I don't know if they used capital punishment or not, and it sounds like they didn't; but _Albion's Seed_ talks of the Quakers using flogging, stocks, and the like in early Pennsylvania.
This would not surprise me - the colonial penal code was derived as far as I can tell from the English penal code, although less harsh. It is possible to simultaneously be much less harsh than the contemporary norms and still be abhorrent from a modern viewpoint. A more interesting comparison would be to contrast the usage of corporal punishment in early Pennsylvania versus other nearby colonies.
I'd have to check _Albion's Seed_ for the details, and how their penal code compared to England's and their neighbors' -- but isn't it obvious that there's a contradiction between "preaches mutual love and respect" and "flogs people"?
The Quakers were perfectly capable of innovative thought, and of thinking through the consequences of their principles (thus relative sexual equality, concern for animal welfare, and encouragement of vegetarianism); but they were fine with using brutal violence against anyone who didn't accept their doctrine of nonviolence -- especially those from different cultures, and followers of different religions (or different Protestant denominations; they were particularly cruel towards the Presbyterian Scotch-Irish). This is why they get under my skin.
"but they were fine with using brutal violence against anyone who didn't accept their doctrine of nonviolence -- especially those from different cultures, and followers of different religions (or different Protestant denominations; they were particularly cruel towards the Presbyterian Scotch-Irish). This is why they get under my skin."
If you don't defend your culture you'll go extinct, the same way you don't want to be contaminated by outside ideas an ways of life that you worked hard to protect. Hypocrisy isn't quite the word I think you'd want to use. People get violent because they passionately want to protect something from what they deem as evil. They can be misguided in that sense but, ultimately they do have a point - those who do not defend themselves find commitments to their principles/ways of life and doctrines waning and their communities will suffer death by mixing and mediocrity.
Think of it like cultural entropy, they are trying to resist things that corrode their way of life.
I don't particularly mind when people exercise their right of collective self-defense (and for the sake of the argument, I'll grant that this is what the Quakers were doing); but I do mind when they deny that anyone has a right of collective self-defense, and then they turn around and exercise their own anyways. That's their hypocrisy: they preached pacifism, and used violence.
