This is the fourth in a series of articles about the people whose testimony make up the poems in my book, Inspired By Their Voices: Poetry from Underground Railroad Testimony. In honor of Women’s History Month, this blog will highlight another female abolitionist and women’s rights activist: Sarah Moore Grimké (1792-1873). A blog can hardly do justice to the scope of Sarah’s life, dedicated as it was to activism over many decades.
When historians write about abolitionist efforts among women in the antebellum United States, Sarah Moore Grimké gets short shrift. She is most commonly mentioned in the same breath as her younger sister, Angelina. Angelina was passionately focused on antislavery, while Sarah became fiercely dedicated to the advancement of women’s rights. Generally, Angelina became the more prominent of the two, due in large part to her public speaking skills. But, as one learns more about these women, it becomes clear that there would be no Angelina without Sarah. Their combined importance to the abolitionist movement, and to the cause of women’s rights, cannot be overstated.
Sarah and Angelina Grimké were born thirteen years apart into a life of privilege and comfort in the heart of the southern slave economy: Charleston, South Carolina. The sisters were born to Mary (née Smith) and John Faucheraud Grimké, the chief judge of the state’s Supreme Court, and a wealthy cotton plantation owner. The couple were married in 1784, and had fourteen children. Only eleven survived to adulthood; Sarah was the oldest surviving daughter, born in 1792. The Grimké children experienced the realities of slavery first-hand— their household in Charleston had as many enslaved workers as family members. Some of Sarah’s earliest memories involved the increasing intolerance that her mother had for her “servants,” leading to cruel canings for even minor mistakes. One of these beatings led to four-year-old Sarah running away to the docks and begging a surprised ship’s crew to be taken away to a place where there was no slavery.
An intelligent and precocious child, Sarah bemused and challenged her parents, showing an early and dogged interest in scholarly pursuits. Her brother Thomas, five years her senior, was a singular inspiration. He shared his schoolbooks, worked on his Latin assignments with her, and after enrolling in the College of Charleston, spoke about his coursework. This common love of learning led them to discussions about law, politics and religion, and spirited debates at the dinner table. Sarah’s father often found her in his library, reading his law books. But Sarah’s destiny was predetermined for a different path: that of a genteel, elegantly dressed Southern woman who, while she may be pleasantly conversant in history and geography, was to marry, raise a family and keep a well appointed house. Chafing at this expectation, Sarah wanted the education afforded her brother, who went to Yale in early 1805. Like Thomas, she wanted to be a lawyer.
It was not to be.
Beyond her own desire for education, Sarah was determined to share it with others— especially the enslaved residents of the household. When she was almost twelve, she was caught reading to an enslaved ten year old girl named Hetty. Sarah taught Hetty the alphabet and phonics, to the point that Hetty could read children’s books.
This was against the law in South Carolina.
Retribution was swift and resolute. John Grimké went into a rage, and Hetty was removed from Sarah’s sphere. Although she was frightened, this experience planted the seeds of Sarah’s determination to educate enslaved children. Later, in her diary, she remembered, “I took an almost malicious satisfaction in teaching my little waiting-maid at night, when she was supposed to be occupied in combing and brushing my locks. The light was put out, the keyhole screened, and flat on our stomachs before the fire, with the spelling-book under her eyes, we defied the law of South Carolina.”
Her father’s stern lecture aside, Sarah found other ways to work around the restrictions of her circumstances. In a brave subterfuge, she taught the Bible to enslaved workers at a Sunday school that she started, but encouraged them to follow the words on the page along with her. Clearly, Sarah Grimké’s intensity was not easily dimmed.
Another focus of intense dedication in Sarah’s life was her sister, Angelina.
In a book sharing his memories of Sarah after her death, her brother-in-law Theodore Dwight Weld (1803-1895)— who lived with her for much of her adult life— wrote: “When Angelina was born Sarah who was not yet thirteen years old, entreated her parents to let her stand sponsor at the babe’s baptism. They, thinking it only a childish impulse that would soon pass, waived the question. But Sarah, nothing daunted, plied them again and again, with an intensity which excited their wonder.” In fact, Sarah became more than a godmother— she became a surrogate mother to Angelina. As she grew up, it was not uncommon for Angelina to call Sarah “Mother.”
Sarah instilled the same disgust of slavery in Angelina that she had cultivated over years of witnessing the cruelty of the South’s slave laws. Years later, both sisters wrote testimonies in the book “American Slavery As It Is,” published in 1839 by the American Anti-Slavery Society. Their stories of beatings, deprivations and travesty were unflinching.
A watershed moment in Sarah’s life happened in 1818, when Judge Grimké became ill. His doctor recommended a specialist in Philadelphia, in the free state of Pennsylvania. One year later, Sarah accompanied her father to the country’s second largest city. John Grimké and his oldest daughter stayed in Philadelphia for months, where Sarah encountered the Society of Friends, or Quakers, and their antislavery activities.
