author
John Woolman
1720–1772
A quiet but powerful Quaker voice, he challenged slavery, luxury, and injustice long before abolition became a national cause. His writings are still admired for their moral clarity, gentleness, and deep inward focus.
1 Audiobook
The journal, with other writings of John Woolman
by John Woolman
About the author
Born in New Jersey in 1720, John Woolman was raised in a Quaker family and became known as a traveling minister, writer, and early antislavery reformer. Rather than arguing with anger, he tried to persuade people through conscience, urging fellow Friends to see the humanity of enslaved people and to live more simply and compassionately.
Woolman spent much of his life visiting meetings across the American colonies, speaking against slavery, war, and the harsh treatment of Indigenous people and the poor. His quiet persistence helped shape Quaker antislavery witness in the eighteenth century, and later readers came to see him as one of the clearest moral voices of colonial America.
He is best remembered for The Journal of John Woolman, published after his death in 1772. The book combines spiritual autobiography with careful self-examination, and it has remained widely read for generations because of its plain style, sincerity, and steady call to live in harmony with one's beliefs.