University of Kansas historian Richard Godbeer has just released "World of Trouble," an account of the adventures of Philadelphia Quakers Henry and Elizabeth Drinker during the American Revolution. Because they refused to take sides during the War of Independence, Quakers were not popular with either the colonists or the British. Nor did it help that Henry was an agent for England's East India Company. He and 29 other pacifists were arrested by Pennsylvania's government and imprisoned. Those who refused to swear an oath of allegiance and were exiled to Virginia for eight months. And after the British surrendered at Yorktown, the Drinkers' house was vandalized because they refused to display celebratory candles.
The "Wall Street Journal" reviewer, Robert Landers, called the book "well-written and fascinating . . . a tale not only of resilience in the face of hardship but of the perils of exercising freedom of conscience -- even when the cause that threatens it can be rightly seen as a fight for freedom itself."
I've already ordered my copy. It'll be great reading during a snowstorm.
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