely associated with evangelical Quakers in her home country, entered the American fray with a vengeance. Braithwaite’s style was both confrontational and aristocratic—she traveled in a fine carriage with a female servant beside her—and thus guaranteed to alienate the Hicksites. She made three trips to the United States during the controversy; the first visit was in 1823, when she sought an interview with Elias Hicks. Unsurprisingly, the two sides disagreed about Braithwaite’s motivations. Evangelicals described Braithwaite as “unprejudiced”; the Hicksites criticized her intention “to bring the American people into all the glorious consistency of the Mother Church [London Yearly Meeting].”25
Anna Braithwaite’s published account of her interview with Hicks was intentionally provocative, casting Hicks as a heretic and a crank. According to Braithwaite, Hicks claimed that the Bible was unnecessary. He denied the account of creation in Genesis. He also questioned the doctrine of the Atonement, asking her “whether she could suppose the Almighty to be so cruel as to suffer Jesus Christ to die for our sakes.” He demonstrated the same broad and scandalous conception of spirituality as Benjamin Ferris, asserting that “the heathen nations, the Mahometans, Chinese and Indians bore greater evidence of the influence of Divine light, than professing Christians.” Finally, according to Braithwaite, Hicks testified to the absolute universality of the inner light, stating “the fullness of the Godhead was in us and in every blade of grass.”26
Elias Hicks’s defense, written as a letter to Dr. Edwin Atlee, a Philadelphia ally, indicated his distance from the evangelical position. Though he acknowledged the importance of Scripture among Christians, he reiterated his belief in the inner light: “we ought to bring all doctrines, whether written or verbal, to the test of the Spirit of Truth in our own minds, as the only sure director relative to the things of God.” And he remained skeptical of the Atonement as the test of Christian faith. In an introduction to the published version of the letter, Hicks’s friends further linked the minister to William Penn, who had also been “egregiously slandered, reviled and defamed by pulpit, press and talk, terming him a blasphemer, seducer, Socian, denying the Divinity of Christ and what not.”27 They saw Hicks as protecting the Society of Friends from those who had been “too easily uniting with the prevalent spirit of the world.” His allies did not hold back from their own controversial assertions, referring to the Bible as a false idol, a “gilded household God.”28
Quaker minister Priscilla Hunt of Indiana served as Hicks’s female counterpart. She preached on similar topics and drew large crowds in Philadelphia in 1822 and 1823. In one sermon she declared, “I have seen the Gospel trumpet laid down in this city. False alarms have been sounded here and believed. True alarms have been sounded and not believed.”29 Like Hicks, she emphasized the inward light, which she called “the monitor in the breast.” But her preaching (and her popularity) drew the ire of the elders. In response to one sermon at Pine Street Meeting, William Evans, son of Jonathan Evans, rose and stated, “These are not the doctrines of our religious Society.” After this rebuke, Priscilla Hunt kneeled to pray, and the rest of the meeting rose in unity, with the exception of William and Jonathan Evans. The meeting then ended in an “agitated fashion.”30 When Hunt returned to speak at Arch Street and Pine Street Meetings, she faced similar opposition. But she was welcomed at Green Street Meeting, a stronghold for Hicks, and at Mott’s Twelfth Street Meeting. Lucretia later referred to her as a “great minister.” Evans justified his behavior by suggesting that Hunt had been reprimanded for unsound doctrine by her home meeting. But one Hicksite later testified, “it was not the business of elders in Philadelphia to condemn an individual unheard, and thus publicly proscribe her; which that opposition manifested was calculated to do.”31
With women as crucial players, the character and authority of female ministers became an issue in the Hicksite controversy. Evangelical Quakers saw Hannah Barnard, whose disownment figured so prominently in Lucretia’s childhood, as a Quaker Eve, precipitating the fall. Thomas Eddy, a leading Quaker and founder of the American Bible Society, claimed that before Barnard’s trip to England the Society of Friends was united in “love and amity,” but her “deist” sermons on the Scriptures, the Atonement, and the divinity of Christ divided Quakers. Eddy cited Barnard as a direct predecessor to Elias Hicks.32 Female ministers presented a problem for evangelical Quakers because their equal presence further distinguished the Society of Friends from mainstream denominations. For example, Presbyterian minister Eliphalet Gilbert, writing as Paul, viewed female preachers as another Quaker heresy. “Paul” described the pen of “Amicus” as like a “scolding woman’s tongue” and female Quaker ministers as “frothy” and “ignorant.”33
All Quakers agreed on the right of women to be ministers, but they disagreed about which women had received genuine inspiration. Evangelical Quakers defended Anna Braithwaite as “innocent” and a victim of “calumny and persecution.” Hicksites saw her as “shameful and unprincipled,” “violent,” and deluded.34 Evangelical Quakers described Ann Shipley, a witness to Anna Braithwaite’s conversation with Elias Hicks, as a “worthy minister,” while Hicksites doubted her authorship of a letter supporting Braithwaite’s account.35
As a consequence, the mistreatment of female ministers became one of many points of contention between evangelical and Hicksite Quakers. In 1826, the Hicksite-dominated Green Street Meeting succeeded in having several evangelical holdouts, including Ann Scattergood and Mary Taylor, removed as ministers. The Orthodox or evangelical Quakers later referred to this action as “oppressive and arbitrary” as well as ungentlemanly.36 Similarly, the Hicksites complained of the Evanses’ treatment of Priscilla Hunt, deploring their hostile “reception of a virtuous female stranger.”37
Most historians consign female Quakers to a minor role in the split, yet women’s participation was evident during every stage of the conflict. In 1826, Anna Braithwaite and another British Friend, Elizabeth Robson, appeared at Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and, according to Lucretia, “had full opportunities to relieve their minds, and we had much preaching.”38 Robson returned to Philadelphia in 1827 and, after requesting an audience with the men’s meeting, preached for close to an hour against the unsound doctrines of Hicks and his allies.39
After the acrimonious 1827 Yearly Meeting adjourned, a struggle ensued for the loyalty of women. Hicksite men were particularly concerned about the influence of British evangelicals on the women’s meeting. When Ann Jones, another English Friend, proposed appointing a committee to determine the state of the ministry, Hicksite men saw it as an attempt to derail the separation. Their anger at Jones turned on the women’s meeting, and they suggested that
