Angelina Emily Grimké

“ Why not let us live in America, if you really love us? Surely you never want to ‘get rid’ of people whom you love. I like to have such near me; and it is because I love the colored Americans, that I want them to stay in this country; and in order to make it a happy home to them, I am trying to talk down, and write down, and live down this horrible prejudice. Sending a few to Africa cannot destroy it. No—we must dig up the weed by the roots out of each of our hearts. ”

“ Slavery subverts justice, promotes the welfare of the few to the manifest injury of the many, and robs thousands of the posterity of our forefathers of the blessings of liberty. This cannot be denied, for Paxton, a Virginia slaveholder, says, ‘the best blood in Virginia flows in the veins of slaves!’ Yes, even the blood of a Jefferson. And every southerner knows, that it is a common thing for the posterity of our forefathers to be sold on the vendue tables of the South. The posterity of our fathers are advertised in American papers as runaway slaves. ”

“ Thus have all the diversified relations of life been filled with ‘confusion and every evil work.’ This principle has given to man a charter for the exercise of tyranny and selfishness, pride and arrogance, lust and brutal violence. It has robbed woman of essential rights, the right to think and speak and act on all great moral questions, just as men think and speak and act; the right to share their responsibilities, perils and toils; the right to fulfil the great end of her being, as a moral, intellectual and immortal creature, and of glorifying God in her body and her spirit which are His. ”

“ The Maryland scheme is altogether based on the principle of banishment and oppression. The colored people were to be ‘got rid of,’ for the benefit of their lordly oppressors—not set free from the noble principles of justice and mercy to them. If Abolitionists have put a stop to all such discussions of slavery, I, for one, do most heartily rejoice at it. The fact is, the South is enraged, because we have exposed her horrible hypocrisy to the world. We have torn off the mask, and brought to light the hidden things of darkness. ”

“ If further evidence is needed, that anti-slavery societies are producing a powerful influence at the South, look at the efforts made there to vilify and crush them. Why all this turmoil, and passion, and rage in the slaveholder, if we have indeed rolled back the cause of emancipation 200 years, as thy father has asserted? Why all this terror at the distant roar of free discussion, if they feel not the earth quaking beneath them? Does not the South understand what really will affect her interests and break down her domestic institution? ”

“ But be it known to the North and to the South, we have names of scores of citizens of the slaveholding states, many of them slaveholders, who are in constant correspondence with us, persons who feel so deeply on the subject as to implore us to persevere in our efforts, and not to be dismayed by Southern threats nor disheartened by Northern cavils and heartlessness. Yea more, these persons have committed to us the custody even of their lives, thus encountering imminent peril that they might cheer us onward in our work. Shall we betray their trust, or put them in jeopardy? Judge thou. ”

“ I know that a broad line of distinction is drawn between our principles and our measures, by those who are anxious to ‘avoid the appearance of evil’—very desirous of retaining the fair character of enemies to slavery. Now, our measures are simply the carrying out of our principles; and we find, that just in proportion as individuals embrace our principles, in spirit and in truth, they cease to cavil at our measures. ”

“ As to anger, it is no design of ours to excite so wicked a passion. We cannot help it, if, in rejecting the truth, they become angry. Could Stephen help the anger of the Jews, when ‘they gnashed upon him with their teeth’?
But I had thought the principal motives urged by abolitionists were not these; but that they endeavored to excite men and women to active exertion,—first, to cleanse their own hands of the sin of slavery, and secondly, to save the South, if possible, and the North, at any rate, from the impending judgments of heaven. ”

“ We are striving to purify public opinion, first, because as long as the North is so much involved in the guilt of slavery, by its political, commercial, religious, and social connexion with the South, her own citizens need to be converted. Second, because we know that when public opinion is rectified at the North, it will throw a flood of light from its million of reflecting surfaces upon the heart and soul of the South. ”

“ Where didst thou get thy statement of what Abolitionists mean by immediate emancipation? I assure thee, it is a novelty. I never heard any abolitionist say that slaveholders ‘were physically unable to emancipate their slaves, and of course are not bound to do it,’ because in some States there are laws which forbid emancipation. This is truly what our opponents affirm; but we say that all the laws which sustain the system of slavery are unjust and oppressive—contrary to the fundamental principles of morality, and, therefore, null and void. ”

