1861 FRIENDS' REVIEW. Important Civil War Periodical Reflection Christian Pacifists Views, Slavery, Abolition, etc.

This rather scarce 1860–1861 volume of Friends' Review: A Religious, Literary, and Miscellaneous Journal provides as a critical primary record of the Society of Friends as they navigated the agonizing transition from sectional crisis to the outbreak of the American Civil War. The journal captures the profound moral paradox facing Quakers who were forced to reconcile their unwavering abolitionist convictions with their historic commitment to Christian pacifism.

As the nation moved from Lincoln’s election to the firing on Fort Sumter, the publication documented the internal struggles of a community divided between their patriotic desire to end the "moral evil" of slavery and a strict adherence to the Peace Testimony, which prohibited bearing arms or financing hostilities. Through its coverage of conscientious objection and its advocacy for economic boycotts of slave-labor goods, the Review provides a rare, sectarian window into how a pacifist religious body interpreted the dissolution of the Union while maintaining a defiant, non-violent stance against both human bondage and the machinery of war.

A fascinating historical record. 

Contents include: The Value of Sabbath Schools; The Misery of Infidelity; Nah-Ne-Bah-Wee-Quay the Poor Indian; The Effects of the Emancipation of Slaves in the West Indies; The Oil Wells of Western Pennsylvania; The War-Principle Never Forgives; A Minister Hung in Texas [for insurrection]; The Choctaw Indians; The Consumption of Tobacco; The Chinese Sugar Cane in Kanzas [Kansas]; Peace not to be Attained by War; New Settlemement in Africa [Institute for Colored Youth; Liberia; Yomba and Egba]; The Future of the Cotton Supply; The Work of God [Revival] in Ireland; John Jay on the American Slave Trade; Aid to the Sufferers in Kansas; On the Manufacture of Cotton in Africa; The Ohio Separatists; Wine and Temperance by J. J. Thomas; The Banneker Institute for Colored Youth; The California Overland Route; The Discovery of a Manuscript from the Time of David; How to Quit Using Tobacco; Scarletina and Measles; Revivals in the Sandwich Islands [Hawaii]; Wines of the Ancients by R. D. Alexander; The Exodus of Negroes from South Carolina and their Refuge in Philadelphia; The Real Horrors of War; The Convention for Secession in South Carolina [extensive monthly updates on Jefferson Davis and the movement toward Secession]; The Present Crisis and its Demands; The Orphan Houses at Ashley-Down [George Muller]; Religious Revivals; Settlement of the Slavery Question; The Great Cotton Question; Finding a Home - The Poor White Trash of the South; A Word for the Hour by John Greenleaf Whittier [its first appearance in print]; A Fatal Shot - Addressed to the Members of the Volunteer Rifle Corps; Effects of the Slave Trade Upon Africa; To the Friends of Peace; A Black Companion of the Bath; The Southern Confederacy and the African Slave Trade; The Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane; The Three New Territories - Colorado, Nevada, and Dacotah; Memoir of Emma Pease; The Spinning Jenny; Aerated Bread Making; The Pennsylvania Training School for Feeble-Minded Children; The Fruits of Slavery; Wilberforce's Practical View [his inward feelings at the time of authorship]; War Inconsistent with Christianity by R. D. Alexander; Slaveholders in the Salve States; Use of Tobacco in Prisons; Life of Anthony Benezet; Who are the Plymouth Brethren; A Letter from Liberia [William P. Howland]; Lo! The Poor Indian!; Pride in Dress; Of the General Preservation of the Society during the Rebellion in Ireland; Our Testimony Against Slavery; The Principles of Peace; Extensive Monthly "War News;" King Cotton - Effects of a Short Supply in England; Havoc of Life by War; Address from the Peace Society; The African Aid Society; The Poet Whittier and the War; Extensive Reference to the Pacifist Conduct of the Friends during the Irish Rebellion as Analogy to their Activity to the then-present Civil War; The Stupendous Folly [of war]; The Call of the Christian by John Greenleaf Whittier; Cotton and the War; The Maple Sugar Crop of Vermont; The Christian Warfare; War; American Cotton Statistics; Stereotyping; Christian Liberty; The Southern Methodist Press - Its Present Condition; The Impolicy of War; The War and its Effect on Emancipation; Agricultural Resources of the Sandwich Islands; An Impartial View of the War; Trade with Liberia; The Effect of the War and Secession on Religion; Boudinot on Slavery; Liberian Cotton; Is the Government of the United States Oppressive and Tyrannical?; etc. etc. 

Rhoads, Samuel [Ed.]. Friends' Review; A Religious, Literary, and Miscellaneous Journal. September, 1860 to August, 1861. Philadelphia. Merrihew & Thompson. 1861. 832pp. 

Very attractive large 4to in half leather, some rubbing as shown, a couple of pages franken-sewn without loss. Some scattered handling and foxing, but good + to very good overall.