01 Feb In the required reading for this

HIST553 History of Colonial America

Week 4 Forum

The Coastal Societies

In the required reading for this week, Allen notes that, “Resettlement in [Pennsylvania] did not, of course, mean [Quaker] freedom from disease, inequality, or persecution. During Penn’s second visit to the colony in 1700, he discovered that there had been an outbreak of yellow fever, which had resulted in a large number of deaths. At the same time, Penn spoke out against slave holding. In 1704, John Kelsall had observed in his diary that the settlers in Virginia were not well disposed towards the Friends at Philadelphia, and the London Yearly Meeting had to send some literature to members to combat the verbal onslaughts. In a letter in October 1706 to Kelsall, Rowland Ellis informed him that the non-Quaker deputy-governor, John Evans, had seized upon a false rumour of an imminent French invasion of Pennsylvania. According to Ellis, ‘a more unsuitable man to govern a colony of Quakers’ could not be found. It seems clear that Evans was attempting to test the Quaker pacifist credentials by forcing them to take military action in order to defend themselves.” Against this challenging backdrop, why do you think the Quaker settlement in Pennsylvania endured?