Back More
Salem Press

Table of Contents

From Suffrage to the Senate America's Political Women: An Encyclopedia of Leaders, Causes & Issues

Grimké, Angelina Emily (1805-1879) and Sarah Moore (1792-1873)

The daughters of slave owners in the South and the only white Southern women leaders in the abolitionist movement, Angelina and Sarah Grimké worked to end slavery. As agents of the American Anti-Slavery Society, the sisters described the horrors of slavery to New England audiences and helped found female anti-slavery societies.

Born in Charleston, South Carolina, the Grimké sisters were educated at home and in private schools to become members of Charleston’s society. Sarah Grimké was particularly resentful that her brothers had received a good advanced education, an opportunity denied to her.

In 1819, Sarah Grimké met a prominent Quaker with whom she had extensive conversations during a sea voyage from Philadelphia to Charleston. When she returned home, she continued to study Quakerism. Sarah reported that she heard voices that told her to return to Philadelphia, which she did in 1821, the year she became a Quaker. Angelina joined her sister in Philadelphia in 1828 and also became a Quaker.

By 1836, the sisters had become committed to the abolitionist movement. That year, Angelina Grimké wrote Appeal to the Christian Women of the South and Sarah Grimké wrote An Epistle to the Clergy of the Southern States, published by the American Anti-Slavery Society. The works were significant for their condemnation of slavery by women who had been part of a slave society. The next year, the women were leaders in a women’s anti-slavery convention that has been described as the “first major organizational effort of American women.”

As the first female agents of the American Anti-Slavery Society, the Grimké sisters went on several speaking tours between 1837 and 1839. These lectures were among the most significant of their contributions to the abolitionist movement, and their public speeches placed them among the pioneers of the women’s rights movement. The speeches, however, proved controversial because of social mores that questioned the appropriateness of women speaking in public and because they spoke to audiences of women and men. Of the controversies, Angelina wrote: “We Abolition Women are turning the world upside down.” In 1837, the Ministerial Association of the Congregational Churches of Massachusetts issued a public “Pastoral Letter” that was clearly directed at Angelina Grimké condemning her for speaking before audiences of women and men. The press attacked her for the same reasons.

The Grimké sisters believed that women and men were equal as moral beings, had equal moral duties as children of God, and had an equal right to fulfill them. In their belief system, if an act was morally right for a man to do, it was also morally right for a woman. Angelina Grimké developed her argument for women’s rights from her understanding of her biblical duty to take action in moral areas, which led her to an insistence that women had a right to a voice in all the laws under which they lived and that women had a right to sit in Congress or be president.

In her feminist writings, Sarah Grimké argued that parallels existed between slavery and women’s status, explaining that in both situations, one group exerted power over another group—whites over slaves and men over women—and that when power is used in such a way, one group benefits and the other group is exploited. She said that women “ought to feel a peculiar sympathy in the colored man’s wrong, for like him, she has been accused of mental inferiority, and denied the privileges of a liberal education.” Sarah Grimké believed that men had usurped women’s power and that women had accepted the concept of men’s superiority. She wrote: “I ask no favors for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is, that they take their feet from off our necks, and permit us to stand upright on that ground which God designed us to occupy.” Her development of these concepts made her a major feminist theorist and pioneer, but they aroused opposition to the Grimké sisters both inside and outside the abolitionist movement. Some thought that adding women’s issues to the debate would increase opposition to the abolitionist movement.

In 1838, Angelina Grimké married Theodore Weld, one of the leading abolitionists of the time. The two sisters and Weld wrote American Slavery as It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses (1839), considered the most important anti-slavery document written before Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. They continued to do research, assist local African Americans, and work for women’s rights, but their period of intense activity ended in 1839.

See also: Abolitionist Movement, Women in the; Public Speaking; Stowe, Harriet Elizabeth Beecher

References: Lerner, The Feminist Thought of Sarah Grimké (1998); Matthews, Women’s Struggle for Equality: The First Phase, 1828-1876 (1997).

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
"Grimké, Angelina Emily (1805-1879) And Sarah Moore (1792-1873)." From Suffrage to the Senate America's Political Women: An Encyclopedia of Leaders, Causes & Issues, edited by Suzanne O’Dea, Salem Press, 2019. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=Suffrage3e_0408.
APA 7th
Grimké, Angelina Emily (1805-1879) and Sarah Moore (1792-1873). From Suffrage to the Senate America's Political Women: An Encyclopedia of Leaders, Causes & Issues, In S. O’Dea (Ed.), Salem Press, 2019. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=Suffrage3e_0408.
CMOS 17th
"Grimké, Angelina Emily (1805-1879) And Sarah Moore (1792-1873)." From Suffrage to the Senate America's Political Women: An Encyclopedia of Leaders, Causes & Issues, Edited by Suzanne O’Dea. Salem Press, 2019. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=Suffrage3e_0408.