“ The ultimate and glorious success of the measures proves their wisdom and expediency. But when Anti-Slavery measures are looked at now, we see them long before the end is accomplished. We see, according to thy account, the burdens increased; but we do not yet see the triumphant march through the Red Sea, nor do we hear the song of joy and thanksgiving which ascended from Israel’s redeemed host. But canst thou not give us twenty years to complete our work? Clarkson, thy much admired model, worked twenty years; and the benevolent Colonization Society has been in operation twenty years. ”

“ Thou sayest, when a woman is asked to sign a petition, or join an Anti-Slavery Society, it is ‘for the purpose of contributing her measure of influence to keep up agitation in Congress, to promote the excitement of the North against the iniquities of the South, to coerce the South by fear, shame, anger, and a sense of odium, to do what she is determined not to do.’ Indeed! ”

“ But how can we go now, when northern pulpits and meeting-houses are closed, and northern ministers are dumb, and northern Governors are declaring that ‘the discussion of the subject of slavery ought to be made an offence indictable at common law,’ and northern women are writing books to paralyze the efforts of southern women, who have come up from the South, to entreat their northern sisters to exert their influence in behalf of the slave, and in behalf of the slaveholder, who is as deeply corrupted, though not equally degraded, with the slave. ”

“ If I really feel a sweet assurance that ‘my witness is in heaven—my record is on high,’ I then realize to its fullest extent that ‘it is a small thing to be judged of man’s judgment,’ and I can bear false charges unmoved; but true ones always nettle me, if I am unwilling to confess that ‘I have sinned;’ if I am, and yield to conviction, O then! how sweet the reward! Now I am very much afraid that these sincere, upright and conscientious Colonizationists are something like the pious professors of the South, who are very angry because abolitionists say that all slaveholders are men-stealers. ”

“ Why, then, protest against our measures as unchristian, because they do not smooth the pillow of the poor sinner, and lull his conscience into fatal security? The truth is, the efforts of abolitionists have stirred up the very same spirit which the efforts of all thorough-going reformers have ever done; we consider it a certain proof that the truths we utter are sharper than any two edged sword, and that they are doing the work of conviction in the hearts of our enemies. If it be not so, I have greatly mistaken the character of Christianity. ”

“ I there pointed out fifteen different ways in which the North was implicated in the guilt of slavery; and, therefore, I deny the charge that abolitionists are endeavoring ‘to convince their fellow citizens of the faults of another community.’ Not at all. We are spreading out the horrors of slavery before Northerners, in order to show them their own sin in sustaining such a system of complicated wrong and suffering. It is because we are politically, commercially, and socially connected with our southern brethren, that we urge our doctrines upon those of the free States. ”

“ When Jehovah commanded Pharaoh to ‘let the people go,’ he meant that they should be immediately emancipated. I read his meaning in the judgments which terribly rebuked Pharaoh’s repeated and obstinate refusal to ‘let the people go.’ I read it in the universal emancipation of near 3,000,000 of Israelites in one awful night. When the prophet Isaiah commanded the Jews ‘to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke,’ he taught no gradual or partial emancipation, but immediate, universal emancipation. ”

“ This idea of woman’s being ‘the last best gift of God to man,’ however pretty it may sound to the ears of those who love to discourse upon ‘the poetry of romantic gallantry, and the generous promptings of chivalry,’ has nevertheless been the means of sinking her from an end into a mere means—of turning her into an appendage to man, instead of recognizing her as a part of man—of destroying her individuality, and rights, and responsibilities, and merging her moral being in that of man. ”

“ It is true, ‘the dangers, evils and mischiefs of slavery’ could be, and were discussed at the South and the North. Yes, we might talk as much as we pleased about these, as long as we viewed slavery as a misfortune to the slaveholder, and talked of ‘the dangers, evils and mischiefs of slavery’ to him, and pitied him for having had such a ‘sad inheritance entailed upon him.’ But could any man or woman ever ‘express their views freely’ on the SIN of slavery at the South? ”

