Note

Aims

Following very helpful suggestions from Professor Moglen, I have substantially narrowed the scope of my previous inquiry and I intend to now focus on the following specific questions:

Did colonial Pennsylvania employ capital punishment? If so, how did Quaker pacifism accept the institution, and if not, when did the death penalty start being used?

Quakers and Pacifism

I will not include here an extensive description of the Quakers, their prosecution in England, and the origins of their beliefs, as another student is doing a project which incorporates many elements of the above: please see MattDavisRatnerProject. However, given the central importance of Quaker pacifism to my inquiry, a very brief sketch of this aspect of Quaker beliefs is in order. George Fox, generally held to be the 'founder' of Quakerism (if one can 'found' a religion), believed firmly that all would do best living the 'peaceable life'. His personal beliefs appear to have been transposed into the general body of beliefs held by Quakers of the time - see, for instance, the Quaker Declaration of Pacifism. Due to their pacifist beliefs, Quakers refused to use wage war or bear arms, and found the idea of violence distasteful or even ungodly. This is what makes a study of the death penalty - a punishment one might see as repugnant to pacifist beliefs since it is arguably the epitome of physical force being used against a fellow human being - in a 'Quaker State' so interesting.