Even after taking in the sea air in Long Branch, New Jersey, Judge Grimké did not recover, and died with his daughter as his only companion— the daughter he once said could have been the most brilliant legal mind in the state of South Carolina, if she weren’t a woman. On her journey from the port of Philadelphia back to Charleston, Sarah met a wealthy Quaker family who began supplying her with books and pamphlets. This led to her conversion from her Episcopalian faith to the beliefs of the Society of Friends. She adopted their plain dress and resolved to leave her home and return to Philadelphia. In 1821, at the age of 29, she did just that. Joining the Fourth and Arch Street Meeting house, Sarah would have heard Lucretia Mott preach first-hand— an opportunity given to women unmatched in other denominations. Sarah began to develop theories on the rights of women, and briefly considered becoming a minister herself.
Meanwhile, Angelina remained in Charleston, believing that she had a role to play speaking out against slavery in her community. She, too, converted to Quakerism, after meeting Anna Braithwaite, an influential Quaker minister who visited the Grimké home. After failing to change the minds of her family, much less her friends and community members, Angelina left Charleston and joined Sarah in Philadelphia in 1829. They lived on the income from their inheritance, and did some teaching.
Becoming more emboldened by the abolitionist movement, both sisters published critical writings in 1836. Angelina issued her “Appeal to the Christian Women of the South.” “Respected Friends,” it began, “it is because I feel a deep and tender interest in your present and eternal welfare that I am willing thus publicly to address you.” The book went on to point out the immorality of slavery. It was burnt by the Postmaster when it arrived in Charleston.
While Angelina addressed Southern Christian women, Sarah wrote her “An Epistle to the Clergy of the Southern States.” Although banned and confiscated throughout the South, it struck a nerve, as some Southern ministers had begun to question slavery as an institution. Sarah used the penchant for logical argument she had honed at family debates to demonstrate that slavery was not blessed in the Bible. Remarkably, she claimed a credibility based on her ability to correctly translate the Bible from its original language.
Along with issuing their two inaugural publications, Sarah and Angelina relocated to New York in 1836, determined to become agents in the abolitionist cause. They attended a 19-day training session given by the American Anti-Slavery Convention, and began offering public lectures to female antislavery societies. Their call to action was that Northern women begin to root out prejudice in their lives and communities. These early lectures were just the start of years of public speaking, writing and testimony that exemplify the contributions of the Grimké sisters to the abolitionist movement. At the same time, Sarah began writing on the topic of women’s rights, publishing “Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Women” in 1838. In it, she claimed, “Men and women were created equal. . . whatever is right for a man to do, is right for a woman. . . I seek no favors for my sex. I surrender not our claim to equality. All I ask of our brethren is that they will take their feet from off our necks and permit us to stand upright on that ground which God destined us to occupy.” In letters written to fellow activists, Sarah always ended with the salutation, “Thine in the bonds of womanhood.” Clearly, the word ‘bonds’ is a double-entendre.
Both women habitually bore the brunt of ridicule as their actions challenged the conventional roles of women. Angelina was the target of mob violence as she spoke to a conference of women held in May 1838 at Pennsylvania Hall in Philadelphia. The mob was offended that women were speaking to an audience of both genders, and that Blacks were present. The next day, the rioters burned the building to the ground. Additional censure came when the Grimkés were disowned by the Society of Friends after Angelina married Theodore Dwight Weld that same year.
Sarah Grimké never married. She lived with Angelina and Theodore for the rest of her life. Withdrawing from the lecture circuit in 1839, she and her sister focused on publishing antislavery treatises and teaching. In 1850, they discovered that they had two nephews— Archibald Henry and Francis James Grimké— who were the children of their brother Henry and an enslaved woman named Nancy Weston. Sarah and Angelina began assisting the brothers, who were enrolled in Lincoln University. With their support, Archibald attended Harvard Law School and Francis matriculated at the Princeton Theological Seminary. Both went on to distinguished careers in fields that Sarah had at one time wished she herself could pursue.
By 1870, living to see slavery abolished through the 13th Amendment, Sarah and Angelina had moved to Hyde Park, Massachusetts, where Sarah was fond of handing out the book “Subjection of Women” by John Stuart Mill (1806-1873). She stayed true to the cause of women’s equality until her death in 1873 at the age of 81.
While Sarah saw the end of slavery, it would be another 46 years before women were granted the right to vote. The Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution of the United States has yet to be ratified.
Sources
Baycora, Fidan. “From Charleston to Philadelphia,” Historic America, 2021. https//historicamerican.org
Birney, Catherine. “The Grimké Sisters, Washington City. 1885.
Grimke, Angelina. “Appeal to the Christian Women of the South,” 1836.
Grimké, Sarah. “Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Woman,” 1838.
Perry, Mark. “Life Up Thy Voice: The Grimké Family’s Journey from Slaveholders to Civil Rights Leaders,” New York: Penguin Books, 2001.
Whipps. Judy,. “Sarah Grimké and Agelina Grimké Weld,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https:\\iep.utm.edu.
Weld, Theodore Dwight. “In Memory,” Boston: Press of George H. Ellis, 1880. https://archive.org/details/inmemoryangelin00weldgoog/page/n73/mode/2up.
__, compiler, “American Slavery As It Is,” New York: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1839.
http://www.worldculture.org/articles/12-Grimke Letters, 1-3.pdf