ANGELINA GRIMKE

An Appeal to the Women of the Nominally Free States

1837

Angelina and her sister Sarah were raised in a rich slaveholder family in South Carolina, but they converted to Quakerism as young women and turned against slavery. Upon relocating to the Philadelphia, they became public spokespeople against slavery, the first women to become prominent doing so. This is one of her early attempts to get northern women to do something about slavery.

After issuing an appeal to southern women, this second address was published by the national convention of antislavery women. Angelina Grimke forcefully asserted women's right to act on behalf of emancipation, and exhorted women to incorporate their antislavery beliefs into their daily actions.

Because the Grimkes spoke before abolitionist gatherings, the issue of slavery tended to get mixed up with the issue of whether respectable women had any right to speak out on such controversial topics, or on any other topic for that matter. Showing the confidence that flowed from her successful public speaking, she articulated a cogent written defense of women's rights.

BELOVED SISTERS:

. . .The women of the North have high and holy duties to perform in the work of emancipation - duties to themselves, to the suffering slave, to the slaveholder, to the church, to their country, and to the world at large, and, above all to their God. Duties, which if not performed now, may never be performed at all....

Every citizen should feel an intense interest in the political concerns of the country, because the honor, happiness, and well being of every class, are bound up in its politics, government and laws. Are we aliens because we are women? Are we bereft of citizenship because we are the mothers, wives, and daughters of a mighty, people? Have women no country-no interest stakes in public weal-no liabilities in common peril-no partnership in a nation's guilt and shame? Has woman no home nor household altars, nor endearing ties of kindred, nor sway with man, nor power at a mercy seat, nor voice to cheer, nor hand to raise the drooping, and to bind the broken? ...

What then is Slavery? It is that crime, which casts man down from that exaltation where God has placed him, "a little lower than the angels," and sinks him to a level with the beasts of the field. This intelligent and immortal being is confounded with the brutes that perish; he whose spirit was formed to rise in aspirations of gratitude and praise whilst here, and to spend an eternity with God in heaven, is herded with the beasts, whose spirits go downward with their bodies of clay, to the dust of which they were made. Slavery is that crime by which man is robbed of his inalienable right to liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the diadem of glory, and honor, with which he was crowned, and that sceptre of dominion which was placed in his hand when he was ushered upon the theatre of creation....

It is gravely urged that as it is a political subject, women have no concernment with it, this doctrine of the North is a sycophantic response to the declaration of a Southern representative, that women have no right to send up petitions to Congress. We know, dear sisters, that the open and the secret enemies of freedom in our country have dreaded our influence, and therefore have reprobated our interference, and in order to blind us to our responsibilities, have thrown dust into our eyes, well knowing that if the organ of vision is only clear, the whole body, the moving and acting faculties will become full of light, and will soon be thrown into powerful action. Some, who pretend to be very jealous for the honor of our sex, and are very anxious that we should scrupulously maintain the dignity and delicacy of female propriety, continually urge this objection to female effort We grant that it is a political, as well as a moral subject: does this exonerate women from their duties as subjects of the government, as members of the great human family? Have women never wisely and laudably exercised political responsibilities? ...

And, dear sisters, in a country where women are degraded and brutalized, and where their exposed persons bleed under the lash—where they are sold in the shambles of "negro brokers"- robbed of their hard earnings-torn from their husbands, and forcibly plundered of their virtue and their offspring; surely, in such a country, it is very natural that women should wish to know "the reason why"- especially when these outrages of blood and nameless horror are practised in violation of the principles of our national Bill of Rights and the Preamble of our Constitution. We do not, then, and cannot concede the position, that because this is a political subject women ought to fold their hands in idleness, and close their eyes and ears to the "horrible things" that are practised in our land. The denial of our duty to act, is a bold denial of our right to act, and if we have no right to act, then may we well be termed "the white slaves of the North"-for, like our brethren in bonds, we must seal our lips in silence and despair. ... All moral beings have essentially the same rights and the same duties, whether they be male or female....

Out of the millions of slaves who have been stolen from Africa, a very great number must have been women, who were torn from the arms of their fathers and husbands, brothers, and children, and subjected to all the horrors of the middle passage and the still greater sufferings of slavery in a foreign land.' ... The great mass of female slaves in the southern states are the descendants of these hapless strangers: 1,000,000 of them now wear the iron yoke of slavery in this land of boasted liberty and law. They are our countrywomen-they are our sisters, and to us, as women, they have a right to look for sympathy with their sorrows, and effort and prayer for their rescue. Upon those of us especially, who have named the name of Christ, they have peculiar claims, and claims which we must answer or we shall incur a heavy load of guilt.

Women, too, are constituted by nature the peculiar guardians of children, and children are the victims of this horrible system. Helpless infancy is robbed of the tender care of the mother, and the protection of the father....

And now, dear sisters, let us not forget that Northern women are participators in the crime of Slavery-too many of us have surrendered our hearts and hands to the wealthy planters of the South, and gone down with them to live on the unrequited toil of the Slave. Too many of us have ourselves become slaveholders, our hearts have been hardened under the searing influence of the system, and we too, have learned to be

But let it be so no longer. Let us henceforward resolve, that the women of the free states never again will barter their principles for the blood bought luxuries of the South - never again will regard with complacency, much less with the tender sentiments of love, any man "who buildeth his house by unrighteousness and his chambers by wrong, that useth his neighbor's service without wages, and giveth him not for his work." . . .

Multitudes of Northern women are daily making use of the products of slave labor. They are clothing themselves and their families in the cotton, and eating the rice and the sugar, which they well know has cost the slave his unrequited toil, his blood and his tears; and if the maxim in law be founded in justice and truth, that "the receiver is as bad as the thief," how much greater the condemnation of those, who, not merely receive the stolen products of the slave's labor, but voluntarily purchase them, and continually appropriate them to their own use....

In consequence of the odium which the degradation of slavery has attached to color even in the free states, our colored sisters are dreadfully oppressed here. Our seminaries of learning are closed to them, they are almost entirely banished from our lecture rooms, and even in the house of God they are separated from their white brethren and sisters as though we were afraid to come in contact with a colored skin.... Yes, our sisters, little as we may be willing to admit it, yet it is assuredly true, that whenever we treat a colored brother and sister in a way different from that in which we would treat them, were they white, we do virtually reproach our Maker for having dyed their skins of a sable hue....

Much may be done, too, by sympathizing with our oppressed colored sisters, who are suffering in our very midst Extend to them the right hand of fellowship on the broad principles of humanity and Christianity-treat them as equals-visit them as equals-invite them to cooperate with you in Anti-Slavery and Temperance, and Moral reform Societies-in Maternal Associations, and Prayer Meetings, and Reading Companies.... Opportunities frequently occur in travelling, and in other public situations, when your countenance, your influence, and your hand, might shield a sister from contempt and insult, and procure for her comfortable accommodations.... Multitudes of instances will continually occur in which you will have the opportunity of identifying yourselves with this injured class of our fellow beings; embrace these opportunities at all times and in all places.... In this way, and in this way alone, will you be enabled to subdue that deep-rooted prejudice which is doing the work of oppression in the Free States to a most dreadful extent.