Archibald Henry Grimké

He saw at once the immense value of woman's influence in the temperance movement, he saw no less quickly her importance in the anti-slavery reform, and he had appealed to her for help in the work of both, and she had justified his appeal…

The advent of the sisters Grimké upon the anti-slavery stage as public speakers, marked the advent of the idea of women's rights, of their equality with men in the struggle with slavery.

The lesson which their triumph enforced of women's fitness to enact the rôle of principals in the conflict with slavery was not lost upon the sex.

Women went, saw, and conquered their prejudices against the idea of equality; likewise, many men.

My idea is that whatever is morally right for a man to do is morally right for a woman to do.

I am persuaded that woman is not to be, as she has been, a mere second-hand agent in the regeneration of a fallen world, but the acknowledged equal and co-worker with man in this glorious work.

My work in the anti-slavery cause is not wholly done; as soon as it is, I shall know it, and shall be prepared, I trust, to enter upon a mightier work of reform.

In a country where the principle of popular suffrage obtains, all successful moral movements must sometime ultimate in political action.

There is no other way of fixing in laws the changes in public sentiment wrought during this period of agitation.

The idea of political action was therefore a perfectly natural growth from the moral movement against slavery.

For every movement against a great social wrong as was the anti-slavery movement must have its John-the-Baptist stage, its period of popular awakening to the nature and enormity of sin and the duty of immediate repentance.

I was too proud to beg, and ashamed to borrow.