Angelina Grimke
Angelina Grimke
Angelina Emily Grimké Weldwas an American political activist, abolitionist, women's rights advocate, and supporter of the women's suffrage movement. While she was raised a Southerner, she spent her entire adult life living in the North. The time of her greatest fame was between 1836, when a letter she sent to William Lloyd Garrison was published in his anti-slavery newspaper, The Liberator, and May 1838, when she gave a courageous and brilliant speech to abolitionists gathered in Philadelphia, with a hostile...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionCivil Rights Leader
Date of Birth20 February 1805
CityCharleston, SC
CountryUnited States of America
Human beings have rights, because they are moral beings: the rights of all men grow out of their moral nature; and as all men havethe same moral nature, they have essentially the same rights. These rights may be wrested from the slave, but they cannot be alienated: his title to himself is as perfect now, as is that of Lyman Beecher: it is stamped on his moral being, and is, like it, imperishable.
There is something in the heart of man which will bend under moral suasion. There is a swift witness for truth in his bosom, which will respond to truth when it is uttered with calmness and dignity.
So precious a talent as intellect never was given to be wrapt in a napkin and buried in the earth.
... so far from thinking that a slaveholder is bound by the immoral and unconstitutional laws of the Southern States, we hold thathe is solemnly bound as a man, as an American, to break them, and that immediately and openly ...
The investigation of the rights of the slave has led me to a better understanding of my own. I have found the anti-slavery cause to be ... the school in which human rights are more fully investigated and better understood and taught than in any other.
Measure her rights and duties by the unerring standard of moral being… and then the truth will be self-evident, that whatever it is morally right for a man to do, it is morally right for a woman to do. I recognize no rights but human rights – I know nothing of men’s rights and women’s rights; for in Christ Jesus, there is neither male nor female. It is my solemn conviction, that, until this principle of equality is recognised and embodied in practice, the Church can do nothing effectual for the permanent reformation of the world.
I recognize no rights but human rights.
Thou art blind to the danger of marrying a woman who feels and acts out the principle of equal rights.
The doctrine of blind obedience and unqualified submission to any human power, whether civil or ecclesiastical, is the doctrine of despotism ...
It is through the tongue, the pen, and the press that truth is principally propagated.
I appeal to you, my friends, as mothers: are you willing to enslave your children? You stare back with horror and indignation at such questions. But why, if slavery is not wrong to those upon whom it is imposed?
Can you not see that women could do and would do a hundred times more for the slave, if she were not fettered?