To do this, we must discuss the subject of slavery itself.
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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We must examine its bearing upon the moral, political, and religious institutions of the country.
Colonization, then a favorite measure, is now rejected for instant emancipation.
Deep reflection, the reading of your excellent publications, and--years of travel in Europe, have made me, what I am now proud to call myself, an abolitionist.
I was violently opposed to Abolitionists, and verily thought I was doing service to both church and State, in decrying them as incendiaries and fanatics.
Ah! my dear sir, God in mercy has taught me that something more than sincerity, in the common acceptation of the term, is necessary to preserve our understandings from idiocy, and our hearts from utter ruin.
No, sir!--but of the only persons on the face of the earth, who had HEART enough to FEEL, and SOUL enough to ACT, in behalf of the RIGHTS OF MAN!
Yes, sir, I was a fanatic, and an incendiary too--setting on fire the worst passions of our fallen nature.
It was only whilst the slaveholder was regarded as an unfortunate sufferer, and sympathized with as such, that he was willing to talk, and be talked to, on this ‘delicate subject.’ Hence we find, that as soon as he is addressed as a guilty…
As soon as we set before him the dangers, and evils, and mischiefs of slavery to the down-trodden victims of his oppression, O then! the slaveholder storms and raves like a maniac.
With regard to the discussion of ‘the subject of slavery, in the legislative halls of the South,’ if thou hast read these debates, thou certainly must know that they did not touch on the SIN of slavery at all; they were wholly confined to…
The great fundamental principle of Abolitionists is, that man cannot rightfully hold his fellow man as property.