The Americans: The Colonial Period - The Quakers

Early in The Americans: The Colonial Experience, Daniel J. Boorstin looks at four groups of colonists to America. He focuses on the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay, the Quakers of Pennsylvania, the settlers of Georgia, and the Virginians. We tend to look back through the haze of history more with a goal of telling ourselves an inspirational creation story rather than understanding the complexities and variations in the group of colonists who braved the Atlantic passage for a new life in the New World, and we often view the colonists as a homogenous group of people, but Boorstin’s approach reflects the complex motivations that drew people to the New World, and the ways those motivations influenced and shaped the different colonies. By understanding the goals of the colonists, we can understand not just what drove them to the Western Hemisphere, but why they met with success or failure.

I found the unit discussing the Quakers especially challenging. So much of the Quaker approach is appealing. The ideals they espoused resonate nicely with the outlook of a modern day liberal: belief in equality, informality, and toleration. However, it is Boorstin’s contention that their attitudes toward these ideals made the Quakers ill equipped for governing. It’s the familiar argument of a pragmatist; idealists are naïve and unrealistic. While the Quakers possessed great personal bravery, and were willing to sacrifice their own lives for a cause they championed, their unwillingness to accommodate the political realities of the day caused others to suffer as well.

The chapters dealing with the Quakers caused me to view them with a combination of admiration and frustration. I found their ideals admirable, and their insistence on following those ideals long past the point of futility to be frustrating. In the end, one of the most admirable things they did was to recognize their own unsuitability to govern, and to voluntarily give up their political power.