cause worth dying for. ”7 Garrison published the letter in his
abolitionist paper, The Liberator, with a foreword identifying
Angelina as the member of a prominent slaveholding family.
She was widely condemned by friends and acquaintances for
disgracing her family, and Sarah, too, condemned her.
In 1836, she sealed her fate as a traitor to her race and to
her family by publishing an abolitionist tract called “An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South. ” For the first time, maybe in the history of the world, a woman addressed other
women and demanded that they unite as a revolutionary force
to overthrow a system of tyranny. And for the first time on
Amerikan soil, a woman demanded that white women identify
themselves with the welfare, freedom, and dignity of black
women:
Let [women] embody themselves in societies, and send petitions
up to their different legislatures, entreating their husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons, to abolish the institution of slavery; no longer to subject woman to the scourge and the chain, to mental
darkness and moral degradation; no longer to tear husbands from
their wives, and children from their parents; no longer to make
men, women, and children, work without wages; no longer to
make their lives bitter in hard bondage; no longer to reduce
American citizens to the abject condition of slaves, of “chattels
personal; ” no longer to barter the image of God in human shambles for corruptible things such as silver and gold. 8
Angelina exhorted white Southern women, for the sake of all
women, to form antislavery societies; to petition legislatures;
to educate themselves to the harsh realities of black slavery; to
speak out against black slavery to family, friends, and acquaintances; to demand that slaves be freed in their own families; to pay wages to any slaves who are not freed; to act against the law by freeing slaves wherever possible; and to act
against the law by teaching slaves to read and to write. In the
first political articulation of civil disobedience as a principle of
action, she wrote:
But some of you will say, we can neither free our slaves nor
teach them to read, for the laws of our state forbid it. Be not
surprised when I say such wicked laws ought to be no barrier in
the way of your duty. . . If a law commands me to sin I will
break it; if it calls me to suffer, I will let it take its course unresistingly. The doctrine of blind obedience and unqualified sub
mission to any human power, whether civil or ecclesiastical, is
the doctrine of despotism... 9
This tract was burned by Southern postmasters; Angelina was
warned in newspaper editorials never to return to the South;
and she was repudiated by her family. After the publication of
her “Appeal, ” she became a full-time abolitionist organizer.
Also in 1836, in a series of letters to Catherine Beecher,
Angelina articulated the first fully conceived feminist argument against the oppression of women: Now, I believe it is woman’s right to have a choice in all the laws
and regulations by which she is to be governed, whether in
Church or State; and that the present arrangements of society. . .
are a violation of human rights, a rank usurpation of power, a
violent seizure and confiscation of what is sacredly and inalienably hers—thus inflicting upon woman outrageous wrongs, working mischief incalculable in the social circle, and in its influence on the world producing only evil, and that continually. 10
Her feminist consciousness had grown out of her abolitionist
commitment: “The investigation of the rights of the slave has
led me to a better understanding of my own. ”11
Also in 1836, Sarah Grimke published a pamphlet called
“Epistle to the Clergy of the Southern States. ” In it, she refutes
the claims by Southern clergy that biblical slavery provided a
justification for Amerikan slavery. From this time on, Sarah
and Angelina were united publicly and privately in their political work.
In 1837, the Grimke sisters attended an antislavery convention in New York City. There they asserted that white and black women were a sisterhood; that the institution of black
slavery was nourished by Northern race prejudice; and that
white women and black men also shared a common condition:
[The female slaves] 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. . . Our people have erected a false standard by which to judge man’s char
acter. Because in the slave-holding States colored men are
plundered and kept in abject ignorance, are treated with disdain
and scorn, so here, too in profound deference to the South, we
refuse to eat, or ride, or walk, or associate, or open our institutions of learning, or even our zoological institutions to people of color, unless they visit them in the capacity of servants, of menials
in humble attendance upon the Anglo-American. Who ever heard
of a more wicked absurdity in a Republican country?
Women ought to feel a peculiar sympathy in the colored man’s
wrongs, for, like him, she has been accused of mental inferiority, and denied the privileges of a liberal education. 12
In 1837, public reaction against the Grimke sisters became
fierce. The Massachusetts clergy published a pastoral letter
denouncing female activism:
We invite your attention to the dangers which at present seem
to threaten the female character with wide-spread and permanent
injury.
. . . We cannot. . . but regret the mistaken conduct of those
who encourage females to bear an obtrusive and ostentatious part
in measures of reform, and [we cannot] countenance any of that
sex who so far forget themselves as to itinerate in the character
of public lecturers and teachers. We especially deplore the intimate acquaintance and promiscuous conversation of females with regard to things which ought not to be named; by which
that modesty and delicacy which is the charm of domestic life,
and which constitutes the true influence of woman in society, is
consumed, and the way opened, as we apprehend, for degeneracy
and ruin. 13
Replying to the pastoral letter, Angelina wrote: “We are
placed very unexpectedly in a very trying situation, in the forefront of an entirely new contest— a contest for the rights of woman as a moral, intelligent and responsible being. ”14 Sarah’s reply, which was later published as part of a systematic analysis of women’s oppression called Letters on the Equality