New England Non-resistance Society, Boston

The New England Non-Resistance Society was organized in Boston in September 1838 by radical peace reformers, after more conservative delegates withdrew from a peace convention dominated by William Lloyd Garrison. Its Declaration of Sentiments, drafted chiefly by Garrison, renounced all use of force, including war, self-defense, and capital punishment, and rejected allegiance to coercive human government. The Universalist reformer Adin Ballou served as its president, and the society published a journal, The Non-Resistant, beginning in 1839. The organization declined during the 1840s and held its final meeting in 1849.

Ballou's early statement of the nonresistance position, from the years of the Garrisonian New England Non-Resistance Society: how the Christian who renounces violence stands toward the state — obeying its just laws, refusing its wars and its oaths, submitting to its penalties without rendering evil for evil. A careful answer to the charge that nonresistance is anarchy, and the seed of the fuller 1846 treatise.

(Note: this summary was automatically generated and may be inaccurate.)