Quaker Awakening
That Benjamin Lay, a hunch-backed dwarf with an oversized head and spindly legs, stood out in his opposition to enslavement would be an understatement. Lay, a Quaker, was among the most strident American abolitionists of the early 18th century. He pricked the consciences of coreligionists fearful of bucking Quaker doctrine with theatrics that traded on his startling appearance. Born in Colchester, England, and now a Pennsylvanian, Lay agitated against Quakers’ role in slavery as owners, traders, and participants in businesses reliant on bondage.
Lay’s protests, carefully planned and uproarious, left an indelible impression. One wintry Sunday morning in 1733-34, Lay—coatless, right foot and leg bare in the snow to remind onlookers of how cruelly slaveowners treated their human chattel—posed outside a Quaker meetinghouse in Philadelphia as a Meeting for Worship ended. Congregants admonished him not to make himself sick.
“Ah, you pretend compassion for me but you do not feel for the poor slaves in your fields, who go all winter half clad,” he replied.
On Friday, September 19, 1738, Lay attended a large Quaker assembly, the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, in Burlington, New Jersey. Wearing a military greatcoat over a soldierly uniform, complete with sword, he carried a book. In a hollow between the covers, he had fitted an animal bladder brimful of pokeberry juice, which runs a rich red. When his turn to speak came he hefted the oversize volume, railing at Friends whose hands Lay decried as soiled by bondage. “Thus shall God shed the blood of those persons who enslave their fellow creatures!” the strange little man shouted, throwing off his coat, pulling his blade, and stabbing the book. Gouts of red splattered him and all nearby, shocking everyone at hand. Ejected from the hall, Lay went along without protest. Soon after, disowned—excommunicated—by his home Monthly Meeting in Abington, Pennsylvania, Lay dropped from sight and the Quaker community, living for 20 years as a hermit in a cave outside Abington.
Before Lay’s performative
