Sarah
Grimke,
the daughter of slaveholding judge from Charleston, South Carolina,
was born on 26th November, 1792. Sarah and her sister, Angelina
Grimke, both developed an early dislike of slavery
and after moving to Philadelphia in 1819, joined the Society
of Friends.
In 1835 Angelina Grimke had a letter
against slavery published by William Lloyd
Garrison, in his newspaper, The
Liberator.
She followed this with the pamphlet, An
Appeal to the Christian Women of the South.
Sarah followed her example by publishing An
Epistle to the Clergy of the Southern States.
These pamphlets were publicly burned by officials in South Carolina
and the sisters were warned that they would be arrested if they ever
returned home.
The sisters moved to New York where they became the first women to
lecture for the Anti-Slavery Society.
This brought attacks from religious leaders who disapproved of women
speaking in public. Sarah wrote bitterly that men were attempting
to "drive women from almost every sphere of moral action"
and called on women "to rise from that degradation and bondage
to which the faculties of our minds have been prevented from expanding
to their full growth and are sometimes wholly crushed."
Refusing to give up their campaign, the sisters now became pioneers
in the struggle for
women's rights.
In her book Letters
on the Equality of the Sexes
(1838), Grimke linked the rights of slaves to the rights of women.
William Lloyd Garrison gave Grimke
his support in this but Theodore
Weld advised her not to "push your women's
rights until human rights have gone ahead."
In 1838 Sara's sister, Angelina
Grimke married Theodore
Weld. Sarah moved with
the couple to Belleville, New Jersey, where they opened their own
school. Later they established a progressive
school at the Raritan Bay Community
in New York.
During the Civil War Sarah
wrote and lectured in support of Abraham
Lincoln. Sarah Grimke
continued to
to campaign for civil rights and
woman's suffrage until her
death on 23rd December, 1873.
(1)
Angelina Grimke, An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South
(1836)
Search the Scriptures daily, whether the things I have told you are
true. Other books and papers might be a great help to you in this
investigation, but they are not necessary, and it is hardly probable
that your Committees of Vigilance will allow you to have any other.
The Bible then is the book I want you to read in the spirit of inquiry,
and the spirit of prayer. Even the enemies of Abolitionists, acknowledge
that their doctrines are drawn from it. In the great mob in Boston,
last autumn, when the books and papers of the Anti-Slavery Society,
were thrown out of the windows of their office, one individual laid
hold of the Bible and was about tossing it out to the ground, when
another reminded him that is was the Bible he had in his hand. "O!
'tis all one," he replied, and out went the sacred volume, along
with the rest. We thank him for the acknowledgment. Yes, "it
is all one," for our books and papers are mostly commentaries
on the Bible, and the Declaration. Read the Bible then, it contains
the words of Jesus, and they are spirit and life. Judge for yourselves
whether he sanctioned such a system of oppression and crime.
(2)
Angelina Grimke, An Appeal to the Christian
Women of the South (1836)
It is through the tongue, the pen, and the press, that truth is principally
propagated. Speak then to your relatives, your friends, your acquaintances
on the subject of slavery; be not afraid if you are conscientiously
convinced it is sinful, to say so openly, but calmly, and to let your
sentiments be known. If you are served by the slaves of others, try
to ameliorate their conditions as much as possible; never aggravate
their faults, and thus add fuel to the fire of anger already kindled,
in a master and mistress's bosom; remember their extreme ignorance,
and consider them as your Heavenly Father does the less culpable on
this account, even when they do wrong things. Discountenance all cruelty
to them, all starvation, all corporal chastisement; these may brutalize
and break their spirits, but will never bend them to willing, cheerful
obedience. If possible, see that they are comfortably and seasonably
fed, whether in the house or the field; it is unreasonable and cruel
to expect slaves to wait for their breakfast until eleven o'clock,
when they rise at five or six. Do all you can, to induce their owners
to clothe them well, and then allow them many little indulgences which
would contribute to their comfort. Above all, try to persuade your
husband, father, brothers, and sons, that slavery is a crime against
God and man, and that it is a great sin to keep human beings in such
abject ignorance; to deny them the privilege of learning to read and
write. The Catholics are universally condemned, for denying the Bible
to the common people, but, slaveholders must not blame them, for they
are doing the very same thing, and for the very same reason, neither
of these systems can bear the light which bursts from the pages of
that Holy Book. And lastly, endeavour to inculcate submission on the
part of the slaves, but whilst doing this be faithful in pleading
the cause of the oppressed.
