The
New England Non-Resistance Society
was an American peace group founded at a special peace convention organized by
William Lloyd Garrison
, in Boston in September 1838.
[1]
Leading up to the convention, conservative members of the
American Anti-Slavery Society
and the
American Peace Society
expressed discomfort with Garrison's philosophy of "
non-resistance
" and inclusion of women in public political activities. After conservative attendees opposing Garrison walked out of the convention in protest, those remaining formed the
New England Non-Resistance Society
.
The Society condemned the use of force in resisting evil, in war, for the death penalty, or in self-defense, renounced allegiance to human government, and because of the anti-slavery cause, favored non-union with the American South.
The New England Non-Resistance Society was one of the more radical of the many organizations founded by William Lloyd Garrison, adopting a Declaration of Sentiments of which he was the principal author, pledging themselves to deny the validity of social distinctions based on race, nationality or gender",
[2]
refusing obedience to human governments, and opposing even individual acts of self-defense.
[3]
In the Society's
Declaration of Sentiments
, Garrison wrote, "any person without distinction of sex or color, who consents to the principles of this Constitution may become a member and be entitled to speak at its meetings."
[1]
The Society rejected loyalty to any human government; one historian has described the Non-Resistance Society's "basic outlook as that of philosophical
anarchism
".
[4]
[5]
The declaration was signed by 44 people, of whom 20 were women.
Maria Chapman
became the editor of its publication,
The Non-Resistant
(1839 - 1840),
[3]
along with
Edmund Quincy)
, and
William Lloyd Garrison
and started publication in 1839. The first annual meeting was held in
Philadelphia
, Sept 24-27, 1839. The publication lasted only two years but was indicative of the millennial character of parts of the reform movement.
[6]
Among the members were
Adin Ballou
,
Amos Bronson Alcott
,
Maria Weston Chapman
,
Stephen Symonds Foster
,
Abby Kelley
,
Samuel May
, and
Henry C. Wright
.
[7]
The Non-Resistance Society held its last meeting in 1849.
[4]
The organization has been considered by one historian to be a "relatively exclusive vehicle of the radical [Boston] upper class"
[8]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
a
b
Peter Brock
Pacifism in the United States, from the Colonial era to the First World War
. Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1968, pp. 539-42.
- ^
Walters, Ronald G. American Reformers: 1815 - 1860. New York: Hill and Wang, 1997
ISBN
978-0-8090-0130-9
p. 120
Google Books
- ^
a
b
Yellin, Jean Fagan, and John C. Van Horne. The Abolitionist Sisterhood: Women's Political Culture in Antebellum America. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994.
ISBN
978-0-8014-2728-2
- ^
a
b
Reichert, William O.,"The Philosophical Anarchism of Adin Ballou",
Huntington Library Quarterly
, Vol. 27, No. 4 (August 1964), (pp. 357?374).
- ^
"...Ballou was a lecturer for temperance and the American Anti-Slavery Society, as well as president of the pacifist and Christian anarchist New England Non-Resistance Society." Calhoun, Craig.
The Roots of Radicalism: Tradition, the Public Sphere, and Early Nineteenth-Century Social Movements
. University of Chicago Press, 2012
ISBN
0226090841
(p. 372).
- ^
Malone, Dumas, ed. 1935.
Dictionary of American Biography, Vol. VIII
, pp. 306-07. New York: Scribner's.
- ^
Curti, Merle E. (1929). "Non-Resistance in New England".
The New England Quarterly
.
2
(1): 34?57.
doi
:
10.2307/359819
.
ISSN
0028-4866
.
JSTOR
359819
.
- ^
Hansen, Debra Gold. Strained Sisterhood: Gender and Class in the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society. Amherst:
University of Massachusetts Press
, 1993.
ISBN
978-0-87023-848-2
p. 105
Google Books