“ If, by a party conflict, thou meanest a struggle for power, either civil or ecclesiastical, a thirst for the praise and the honor of man, why, then I would ask, is this the proper sphere of any moral, accountable being, man or woman? If, by coercive influences, thou meanest the use of force or of fear, such as slaveholders and warriors employ, then, I repeat, that man has no more right to exert these than woman. ”

“ Human beings have rights, because they are moral beings: the rights of all men grow out of their moral nature; and as all men have the same moral nature, they have essentially the same rights. These rights may be wrested from the slave, but they cannot be alienated: his title to himself is as perfect now, as is that of Lyman Beecher: it is stamped on his moral being, and is, like it, imperishable. Now [115] if rights are founded in the nature of our moral being, then the mere circumstance of sex does not give to man higher rights and responsibilities, than to woman. ”

“ In other words—to begin to hold a slave is man-stealing—to keep on holding him is merely a repetition of the first act—a doing the same identical thing all the time. A series of the same acts continued for a length of time is a habit—a permanent state. And the first of this series of the same acts that make up this habit or state is just like all the rest.
If every slave has a right to freedom, then surely the man who withholds that right from him to-day is a man-stealer, though he may not be the first person who has robbed him of it. ”

“ I have never yet been able to learn, how our hatred to our colored brother is to be destroyed by driving him away from us. I am told that when a colored republic is built up on the coast of Africa, then we shall respect that republic, and acknowledge that the character of the colored man can be elevated; we will become connected with it in a commercial point of view, and welcome it to the sympathies of our hearts. Miserable sophistry! deceitful apology for present indulgence in sin! What man or woman of common sense now doubts the intellectual capacity of the colored people? ”

“ Who cavilled more at Anti-Slavery measures, and who more ready now to acknowledge his former blindness? Real Abolitionists know full well, that the slave never has been, and never can be, a whit the better for mere abstractions, floating in the head of any man; and they also know, that principles, fixed in the heart, are things of another sort. ”

“ If our measures really tend to this result, how can this evil come to an end at no distant period? Colonizationists tell us, if it had not been for our interference, they could have done a vast deal better than they have done; and the American Unionists say, that we have paralyzed their efforts, so that they can do nothing; and yet ‘the tendencies of the age’ are crowding forward Emancipation. Now, what has produced this tendency? Surely every reflecting person must acknowledge, that Colonization cannot effect the work of Abolition. The American Union is doing nothing ”

“ It is only by alarming the consciences of the weak and feeble, and diffusing among our own people a morbid sensibility on the question of slavery, that the abolitionists can accomplish their object. Preparatory to this, they are now laboring to saturate the non-slaveholding States with the belief that slavery is a ‘sin against God.’ We must meet the question in all its bearings. ”

“ When human beings are regarded as moral beings, sex, instead of being enthroned upon the summit, administering upon rights and responsibilities, sinks into insignificance and nothingness. My doctrine then is, that whatever it is morally right for man to do, it is morally right for woman to do. Our duties originate, not from difference of sex, but from the diversity of our relations in life, the various gifts and talents committed to our care, and the different eras in which we live. ”

“ To suppose that it does, would be to deny the self-evident truth, that the ‘physical constitution is the mere instrument of the moral nature.’ To suppose that it does, would be to break up utterly the relations, of the two natures, and to reverse their functions, exalting the animal nature into a monarch, and humbling the moral into a slave ”

“ If, then, we are taxed without being represented, and governed by laws we have no voice in framing, then, surely, we ought to be permitted at least to remonstrate against ‘every political measure that may tend to injure and oppress our sex in various parts of the nation, and under the various public measures that may hereafter be enforced.’ Why not? Art thou afraid to trust the women of this country with discretionary power as to petitioning? Is there not sound principle and common sense enough among them, to regulate the exercise of this right? ”

“ It is my solemn conviction, that, until this principle of equality is recognised and embodied in practice, the church can do nothing effectual for the permanent reformation of the world. Woman was the first transgressor, and the first victim of power. In all heathen nations, she has been the slave of man, and Christian nations have never acknowledged her rights. ”