A pathbreaking study of nineteenth-century
American peace activists.

Valerie Ziegler

This book chronicles the political and intellectual development of the two major antebellum peace movements. The American Peace Society, a moderate peace group, aimed to work through the institutions of church and state to achieve peace. The New England Nonresistant Society constituted a radical group which advocated the individual’s complete separation from all institutions and strict adherence to the example of Christ’s life and teachings.

As Ziegler shows, the task of establishing peace in a culture where institutionalized violence such as slavery was legally protected proved endlessly frustrating for both groups. As they faced the questions raised by the lynching of abolitionists, the women’s rights movement, the Mexican War, the Fugitive Slave Law, and John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, the advocates of peace faced the challenge of finding some way to reconcile peace, liberty, and social order

Despite their differences in temperament, both groups were initially convinced that the New Testament’s admonition to love one’s enemies and to refuse to return evil for evil was an absolute command. They believed they were called to practice peace without regard for the consequences. As civil unrest raged over slavery, however, the advocates of peace discovered they did care about the consequences. They wanted to abolish slavery and create a just social order. With the coming of the Civil War, the peace activists faced their most difficult dillemma: choosing between a violent struggle to free the slaves and dutiful obedience to the Sermon on the Mount.

“Ziegler’s exquisitely written study of antebellum pacifism represents the most important study of antislavery since Aileen Kraditor’s Means and Ends in Abolitionism (1969).”

“The Advocates of Peace in Antebellum America is intellectual history with narrative tautness and conceptual rigor.”

Other titles of interest

Nonviolence for the Third Millenium

Perspectives on War in the Bible

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History

ISBN 978-0-86554-726-1

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