From Peace to Freedom investigates the origins and nature of Quaker antislavery discourse in the years 1657 to 1761 by analysing a wide range of Quaker texts including tracts, pamphlets, sermons, polemics, poems, novels, and essays. It recounts the historical narrative of the Quaker move to antislavery in more depth than has previously been attempted, and offers a new assessment of the rhetorical nuance of the debate that took place, reading the documents in their literary and discursive context as well as in the context of the historical narrative. The book centers on Quaker communities in London, Barbados, and Philadelphia, and examines the writings and lives of antislavery Friends such as George Fox, John Hepburn, Benjamin Lay, John Woolman, and Anthony Benezet.

The book shows that rather than either economic necessity or political expediency, it was vigorous internal debate and discussion that led Quakers to embrace antislavery in 1761. Unlike previous studies, it argues that before this date Quakers were having a continuous and sustained debate about the morality of slavery, a debate revealed in the intertextuality of these early writings. It concludes that a century of such debate caused Quakers to develop a robust and sophisticated rhetoric that, though unknown to the wider world before 1761, would inspire Quakers and non-Quakers to campaign against both slavery and the slave trade in the decades to follow..

From Peace to Freedom: Quaker Rhetoric and the Birth of American Antislavery, 1658-1761 will be published by Yale University Press in 2012.