Читать книгу American Quaker Romances. Building the Myth of the White Christian Nation онлайн

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New opportunities opened up after the Revolutionary War and the passing of the Northwest Ordinance (1787) by the Confederation Congress. The Northwest Ordinance provided a method for admitting new states to the Union from the Northwest Territory. Many Quakers began to move to the newly created Territory and, later on, to the states that sprang from it. They were particularly attracted by the fact that the Northwest Ordinance had banned slavery in those states (Hamm 2003: 39). Indeed, by the end of the eighteenth century many American Quakers were already convinced that slavery could not be accepted by members of the Religious Society of Friends (Hamm 2003: 34-35). Their loathing of slavery led them to move away from slave states, most notably North Carolina, but also to actively engage in the anti-slavery movement and in the Underground Railroad (Dandelion 2008: 29-30).

The Testimony of Equality also made them believe that women and men should have the same rights within a Quaker Meeting; when prompted by the Inner Light, both could equally speak up and minister to others (Hamm 2003: 184). Women became itinerant ministers, and left to visit other meetings, leaving the childcare and household duties behind, sometimes for months at a time. Thus, Quaker women got used to travelling far and wide, even across the Atlantic, speaking in public, and seeing their contributions respected. In early Quakerism, Meetings for Business were segregated: men held theirs, and women handled their own (Dandelion 2008: 22). Though the issues dealt with by women were usually less important, that women had authority over any businesses was radical in the seventeenth century; besides, being in charge of their own business meetings gave women experience in running organizations. For decades there were partitions in Quaker Meeting houses so that men and women could conduct their Meetings for Business separately. Those spaces became a cradle for women’s rights associations, and Quaker women rose as “mothers of feminism” (Hamm 2003: 184).