Are these the only motives presented to the daughters of America, for laboring in the glorious cause of Human Rights?
Angelina Emily Grimké
The Public Record
Angelina Emily Grimké Weld was an American abolitionist, political activist, women's rights advocate, and supporter of the women's suffrage movement. At one point she was the best known, or "most notorious," woman in the country. She and her sister Sarah Moore Grimké were considered the only notable examples of white Southern women abolitionists. The sisters lived together as adults, while Angelina was the wife of abolitionist leader Theodore Dwight Weld.
gutenberg.org
We have fully and fearfully illustrated the truth of the Apostle’s declaration: ‘Knowledge puffeth up.’ We have indeed been puffed up, vaunting ourselves in our mental endowments and national greatness.
As a nation, we have too long educated the mind, and left the heart a moral waste.
Intellectual endowments are good, but a high standard of moral principle is better, is essential.
Those teachers, who are not prepared to teach this in all its fullness, are deficient in one of the most sterling elements of moral character, and are false to the holy trust committed to them, and utterly unfit to train up the children of…
I know of no moral truth of greater importance at the present crisis.
I consider it absolutely indispensable, that this truth should be sedulously instilled into the mind of every child in our republic.
The right understanding of these will qualify her to teach the fundamental, but unfashionable doctrine, that ‘God is no respecter of persons,’ and that he that despiseth the colored man, because he is ‘guilty of a skin not colored like our…
They alone teach fully the doctrine of human rights; and to know and appreciate these, is an indispensable prerequisite to the wisely successful performance of the duties of a teacher.
I know some noble instances of this union of principles and employment, and am fully settled in the belief, that abolition doctrines are pre-eminently calculated to qualify men and women to become faithful and efficient teachers.
If it is drudgery to teach these little ones, then it is the duty of men to bear a part of that burthen; if it is a privilege and an honor, then we generously invite them to share that honor and privilege with us.
I once heard a man, who had labored extensively among children, say, ‘I never feel so near heaven, as when I am teaching these little ones.’ He was right; and I trust the time is coming, when the occupation of an instructer to children…