The Journal of John Woolman
John Woolman’s account of his own life.
In Volume 1 of [[The Harvard Classics]]N. John Woolman was a famous colonial Quaker and ahead-of-his-time abolitionist. This journal describes his experiences, views and the impressive travels he went on to spread his message.
- EPUB: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37311 (not OCR, properly transcribed). This Edition does make the unfortunate Choice to capitalise every Noun.
- Videos:
John Woolman was born in 1720 in British America, and died in 1772 after contracting smallpox while travelling in England. The American Revolution started in 1775, and slavery wasn’t abolished until 1865.
I think that Charles Eliot decide to include this as the second book in [[The Harvard Classics]]N because, like how [[The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin]]N demonstrates Benjamin Franklin as an icon of industriousness and self-education, John Woolman demonstrates himself as an icon of the relentless pursuit of what is true and just.
I found this quite difficult to read since the bulk of it was effectively “and then I went to this town to this meeting, and then this town to this meeting, and then this town to this meeting”, and so on. And although there was a lot of interesting ideas about ethics and conscience, it was in heavily religious terms which I found difficult to connect with.p
Clippings
Robin’s nest
A thing remarkable in my childhood was, that once, going to a neighbours house, I was, on the way, a robin sitting on her nest, and as I came near she went off, but, having young ones, flew about, and with many cries expressed her concern for them; I stood and threw stones at her, till, one striking her, she fell down dead: At first I was pleased with the exploit, but after a few minutes was seized with horror, as having, in a sportive way, killed an innocent creature while she was careful for her young: I beheld her lying dead, and thought these young ones, for which she was so careful, must now perish for want of their dam to nourish them; and, after some painful considerations on the subject, I climbed up the tree, took all the young birds, and killed them; supposing that better than to leave them to pine away and die miserably: And believed, in this case, that scripture-proverb was fulfilled, “The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel”.