Woolman was born in 1720 to parents who were exceedingly devout in their Christian faith. He was considered to be sensitive and introverted in childhood, the latter of which was certainly altered by his later passion for abolitionism. While Woolman's family was unconcerned with the institution of slavery, he became depressed by his personal contact with the buying and selling of slaves in his home colony of New Jersey. Although Woolman had become frustrated and saddened by the institution, it played no direct role in his life until he was 22 years old. At that time he was working as a clerk at a general store when his boss directed him to prepare a bill of sale for an enslaved woman that his boss had decided to sell. Woolman told his boss and the customer that he believed slavery to be in violation of Christianity, but he prepared the bill of sale nonetheless. He wrote in his journal that: "so through weakness I gave way and wrote it; but at the executing of it I was so afflicted in mind, that I said before my master and the Friend that I believed slave-keeping to be a practice inconsistent with the Christian religion. This, in some degree, abated my uneasiness; yet often as I reflected seriously upon it I thought I should have been clearer if I had desired to be excused from it, as a thing against my conscience; for such it was."2  

While this experience at the age of 22 was impactful, Woolman was still not fully drawn into a concerted struggle with the institution of slavery. This would change in a few years, however, following a trip through the south with one of his friends. He became so distraught by what he witness that he returned from the trip and began working on a publication about the ills of slavery. Published in 1754, Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes Recommended to the Professors of Christianity of Every Denomination was a work centered around the importance of the Golden Rule. Inclusive of numerous biblical teachings meant to sway his religious brethren, Woolman was committed to being "clearer" with his disagreement than he had been at age 22. 

Hardly satisfied with his first antislavery publication, Woolman immediately began attempts to convince Quaker Friends about the evils inherent in slavery. One of Woolman's biographers, G. David Houston, states that "Woolman made a second visit in 1757 to the Southern meetings of the Society of Friends. Again he beheld the miseries of slavery and became greatly alarmed at the extension of the system. Everywhere he turned, he saw slaves. What pained him most was the presence of slaves in the homes of friends." In fact, Woolman began to refuse the hospitality of Friends that possessed slaves.3  He travelled over one thousand miles in the two months of his second journey, speaking to as many slaveholders as possible about the ills of the institution. Woolman was determined to convince his Quaker Friends that the institution must be stopped. 

This determination would soon bear fruit at the 1758 Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. Undoubtedly as a result of efforts by Lay, Benezet, and Woolman, the issue of slavery was brought up at the meeting. Houston states that: "When the subject of slavery was brought up, he took such an active part in the discussion that he dominated that part of the meeting. His remarks were simple, but impressive. The effect was so immediate that many slaveholders expressed a desire to pass a rule to treat as offenders Friends who in the future bought slaves."4 The meeting proceeded to vote in the affirmative on the formation of a committee, including Woolman, that would be tasked with personally visiting all Quaker slaveholders to explain the new policy. Woolman's tireless work was finally rewarded. 

Frustration of Opponents

“In 1853, although most Quakers did not support the radical abolitionists, Governor Sterling Price of Missouri specifically blamed the Journal for contributing to the alleged evils of the movement in the United States, England, and the West Indies. Thomas Clarkson in England, Jean Brissot in France, and even Alexander II of Russia, in varying degrees, were said to owe their efforts against slavery and serfdom to Woolman's writings."10