Why I Wrote It: The Perils of Pacifism

**Why I wrote it is a series in which I explain interesting things about the topic I chose or why it matters that people know this history. Please see the story being referenced here.

Sometimes explaining the importance of a historical topic is easy. Why does knowing the history of the First Amendment matter? Simple, we are still dealing with legislating the amendment even today. Then there are other topics like the one I chose about the Quakers. Writing why these are important for readers takes a bit more thought and reflection.

The quickest explanation is that history is entertainment. Historians can boil the topic’s essence down to just a collection of stories we retell. It truly does not need more justification than it entertains people. My interest in history started as pure entertainment when I would walk the aisles of a library or bookstore, finding fun history books. I could leave it there, but I won’t.

I believe there is more to history than entertainment. There is value to learning these stories. Sometimes the value is the morals and virtues we discover. Often we can learn lessons from others so we don’t have to suffer the consequences ourselves. Looking at the story of the Quakers, the moral lessons we can gain are obvious. We can learn how easily our judgment toward different beliefs can spiral. We can see how quickly we can fall victim to mob mentality and how wrong that can go. Colonists found the Quakers’ beliefs weird and their concerns invalid. When Congress falsely arrested the Quakers, no one cared until the arrested men aligned their plight to fit with the colonists. It took people seeing themselves in the Quakers to care about the events. These are lessons we can learn from. For this story, this is where I think history matters. We can learn to be better people from the past.

Maybe at the end of the day, you aren’t looking for the moral of the story. Then I would say just enjoy this tale for what it is. It’s the account of a once influential group falling out of favor and finding its back against the wall. It is a story of a miscarriage of justice and a change of heart from the public. There are lies, intrigue, and politics. It is a story that has almost everything. But really, it is the story of a fake letter from Spanktown.