On the two
sisters who exemplified the courage and power of American abolitionism.
As I’ve
argued before in this space, it might seem from our 21st century
perspective as if it were relatively easy or at least didn’t take a great deal
of courage to be an abolitionist in mid-19th century America, but
that perception would be entirely wrong. William
Lloyd Garrison being dragged through the streets of Boston is only the most
overt of many similar examples of just how unpopular and even hated abolitionists
and abolitionism were by many Americans (from every region). Yet even within a community
defined by its courage and impressiveness, certain individuals and voices can
still stand out, can truly exemplify the kinds of impassioned and heroic
activism that represent the best of what Americans can be and do. And within
the abolitionist community, two such individuals were the
Grimké sisters, Angelina and Sarah.
Virtually
every detail and stage of the sisters’ lives defines their courage. Born to a
prominent Charleston, South Carolina judge and his wife, part of an established
and comfortable Southern family—and thus by definition in the period a
slaveholding family—both sisters by their mid-20s had come to see the
institution of slavery as a moral and national disgrace, and both chose
self-exile (first to Philadelphia and then to many other Northern cities) from
their family and home. Told repeatedly that women could and should not speak in
public, particularly not to “promiscuous” (mixed-gender) audiences, the sisters
gave shared speaking engagements throughout the north nonetheless; Sarah also
wrote a series of “Letters
on the Equality of the Sexes” to protest such gender biases. Notified that
she could never return to Charleston or risk imprisonment and arrest, Angelina
wrote an Appeal to the Christian
Women of the South to make her case in that way. When she learned that educator
and abolitionist Catherine Beecher supported colonization for freed slaves and
other American blacks, Angelina wrote Letters to Catherine
Beecher, calling out the colonization idea as just another kind of
racism. And this all before they had lived in the North for ten years!
Perhaps a
single 1838 event best sums up the sisters’ courageous activism; I’ll quote the
above-linked Gilder Lehrman Institute article on it: “Two days after their wedding,
Angelina and Theodore [Weld] attended the anti-slavery convention in
Philadelphia. Feelings ran high in the city as rumors spread of whites and
blacks parading arm in arm down city streets, and by the first evening of the
event, a hostile crowd had gathered outside the convention hall. Sounds of
objects being thrown against the walls reverberated inside. But Angelina Grimke
rose to speak out against slavery. ‘I have seen it! I have seen it!’ she told
her audience. ‘I know it has horrors that can never be described.’ Stones hit
the windows, but Angelina continued. For an hour more, she held the audience’s
rapt attention for the last public speech she would give. The next morning, an
angry mob again surrounded the hall, and that evening, set fire to the building,
ransacked the anti-slavery offices inside, and destroyed all records and books
that were found.” The sisters and Weld, like Garrison and many other
abolitionists, continued their efforts for many decades—but an individual
moment like this can make clear both the forces against which they strove and their
determination to share their voices and arguments nonetheless.
Next
siblings tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
do you think? Responses to this post or other sibling nominations for the
crowd-sourced weekend post?
8/1 Memory Day nominee: Herman Melville, the iconoclastic genius
who was equally adept at domestic comedy,
scathing social
satire, compelling psychological fiction,
historical
and adventure fiction,
and, yes, whale tales.
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