THIS BOOK WAS MADE possible by the helpful staffs of many research institutions. I wish to thank Chris Densmore and Pat O’Donnell (Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore); Ann Upton and Mary Craudereuff (Quaker and Special Collections, Haverford Libraries); Alexander Bartlett (Germantown Historical Society Library); Daniel M. Rolfe (Historical Society of Pennsylvania); Richard Newman and James Green (Library Company of Philadelphia); Kathy Ludwig (David Library of the American Revolution); Kate LeMay and Brandon Fortune (National Portrait Gallery); and Ken Grossi (Oberlin College Library). In the United Kingdom I was assisted by Allyson Lewis (Essex Record Office); Jennifer Milligan and Josef Stein (Library of the Society of Friends, London); Nigel Cochrane and Sandy Macmillen (Special Collections, University of Essex); Trevor Coombs and Jenny Gaschke (Bristol City Museum and Galleries); and the staff at the National Archives of the United Kingdom.
Two excellent scholars of Quakerism, Larry Gragg and Jean R. Soderlund, kindly shared with me their research on the Quaker communities of Barbados and Pennsylvania. I was fortunate to have the help of James E. Hazard, a superb Quaker genealogist, and two research assistants, my student Alexandra Krongel and Ann Upton, a specialist in the Quaker archives of the Philadelphia region. Sophie White and Kirk Savage gave me expert advice on the portraits of Benjamin Lay. Charles Neimeyer and Wayne Bodle taught me about the military history of the American Revolution as I searched for Benjamin Lay’s papers, which were apparently confiscated (and destroyed) by the British army in late 1778. Jonathan Sassi, Adrian Davies, and A. Glenn Crothers kindly discussed the history of Quakerism with me. Nicole Joniec (Library Company), Susan Newton (Winterthur Museum), Pat O’Donnell, and Anne A. Verplanck assisted me in the search for illustrations. Warm thanks to all.
I wish to express my gratitude to a talented, hard-working group of University of Pittsburgh students with whom I studied “The Origins of Antislavery” in spring 2015: Stan Averin, Jacob Craig, Kiran Feinstein, Julia Gitelman, Andrew Gryskewicz, Kane Karsteter-McKernan, Max Kenney, Brett Morgan, and Ian Sames. Their exuberance as we read the “kick-ass Benjamin Lay,” as one of them called him, was a special encouragement.
Jules Lobel discussed this book with me on many a searching long walk, while Rob Ruck engaged me about the meaning of Benjamin Lay’s life dozens of times over several years. Peter Linebaugh and Staughton Lynd helped me to understand Benjamin’s radicalism and its larger antinomian tradition. I also wish to thank Dr. David S. Friedland, who has been a generous and enthusiastic reader of my books for more than a decade now.
I thank the following people for organizing talks and useful discussions: Anthony Bogues and Neil Safier (Brown University); Linda Colley (Princeton University); Steven Pincus (Yale University); Costas Douzinas and Oscar Guardiola-Rivera (Birkbeck College, University of London); Lynne Siqueland and Rosie Bothwell (Abington Friends Meeting); Françoise Vergés (Collège d’études mondiales/Fondation Maison des sciences de l’homme, Paris); John Donoghue (Loyola University/Newberry Library); Staughton and Alice Lynd (Trumbull Correctional Institute, Ohio); and Kirk Savage and Jonathan Arac (University of Pittsburgh).
It was, once again, a tremendous pleasure to work with my editor at Beacon Press, Gayatri Patnaik, whose intelligence and wise judgment suffuse these pages. Thanks too to Tom Hallock, Rachael Marks, Marcy Barnes, Bob Kosturko, Susan Lumenello, and the rest of the Beacon gang. My agent, Sandy Dijkstra, believed in this project and helped it to find the perfect publishing home.
Three friends, two of them former students, read the entire manuscript and gave me the benefit of their deep learning: Maurice Jackson, who has written on Quaker abolitionist Anthony Benezet; John Donoghue, who has discovered the origins of abolitionism in the English Revolution; and Gary B. Nash, who has been studying Quakers and American society (and much else) for more than half a century. All three gave me inspiration as well as concrete help. It was a special pleasure to work alongside Gary, whose personal warmth and extraordinary scholarship have meant a lot to me over many years, as we both wrote biographies of Quaker abolitionists. I would also like to remember a departed friend, Christopher Hill, whose towering work on the English Revolution inspired me many years ago to become a historian and inspires me still, in this very book.
Final thanks are reserved for the members of my family, who have lived the book with me, listening with good cheer to an endless array of stories about an unusual man from a distant time. Wendy was, as always, my first reader and my most challenging and helpful. My children—Eva, Zeke, and Greer—encouraged me warmly as I wrote the book. Zeke was one of the first to urge me to write the book, and Eva shared her knowledge of special education in valuable ways. I dedicate the book to them, with love and hope.