ANGELINA GRIMKE
"Human Rights Not Founded on Sex”
Grimke Public Letter to Catharine Beecher
August 2, 1837
Answering
Beecher's Essay on Slavery and
Abolitionism, which appeared in
March 1837, Angelina in the summer of 1837 composed a series of letters that
defended the activism of antislavery women. Her twelfth letter addressed the
issue of women's rights. It would seem that Beecher’s goading pushed her, and
other militant abolitionists after her, into an increasingly open feminist
position stressing the essential similarity of men and women and their rights
and duties.
Published
individually in The Liberator, her letters appeared in book form in 1838.
DEAR
FRIEND:
Since I engaged in the
investigation of the rights of the slave, I have necessarily been led to a
better understanding of my own; for I have found the Anti-Slavery cause to be
the high school of morals in our land - the school in which human rights are
more fully investigated, and better understood and taught, than in any other
benevolent enterprise. Here one great fundamental principle is disinterred,
which, as soon as it is uplifted to public view, leads the mind into a thousand
different ramifications, into which the rays of this central light are
streaming with brightness and glory. Here we are led to examine why human
beings have any rights. It is because they are moral beings; the rights of all
men, from the king to the slave, are built upon their moral nature: and as all
men have this moral nature, so all men have essentially the same rights. These
rights may be plundered from the slave, but they cannot be alienated: his right
and title to himself is as perfect now, as is that of Lyman Beecher: they are
written in his moral being, and must remain unimpaired as long
as that being continues. Now it naturally occurred to me, that if rights were
founded in moral being, then the circumstance of sex could not give to man
higher rights and responsibilities, than to woman. To suppose that it did,
would be to deny the self-evident truth, "that the physical constitution
is the mere instrument of the moral nature." To suppose that it did, 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; "making the former a proprietor, and the latter its
property." When I look at human beings as moral beings, all distinction in
sex sinks to insignificance and nothingness; for I believe it regulates rights
and responsibilities no more than the color of the skin or the eyes. My
doctrine then is, that whatever it is morally right for man to do, it is
morally right for woman to do. Our duties are governed, not by difference of
sex, but by the diversity of our relative connections in life, and the variety
of gifts and talents committed to our care, and- the different eras in which
we live.
This
regulation of duty by the mere circumstance of sex, rather than by the
fundamental principle of moral being, has led to all that multifarious train
of evils flowing out of the anti-christian doctrine of masculine and feminine
virtues. By this doctrine, man has been converted into the warrior, and clothed
in sternness, and those other kindred qualities, which, in the eyes of many,
belong to his character as a man; whilst woman has been taught to lean upon an
arm of flesh, to sit as a soul arrayed "in gold and pearls, and costly
array," to be admired for her personal charms, and caressed and humored
like a spoiled child, or converted into a mere drudge to suit the convenience
of her lord and master. This principle has spread desolation over the whole
moral world, and brought into all the diversified relations of life,
"confusion and every evil work." It 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, dangers, and toils; the right to fulfill
the great end of her being, as a help meet for man, as a moral, intellectual
and immortal creature, and of glorifying God in her body and her spirit which
are His. Hitherto, instead of being a help meet to man, in the highest,
noblest sense of the term, as a companion, a co-worker, an equal; she has
been a mere appendage of his being, and instrument of his convenience and
pleasure, the pretty toy, with which he wiled away his leisure moments, or the
pet animal whom he humored into playfulness and submission. Woman, instead of
being regarded as the equal of man, has uniformly been looked down upon as his
inferior, a mere gift to fill up the measure of his happiness. In the poetry of
"romantic gallantry" it is true, she has been called the "last
best gift of God to man;" but I believe I speak forth the words of truth
and soberness when I affirm, that woman never was given to man. She was
created, like him, in the image of God, and crowned with glory and honor; created only a little lower than the
angels,-not, as is too generally presumed, a little lower than man; on her
brow, as well as on his, was placed the "diadem of beauty," and in
her hand the scepter of universal dominion.... Let us examine the account of
her creation. "And the rib which the Lord God had taken from man, made he
a woman, and brought her unto the man." Not as a gift-for Adam immediately
recognized her as a part of himself-(this is now "bone of my bone, and
flesh of my flesh") - a companion and equal, not one hair's breadth
beneath him in the greatness of her moral being; not one iota subject to him,
for they both stood on the same platform of human rights, immediately under
the government of God only. 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 "5omantic
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, instead of recognizing her as part of man - of destroying
her individuality, and rights, and responsibilities, and merging her moral
being into that of man. Instead of Jehovah being her king, her lawgiver, and
her judge, she has been taken out of the exalted scale of existence in which
He placed her, and crushed down under the feet of man....
Measure her rights and duties by the sure, unerring standard of moral
being, not by the false rights and measures of a mere circumstance of her
human existence, and then will it become a self-evident truth, that whatever it
is morally right for a man to do, it is morally right for a woman to do. I
recognize no rights but human rights--I know nothing of men's rights and
women's rights; for in Christ Jesus, there is neither male or female; and it is
my solemn conviction, that, until this important principle of equality is
recognized and carried out into practice, that vain will be the efforts of the
church to do anything effectual for the permanent reformation of the world.
Woman was the first transgressor, and the first victim of power. In all the
heathen nations, she has been the slave of man, and no Christian nation has
ever acknowledged her rights. Nay more, no Christian Society has ever done so
either, on the broad and solid basis of humanity. I know that in some few
denominations, she is permitted to preach the gospel; but this is not done from
a conviction of her equality as a human being, but of her equality in spiritual
gifts - for we find that woman, even in these Societies, is not allowed to make
the Discipline by which she is to be governed. Now, I believe it is her right
to be consulted in all the laws and regulations by which she is to be governed,
whether in Church or State, and that the present arrangement of Society, on
those points, are a violation of human rights, an usurpation of power over her,
which is working mischief, great mischief, in the world. If Ecclesiastical and
Civil governments are ordained of God, then I contend that woman has just as
much right to sit in solemn counsel in Conventions, Conferences, Associations,
and General Assemblies, as man -just as much right to sit upon the throne of
England, or in the Presidential chair of the United States, as man....
I believe the discussion of Human Rights at the North has already been
of immense advantage to this country. It is producing the happiest influence
upon the minds and hearts of those who are engaged in it; ... Indeed, the very
agitation of the question, which it involved, has been highly important. Never
was the heart of man so expanded; never were its generous sympathies so
generally and so perseveringly excited. These sympathies, thus called into
existence, have been useful preservatives of national virtue. I therefore do
wish very much to promote the Anti-Slavery excitement at the North, because I
believe it will prove a useful preservative of national virtue....
The discussion of the wrongs of slavery has opened the way for the
discussion of other rights, and the ultimate result will most certainly be
"the breaking of every yoke," the letting the oppressed of every
grade and description go free -an emancipation far more glorious than any the
world has ever yet seen, an introduction into that liberty wherewith Christ
hath made his people free....
THY FRIEND,
ANGELINA E. GRIMKE