Puritan minister Rev. Cotton Mather urges the kidnapping and enslavement of Quaker William Penn and friends

Quaker Mary Dyer led to execution on Boston Common,  1660

                                                                        

In the Year of Our Lord 1682

To ye aged and beloved, Mr. John Higginson [1616-1708]:

There be now at sea a ship called Welcome, which has on board 100 or more of the heretics and malignants called Quakers, with W. Penn, who is the chief scamp, at the head of them. The General Court has accordingly given sacred orders to Master Malachi Huscott, of the brig Porpoise, to waylay the said Welcome slyly as near the Cape of Cop as may be, and make captive the said Penn and his ungodly crew, so that the Lord may be glorified and not mocked on the soil of this new country with the heathen worship of these people. Much spoil can be made of selling the whole lot to Barbadoes, where slaves fetch good prices in rum and sugar and we shall not only do the Lord great good by punishing the wicked, but we shall make great good for His Minister and people.

Yours in the bowels of Christ,

Cotton Mather [1663-1728]

                    --Quoted in a footnote by Joseph Campbell in The Hero With a Thousand Faces . "Reprinted by Professor Robert Phillips, American Government and Its Problems, Houghton Mifflin, 1941, and by Dr. Karl Menninger, Love Against Hate, Harcourt , Brace and Company, 1942, p. 211"