I trust the cause of human rights is onward--weekly, I receive two copies of the Emancipator, which I send out as battering rams, to beat down the citadel of oppression.’ In a letter to James G.
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.
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A southern Minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church, at the session of the New York Annual Conference, in June of 1836, said: ‘Don’t give up Abolitionism--don’t bow down to slavery.
That there are thousands who believe slaveholding to be sinful, who secretly wish the abolitionists success, and believe God will bless their efforts.
And now, as the result of his investigations and observations, he was convinced that not only the spirit but the principles and measures of the abolitionists ARE RIGHTEOUS.
He was now ready to emancipate his own slaves, and had commenced advocating the doctrine of immediate emancipation--‘and here,’ said he, pointing to two men sitting near him, ‘are the first fruits of my labors--these two fellow Virginians…
And I know a thousand Virginians, who need only to be made acquainted with the true spirit and principles of abolitionists, in order to their becoming converts as we are.
Let the abolitionists go on in the dissemination of their doctrines, and let the Northern papers cease to misrepresent them at the South--let the true light of abolitionism be fully shed upon the Southern mind, and the work of immediate…
At length my eyes were opened--partly by the arguments used by the abolitionists: but mainly, by long being compelled by them to examine the subject for myself.
No longer could I close my eyes to the evils of slavery, nor could I any longer despise the abolitionists, ‘the only true friends of their country and kind.’ I now think, I know, I have no more right to own slaves, whether I inherited them…
By declaring this sentiment, I expect and design to abet the cause of Abolition at the North, and through the North the emancipation of the slaves at the South.
We believe that we have most to fear from the organised action upon the consciences and fears of the slaveholders themselves; from the insinuations of their dangerous heresies into our schools, our pulpits, and our domestic circles.
The great fundamental principle of Abolitionists is, that man cannot rightfully hold his fellow man as property.