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Democracy and religion : a study in Quakerism / by G. von Schulze-Gaevernitz
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any means universally objectors to militaryservice. Colonel Daniel warns General Monk ofQuaker soldiers : " Quakers are uncertain folkin carrying out orders." They refused to givethe blind obedience that excludes conscience fromhaving its say, and that at a time when it was notunusual to send a Quaker to prison without anescort, trustingand not in vainto his bareword.

The Quakers of Pennsylvania also made adistinction between just and unjust wars. Ben-jamin Franklin recounts that in the war againstFrance and Spain they not only supplied thegovernor with bread, meal, and " grains of anothersort " (i.e., powder), but also furnished a battery.In the War of Independence , they supported thecause of the colonists to their utmost, short oftaking up arms. In the late world war they leftthe question of military service to the individualconscience, and although the majority refusedsuch service there was no expulsion of suchmembers as became combatants. But in onething all Quakers agree : after the abolition ofslavery there is no greater cause in politics thanthe abolition of war. A confederation of States isthe means by which war must be overcome. Thisidea had its influence in the drafting of theAmerican federal constitution, which unitedstates which had been up to then foreign, if nothostile to each other.

From Pennsylvania the democratic wave over-flowed America the principles of Early Virginiaand Early Massachusetts being opposed to it.