Finally, near the end of the meeting, a local Friend got up and said, 'I have been thinking. That opened a concern in the meeting. It wasn't as far as John Woolman wanted to go, but he knew that having a local person speak this way opened a door which he could not have opened. Somehow the Holy Spirit kept him from speaking. Discerning what God would have us do takes time.
Quakers talk and pray and talk again, until there is a sense of unity.
It often takes much longer than a voting process. Taking a vote will result in a decision but it does not result necessarily in unity. It's much harder to walk together with real force if you do not have that deep unity. There is a power in this slowness. If the Quakers had taken a vote on slavery, say around 1730 or 1740, maybe they would have been ready to outlaw slavery in the Society of Friends.