Review of Marcus Rediker, The Fearless Benjamin Lay

Marcus Rediker, The Fearless Benjamin Law: The Quaker Dwarf Who Became the First Revolutionary Abolitionist (Boston: Beacon Press, 2017).  212 pp. with endnotes and index.  Review by Douglas S. Harvey, Ph.D.

            Marcus Rediker, (Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania, 1982) Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh, has an extensive background in the history of the Atlantic World, particularly regarding the history of the slave trade and piracy.  He has written, co-written, and edited ten books, including two that will likely remain relevant for generations, The Slave Ship: A Human History (New York: Viking-Penguin, 2007); and with Peter Linebaugh, The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and The Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic (Boston: Beacon Press, 2000).  More can be found at www.marcusrediker.com

            This is history “from the bottom-up,” bringing Benjamin Lay’s unique and amazing story as a hunchbacked, dwarf abolitionist from Essex County in England out of obscurity.  Rediker shows that not only was Lay in the vanguard of the abolitionist movement, but as a compassionate humanist, a man for our own times.  In addition to being a strident abolitionist, Lay was a vegetarian, an animal rights advocate, and an opponent of the death penalty.  After the death of his wife Sarah in 1735, he moved into a cave near Abington, Pennsylvania, where he produced most of his own food and made his own clothing.  He was well-known in the Philadelphia area – Benjamin Franklin published his book in 1738, and he was notorious among those who were the object of his wrath (namely slave-owners) at Quaker meeting houses.  Lay does not seem to have been overly concerned about being a “little person,” although it seems he had to endure some mockery because of it.  Nevertheless, it certainly did not curtail his radical activism.

            The thesis of the book is straightforward: Benjamin Lay brought together numerous strands of radicalism in his effort to condemn as the devil’s own device the institution of slavery.  Lay brought religious, philosophical, working-class, abolitionist, and commoner perspectives to the table.  The fact that these are all present and expressed through a single individual demonstrates, Rediker notes, that they can all be part of the same consciousness.  The evidence the author presents for this is abundant.

            Benjamin Lay was born into the radical Quaker tradition, a third generation Quaker born in 1682 in Copford, Essex.  By the time Benjamin reached adulthood, Quaker practices had toned down considerably from their early “inner light” visionary practices.  Lay gave this practice new life, especially after he married Sarah Smith, who was also a hunchbacked dwarf.  The spark that lit Lay’s (and Sarah’s) abolitionist fervor was a sojourn to Barbados in 1718.  Two years on that hellish sugar island in the Caribbean set the couple, especially Benjamin, on his lifelong abolitionist path.  The atrocities they witnessed defy description.  To help alleviate the suffering, the Lays started a meeting for the enslaved, eventually calling down the wrath of the planter elite.  Their subsequent campaign against slavery embraced Quaker practices from the early days of the religion.  The author elaborates on three of these practices: 1) Public rants against ministers; 2) The refusal of “Hat Honor” (i.e., not removing one’s hat during the Quaker meeting); and, 3) The use of provocative street theater (Rediker opens the book with a stunning example of this).

            The author also shows how Lay’s working-class background allowed him to connect with enslaved people who were routinely worked to death.  Lay’s work-life began as a shepherd, where he found peace in nature and the herding of sheep, no doubt a nurturing influence.  He then trained as a glover, difficult and monotonous work that would have helped him identify with enslaved people who were forced to perform endless rote tasks throughout their short lives.  He maintained some proficiency in this trade all of his life; Rediker notes that glover’s tools and supplies were in significant number in his will.

Eventually, Lay made his way to London.  There, the monotony of gloving led him to take up the life of a sailor, which brought him into contact with the diverse “motley crew” of that profession.  Experiences in the world of sailors, along with his later trip to Barbados led him to de-racialize humanity.  In his writing, Lay referenced the Bible, specifically Acts 17:26, which proclaims that all people are “made of one Blood.”  In his 1738 book, All Slave-Keepers That Keep the Innocents in Bondage, Apostates, Lay did not use the word “race,” instead he used the less divisive word “color.”  This reflected his experience with the motley crew of the eighteenth-century sailing ship.

After immigrating to Philadelphia in 1732, Lay continued his abolitionist activism. Religion and politics merged with philosophy in his life-long self-education. Learning Lay’s worldview is an education not only in Quaker antinomianism, but Greek asceticism, particularly that of the Cynic philosophers.  Most influential of the former was William Dell, a radical Chaplain in the New Model Army during the English Civil War.  In Philadelphia, Lay had dabbled in bookselling, and Dell’s works were one of Lay’s chief offerings.  In his books, which Lay highly praised, Dell advocated antinomianism – the notion that no authority is higher than that of one’s own “inner light” or inner voice.  Dell also encouraged civic education for the masses in order that they, rather than a socio-economic elite, would and could wield power.  These points would have been profoundly upsetting to the elites of seventeenth-century England. 

The library in Benjamin Lay’s cave also contained works of Greek philosophers, particularly those of the founder of Cynic thought, Diogenes, and his protegés Pythagoras, Crates, and Lucian.  Rediker provides a thumbnail sketch of this worldview by defining a handful of crucial practices.  These included parrhesia, the practice of speaking one’s mind regardless of how it will impact those in power.  Autarkeia meant self-sufficiency without the baubles of material gain; askesis and karteria meant training in self-discipline and endurance, both mental and physical; and finally tuphos, where one severely challenged the notions of luxury, prestige, and wealth, considering them flaws in human character to be overcome.  All of this, from antinomianism to Cynic philosophy was built on a commitment to treat others with love, which was to be given to all.

Predictably, Marcus Rediker delved deep into the Quaker archives in both England and the U.S.  He also made himself familiar with the historical literature on Quakers from this period, much of which was old ground for him.  The book is written for the general public, but is erudite enough to appease the specialist.  I personally loved both the book and getting to know Benjamin Lay three hundred years after his righteous fight for justice shook the Quaker world and, as Rediker argues, kick-started a Quaker abolitionist movement that, in turn, was the foundation of nineteenth-century abolitionism.  During his lifetime, the Quaker dwarf was a giant in his way.  His antinomianism, Cynic philosophy, and raw courage will be inspiring to those pursuing egalitarian justice today.