Are you a Quaker or a Jesuit? (The Irish Quaker)

Terrance Flaherty lycidas2 at earthlink.net
Sun Mar 17 16:21:49 CST 2002


"The Hammer of Ireland" and "The Irish Quaker" was William Edmundson.
Edmundson is one of the most important men in the early Quaker
anti-slave movement. Why? Because slave owning and dealing, shipping,
killing, whipping, and all the horrors of that crime against gods and
men were not condemned by many early on. Not by Quakers.  Not even Fox
said or did what The Hammer of Ireland would on the island of Barbados.
He would not go to yearly meeting and appeal to Quaker conscience. He
would go to the slaves and preach what those on the island said was
rebellion. For this he was branded a Jesuit, an Irish Jesuit in
disguise. 

Why did it take so long to get rid of slavery? When Dixon confronts the
Slave trader in M&D he does not represent the Quaker position at all.
The cartoon, his braod-brimmed hat back, his fist in the face of the
slave driver, would not become a reality or even a political cartoon and
cliché for nearly a hundered years.



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