George Richardson Lecture: George W. Taylor, a Practical Antislavery Man

George W. Taylor, a Practical Antislavery Man: Capitalism, Race, Gender, and Quakers in the Nineteenth Century

In 1848, Orthodox Quaker abolitionist George W. Taylor (1803-1891) posted an advertisement in the pages of the Pennsylvania Freeman. Headlined “Practical Anti-Sla[v]ery,” Taylor’s advertisement notified the “consistent friends of the slave” of the arrival of a new shipment of free labor linens at his store. Taylor had purchased the store a year earlier from Joel Fisher, who had acquired the store from Hicksite Quaker Lydia White in 1846. For twenty years, Taylor operated his free labor store and warehouse on the northwest corner of Fifth and Cherry Streets in Philadelphia, buying and selling goods produced by compensated free labor. He was one of the most prominent supporters of the nineteenth-century transatlantic boycott of slave labor goods like cotton and sugar. Taylor’s store was the site of a variety of antislavery activities. In addition to selling free labor goods, Taylor edited and distributed newspapers, including The Non-Slaveholder and Citizen of the World. From his store, Taylor helped manage the business of the Institute for Colored Youth, a school founded by Quakers in 1837 to educate people of African descent. During and after the Civil War, Taylor’s store served as a collection site for seed, clothing, and other goods that were sent south to aid freedmen and women. His store also served as the meeting site for the Clothing Committee of Friends’ Association for the Relief of Colored Freedmen and the Women’s Aid Association. Amid all this antislavery and civil rights activity, Taylor also edited and published Quaker literature and served as the American agent for the British Friend and the London Friend. Wilson Armistead and Frederick Tuckett were among the many British Quaker abolitionists who visited Taylor’s store during their tours of the United States.

In this lecture, Julie Holcomb argues that as a Gurneyite Orthodox Quaker, Taylor’s life and work provide an important counterpoint to those of Hicksite Quaker abolitionists like Lucretia Mott. Using Taylor’s life as a lens this lecture examines the connections between Quakerism, antislavery, capitalism, and gender in the 1840s and 1850s. A key figure in the free produce movement, Taylor brought together a broad spectrum of activists—Quakers, non-Quakers, Black abolitionists, men and women. For Taylor, “practical antislavery” was a practical expression of his Quakerism.

There will be time for comments and questions.