Sarah Moore Grimke was an anti-slavery crusader and advocate of woman’s rights.
Background
Sarah Moore Grimke was born on November 26, 1792 in Charleston, South Carolina. Her parents, Judge John Faucheraud Grimke and Mary Smith Grimke, were wealthy, aristocratic, and conservative; but Sarah and Angelina, her sister, early showed signs of dissatisfaction with their environment.
Career
As a girl Sarah regretted the fact that her sex made it impossible for her to study the law. Contact with her father and her older brother, Thomas, sharpened her mind and deepened her conscience. But it was her association with Quakers, met on a trip to Philadelphia when she was twenty-seven, that crystallized her discontent with her home.
After many trying spiritual experiences, she returned North and became a Friend.
Angelina, having experimented with Presbyterianism, followed her sister. Both, however, chafed under the discipline of the orthodox Philadelphia Friends, and Angelina, the more expansive and self-reliant, came especially to resent in them what seemed to her an equivocal attitude on slavery and Abolition.
In 1835 Angelina, after much reflection, determined to express her growing sympathy with Abolition and wrote to Garrison, encouraging him in his work. The letter, to her surprise, was published in the Liberator. Although Sarah and the Philadelphia Friends disapproved, Angelina, having turned the corner, could not go back. Eager to make a more positive contribution to the cause increasingly close to her heart, she wrote an Appeal to the Christian Women of the South (1836). In this thirty-six-page pamphlet she urged Southern women to speak and act against slavery, which she endeavored to prove contrary not only to the first charter of human rights given to Adam, but opposed to the Declaration of Independence.
“The women of the South can overthrow this horrible system of oppression and cruelty, licentiousness and wrong, ” she wrote, urging them to use moral suasion in the cause of humanity and freedom. Anti-slavery agitators eagerly seized this eloquent and forceful appeal, enhanced in value by the fact that it came from the pen of one who knew the slave system intimately. In South Carolina, on the other hand, copies of the Appeal were publicly burned by postmasters, and its author was officially threatened with imprisonment if she returned to her native city. After pondering for months she took what seemed to her a momentous step.
She decided to accept an invitation from the American Antislavery Society to address small groups of women in private parlors. After an inward struggle Sarah also determined to risk the disapprobation of the Friends, and henceforth the sisters were on intimate terms with Abolitionists and aided former slaves.
Sarah, on her part, wrote an Epistle to the Clergy of the Southern States (1836). Two years later Angelina, in her Letters to Catherine E. Beecher in Reply to an Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism Addressed to A. E. Grimke (1838), denounced gradualism. It was at this time that the sisters persuaded their mother to apportion slaves to them as their share of the family estate, and these slaves they at once freed.
From addressing small groups of women it was a natural step to the lecture platform. At first the sisters, timid and self-conscious, spoke only to audiences of women, but as their reputation for earnestness and eloquence grew, it was impossible to keep men away. Their lectures in New England aroused great enthusiasm.
The prejudice against the appearance of women on the lecture platform found many expressions; one was the famous “Pastoral Letter” issued by the General Association of Congregational Ministers of Massachusetts, a tirade against women-preachers and women-reformers. Whittier, though he defended “Carolina’s high-souled daughters, ” at the same time urged them to confine their arguments to immediate emancipation. So great was the opposition to their speaking in public that the sisters felt compelled to defend woman’s rights as well as Abolition, for in their minds the two causes were vitally connected.
Not only the efforts made to suppress their testimony against slavery, but their belief that slavery weighed especially heavily on both the colored and white women of the South, led them openly to champion the cause of their sex.
The latter part of her and her sister lives was marked by devotion to their work of teaching and by an indomitable interest in the causes to which both had contributed.
Religion
Sarah Grimke's view on abolition is clear based on her activism and she was a major female player in the abolition movement. These views were rooted in her Quaker faith and she believed, similar to her sister, that slavery was contrary to God's will. Similarly, her views on women's rights were rooted in the Bible. She had strong opinions especially on the story of creation. She believed Adam and Eve were created equally, unlike many who believed Eve was created as a gift for Adam. She also assigns much of the blame for the fall on Adam, who was tempted by an equal, instead of Eve, who was tempted by a supernatural evil, which is more forgivable given their innocence. This view was a main argument in her "Letter 1: The Original Equality of Woman" which is the foundation of her views of equality of the sexes, which is discussed in more detail in her "Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Woman".
Sarah Grimke used Scripture in most of her writings that demonstrated her dedication to the Quaker faith and her genuine belief in it compatibility with activism.
Her faith and closeness to God were a critical factor in her ability to be unafraid during times of opposition and to argue on behalf of women and slaves well.
Views
Sarah’s Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Woman (1838) maintained that “the page of history teems with woman’s wrongs” and that “it is wet with woman’s tears. ” She indicted the unrighteous dominion exercised over women in the name of protection ; she entreated women to “arise in all the majesty of moral power and plant themselves, side by side, on the platform of human rights, with man, to whom they were designed to be companions, equals and helpers in every good word and work”.
Quotations:
"I know nothing of man's rights, or woman's rights; human rights are all that I recognize. "
"I ask 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 the ground which God has designed us to occupy. "
Personality
A life of modesty, economy, and charity seemed hollow when she longed for an opportunity to serve humanity. Nor did Sarah find peace; her sensitiveness and lack of self-confidence made her life among the Quakers one of almost intolerable conflict and suffering.
She was shy, blueeyed woman, courteous and gentle in bearing.