Grimké Angelina Emily - On Slavery and Abolitionism

We Defied The Law Of South Carolina
The Grimk Sisters in American History

February 21, 1838, was a bright and sunny day in Boston, though the burgeoning metropolis remained gripped by a winter chill. Such frigid temperatures were hardly unknown to the citys residents, who had endured a heavy snowfall just weeks before, and they werent enough to keep the citys most important families, as well as the merely curious, from gathering at the Massachusetts Statehouse. There, during an afternoon session, a woman was scheduled to address a committee of the State Legislature, an event so unusual as to be unprecedented.

Many of our century would be surprised to learn that the women of our early republic were confined to their own spheres of home and family, but this was the tradition in nineteenth-century America, and had been so for as long as anyone could remember. Then, too, not only were women expected to remain silent in public, it was considered inappropriate for them to speak out on any political issue, and particularly on slaverythe most contentious issue of the era.

But that is precisely what Angelina Grimk, not only a woman but a Southerner, planned to do on that sunny Wednesday. Which explains why so many of the good citizens of Boston, and others from as far away as Springfield and Worcester, crowded the pavement in front of the statehouse, packed themselves into the legislative hearing room and even, several hours before Grimks appearance, clung to the railings of the legislatures stairwells.

The attendance of so many people at a legislative hearing was quite out of the ordinary, historian Gerda Lerner tells us, especially since no public notice had been given, but news of this kind could be trusted to travel speedily by word of mouth. And so it did: By two oclock the statehouse, and the courtyard and steps leading to it, were so packed with onlookers that arriving legislators had to fight their ways through the crowd to take the seats reserved for them in the hearing room.

Angelina Grimk knew that her appearance would draw attention, but when she alighted from her carriage just minutes before she was scheduled to appear, she was shocked by the sheer number of people whod come to hear her. For a moment she felt unequal to the task. I never was so near fainting under the tremendous pressure of the feeling, she later remembered. My heart almost died within me. The novelty of the scene, the weight of the responsibility, the ceaseless exercise of the mind thro which I had passed for more than a weekall together sunk me to the earth. I well nigh despaired.

Fortunately, Angelina was escorted to the statehouse by Maria Weston Chapman, a native Bostonian, wife of a well-known New England merchant, and an uncompromising abolitionist. Chapman was that most unusual of nineteenth-century women: She refused to be silencedenduring catcalls during abolitionist rallies attended by the smattering of men who not only loathed the abolitionist movement but were equally scandalized by the fact that women had founded and led it. Maria was on Angelinas arm as the two climbed the statehouse steps, reassuring her that her appearance before the legislature would be a triumph. God strengthen you, my sister, Chapman said.

A hush fell as the two entered the hearing room, and soon thereafter the committee chairman called on Angelina to speak. Whatever rustling there was in the gallery ceased then, and a hush fell on the hearing room as the Charleston, South Carolina, woman stood to face the legislators. At first her voice was so soft that many in the room had to lean forward to hear her, but then it took on a surprising strength, so that her words rang out for all to hear.

I stand before you as a southerner, exiled from the land of my birth by the sound of the lash, and the piteous cry of the slave.... I stand before you as a moral being... and as a moral being I feel that I owe it to the suffering slave, and to the deluded master, to my country and the world, to do all that I can to overturn a system of complicated crimes, built up upon the broken hearts and prostrate bodies of my countrymen in chains, and cemented by the blood and sweat and tears of my sisters in bonds.