Anti-slavery stand From among the Krefeld settlers, it was probably the Quakers who provided the impetus for the rejection of slavery. The 13 families from Krefeld had heard about the slave trade in the American colonies for the first time in
Rotterdam on their trip to Pennsylvania. They could not imagine that they could own slaves in the land of brotherly love. However, the reality was different:
Puritans and Quakers, who otherwise advocated for universal human rights, had no problems with human trafficking and did not believe it was wrong. In 1688, some years after their arrival, he drafted, together with
Garret Hendericks,
Derick op den Graeff, and
Abraham op den Graeff the first protest against slavery in America. Pastorius was a cosigner of the
1688 Germantown Quaker Petition Against Slavery, the first petition against slavery made in the
Thirteen Colonies. The protest was signed in the house of
Thones Kunders, one of the first burgesses of Germantown. Before the
American Civil War, when abolition of slavery was gaining strength, Pastorius was ripe for celebration. The Quaker poet
John Greenleaf Whittier celebrated Pastorius's life—and particularly his anti-slavery advocacy—in Whittier also translated the Latin ode addressed to posterity, which Pastorius prefixed to his Germantown book of records.
Operation Pastorius Despite the Quaker sympathies of Pastorius, his name was appropriated in 1942 by the
Abwehr of
Nazi Germany for "
Operation Pastorius", a failed
sabotage attack on the
United States during
World War II that included a target in Philadelphia.
Biographies For generations Pastorius has won the affections of historians. In the early twentieth century, German-American scholars embraced him and the University of Pennsylvania professor
Marion Dexter Learned (1857–1917) wrote a lengthy biography; Learned had access to papers that have subsequently been lost. In 1953 DeElla Victoria Toms wrote a Ph.D. dissertation on the intellectual and literary background of Francis Daniel Pastorius. In 1985 John Weaver documented the cultural background of Pastorius's childhood and youth, and his reasons for emigrating to Pennsylvania in 1683. More recently Princeton University professor Anthony Grafton has written about Pastorius as a representative of European intellectual culture. Grafton's presidential address to the
American Historical Association in 2012 was on Pastorius. Weaver extensively revised his earlier research in a book (in PDF) available online and published in 2016.{{cite book
Legacy • The Pastorius Home Association, Inc. operates the Pastorius Haus in
Bad Windsheim, Germany, and the Pastorius House in
Germansville, Pennsylvania.{{cite web • The Pastorius Monument is located in Vernon Park in
Northwest Philadelphia, PA.{{cite web •
Pastorius Park is located in the
Chestnut Hill section of Philadelphia, PA.{{cite web ==References==