Called "a pioneer work of the first importance" by Staughton Lynd, this book traces the history of pacifism in America from colonial times to the start of World War I. The author describes how the immigrant peace sects-Quaker, Mennonite, and Dunker -faced the challenges of a hostile environment. The peace societies that sprang up after 1815 form the subject of the next section, with particular attention focused upon the American Peace Society and Garrison's New England Non-Resistance Society. A series of chapters on the reactions of these sects and societies to the Civil War, the neglect of pacifism in the postwar period, and the beginnings of a renewal in the years before the outbreak of war in Europe bring the book to a close. The emphasis on the institutional aspects of the movement is balanced throughout by a rich mine of accounts about the experiences of individual pacifists.

Originally published in 1968.

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Peter Brock

• Frontmatter,
• Preface,
• Contents,
• Introduction,
• Chapter 1. The Society of Friends in the Colonial Period outside Pennsylvania,
• Chapter 2. The Pacifist as Magistrate: The Holy Experiment in Quaker Pennsylvania,
• Chapter 3. Quaker Pennsylvania: The Crisis of 1756 and Its Aftermath,
• Chapter 4. The German Peace Sects in Colonial America,
• Chapter 5. Quakers and the American Revolution,
• Chapter 6. The Smaller Peace Sects in the American Revolution,
• Chapter 7. The Peace Testimony of the Early American Moravians: An Ambiguous Witness,
• Chapter 8. The Quaker Peace Testimony, 1783-1861,
• Chapter 9. The Witness of the Non-Quaker Peace Sects, 1783-1861,
• Chapter 10. The Pioneers: Dodge and Worcester,
• Chapter 11. The American Peace Society: The First Decade,
• Chapter 12. The Genesis of the Garrisonian Formula: No-Government and Nonresistance,
• Chapter 13. The New England Non-Resistance Society,
• Chapter 14. The Ideology of the New England Non-Resistance Society,
• Chapter 15. The Moderate Pacifists and the League of Universal Brotherhood,
• Chapter 16. The Ebbing of the Pacifist Impulse,
• Chapter 17. The Civil War and the Antebellum Pacifists,
• Chapter 18. The Quakers in the Civil War,
• Chapter 19. Mennonites and Brethren in the Civil War,
• Chapter 20. Religious Pacifism outside the Major Historic Peace Sects, 1861-1865,
• Chapter 21. The Quaker Peace Testimony, 1865-1914,
• Chapter 22. Non-Quaker Sectarian Pacifism in an Era of Peace, 1865-1914,
• Chapter 23. The Reemergence of Nonsectarian Pacifism,
• Conclusion,
• Bibliography,
• Index,