Journals are a far more honest representation of the thoughts and opinions of an author; after all, they are essentially private, like a man talking to an invisible friend, never expecting their conversations with their own conscience to become public. This journal is particularly illuminating, not least because it shows Woolman to be the pious, decent man that his public speeches and writings intimated him to be, but also because they trace the way in which an individual, accustomed to slavery and the slave trade going on around him, went from accepting in a never-really-thinking-about-it kind of way, to challenging his own belief system, to standing up and trying to change a system he saw as inherently wrong.
The most interesting thing about Woolman's change of heart is that he never condemned the character of his friends who were still participating in the slave trade, even if they themselves did not consider themselves "traders". Slave traders would have been considered to be the men at the start of the supply chain, those who brought slaves into a community and made the original transaction whereby a slave would be sold into a household where he or she would then reside. Like Woolman, many judged slavery by the way in which a slave was kept. Woolman himself wrote that he felt that a slave owner who treated the slave well, who provided food, indoor shelter and had the slave basically living within the family setting, much like a servant or a maid, was behaving properly towards them. His main issue with slavery at the start of his journal was with slave owners who kept their slaves outside in quarters more suited to outdoor animals. He was able to compartmentalize the two situations into "good" and "bad" without ever really contemplating much about slavery itself.
This all changes when he is called upon to do his community duty and assist in a transaction between a good friend of his, and an associate of his friend. His friend was selling a slave to his associate, and Woolman drew up the paperwork and facilitated the deal. It seems to dawn on him this very day that he is participating in the sale of a human being, as if that human being was an antique dresser, or a pound of potatoes. The journal gives us a unique insight into the changing of a mind, and the way in which Woolman struggled with his former beliefs, and his new realizations.
From that day forth, Woolman is against slavery. His opposition to slavery is also in opposition to the official position taken by his Quaker denomination, but Woolman believed strongly that "slavekeeping is a practice inconsistent with the Christian religion". The journal also shows how he came to write and publish several works with regard to slavery, and the need to end the practice of it, particularly with Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes. By the end of his journal we see him as one of the first, and most influential, Abolitionists, even if the majority of his influence was seen posthumously after the publication of the journals.