(3) Angelina
Grimke, An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South (1836)
Some of your own slaves yourselves. If you believe slavery is sinful,
set them at liberty, "undo the heavy burdens and let the oppressed
go free." If they wish to remain with you, pay them wages, if
not let them leave you. Should they remain teach them, and have them
taught the common branches of an English education; they have minds
and those minds ought to be improved. So precious a talent as intellect,
never was given to be wrapt in a napkin and buried in the earth. It
is the duly of all, as far as they can, to improve their own mental
faculties, because we are commanded to love God with all our minds,
as well as with all our hearts, and we commit a great sin, if we forbid
or prevent that cultivation of the mind in others, which would enable
them to perform this duty. Teach your servants then to read and encourage
them to believe it is their duty to learn, if it were only that they
might read the Bible.
(4)
Angelina
Grimke, An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South (1836)
The women of the South can overthrow this horrible system of oppression
and cruelty, licentiousness and wrong. Such appeals to your legislatures
would be irresistible, for there is something in the heart of man
which will bend under moral pressure. There is a swift witness for
truth in his bosom, which will respond to truth when it is uttered
with calmness and dignity. If you could obtain but six signatures
to such a petition in only one state, I would say, end up that petition,
and be not in the least discouraged by the scoffs and jeers of the
heartless, or the resolution of the house to lay it on the table.
It will be a great thing if the subject can be introduced into your
legislatures in any way, even by women, and they will be the most
likely to introduce it there in the best possible manner, as a matter
of morals and religion, not of expediency or politics. You may petition,
too, the different ecclesiastical bodies of the slave states. Slavery
must be attacked with the whole power of truth and the sword of the
spirit. You must take it up on Christian ground; and fight against
it with Christian weapons, whilst your feet are shod with the preparation
of the gospel of peace.
Sisters in Christ, I have done. As
a Southern, I have felt it was my duty to address you. I have endeavoured
to set before you the exceeding sinfulness of slavery, and to point
you to the example of those noble women who have been raised up in
the church to effect great revolutions, and to suffer for the truth's
sake. I have appealed to your sympathies as women, to your sense of
duty as Christian woman. I have attempted to vindicate the Abolitionists,
to prove the entire safety of immediate Emancipation, and to plead
the cause of the poor and oppressed. Farewell. Count me not your "enemy
because I have told you the truth," but believe me in unfeigned
affection.
(5)
Angelina
Grimke, Education of Women (1852)
The reason why women effect
so little & are so shallow is because their aims are low, marriage
is the prize for which
they strive, if foiled in that they rarely rise above the disappointment.
Many a woman shudders
at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early
life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army
of martyrs among our married & unmarried women who, not having
cultivated a taste for science, art or literature form a corps
of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians.
Freedom and equality of
rights and privileges, furnish a salutary discipline for the mind
and open a vast field for intellectual effort. Education furnishes
the means for extensive information and widens the bounds of human
experience, which embraces the past and the present. It is doubtless
a feeling of injury on the part of woman which has induced a few of
us to claim the Rights so unjustly withheld.
It is because we feel
we have powers which are crushed, responsibilities which we are not
permitted to exerciser duties which we are not prepared to fulfill.
Rights vested in us as moral and intellectual beings which are utterly
ignored and trampled upon. It is because we feel this so keenly we
now demand an equal education with man to qualify us to be co-workers
with him in the great arena of human
life. We come before him not in fear and trembling; we come filled
with the sense of the moral sublimity of our present position as equals
to demand in the name of Him who created us, our appropriate purpose
in the scale of humanity. Marvel not that so few have joined our band.
The mightiest river drops a little streamlet from the mountain-side.
The most stupendous mountain is gathered grain by grain. But two or
three were gathered together at the first meeting of our revolutionary
fathers. But fifty-six signed the Declaration
of Independence. Nevertheless, the grand and glorious words had been
uttered, "liberty or death," "taxation and representation,"
and they rang through the land with magic power. Will it not be so
with the words woman utters? The Rights, Equality, Education, Self-Support
and Representation.
Can we marvel that woman
does not immediately realize the dignity of her own nature when we
remember that she
has been so long used as the means to an end and that end, the comfort
and pleasure of man, regarded as his property, a being created for
his benefit, and living like a parasite on his vitality. When we remember
how little her intellect has been taken into account in estimating
her value in society, and that she received as truth the dogma of
her inferiority?
The conflict of interests
and opinions between the sexes cannot fail to create antagonistic
feelings and this will necessarily be felt in all their relations
to each other. This conflict arises from withholding rights on one
side and the injury sustained from this injustice on the other. Perhaps
there is nothing that will tend as rapidly and so powerfully to the
equalization as similar education advantages.
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