Abolitionist Sisters

Sarah and Angelina Grimke were born into good fortune. Their father, John Grimk�, had been a lieutenant colonel in the Revolutionary War and speaker in the South Carolina House of Representatives before becoming a plantation owner and judge on the state Supreme Court. The girls could look forward to a life of ease. In front of them lay a future of balls, concerts, picnics, rides, dinners, parties, and entertainments. They would spend their days in spacious rooms with high ceilings in beautifully decorated homes and stroll in wellmanicured gardens. Their wardrobes would be of the finest kind, full of the latest fashions, and their tables would be laden with both local and imported food and wine. What's more, they'd hardly need to lift a finger, thanks to the house slaves on hand 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to attend to their every whim. Outside, field slaves would work just as hard if not harder on the plantations that made all this possible.

Sarah Moore Grimk� was born in 1792 and grew up in a magnificent house in the center of Charleston and on the family plantation inland at Beaufort. She had three elder brothers and one elder sister, and three younger brothers and two younger sisters. Her education was to consist of reading, writing, and enough mathematics to run a household. Needlework, art, music, and a little French were featured on the curriculum, but the most important subject was the learning of manners. She craved more from her education, however, and started to learn secretly from her brother Thomas, six years her senior, studying his books at night. She delved into history, geography, science, Greek, and advanced mathematics. She was allowed to participate in the semiformal debates her father arranged for his sons as law school preparation. Judge Grirnke reportedly commented that if Sarah had been a boy she would have been America's greatest jurist. But while Thomas went to Yale, Sarah was kept at home.It was not only the impact of slavery on the slaves that troubled Angelina but also its effect on their owners. Having everything done for you by house slaves and living off the work of field slaves, she observed, was deeply amoral and undermined families. She wondered what hope there was for affection to arise from familial duty if you could not even move a chair for your mother or open a window so she that she might enjoy the air.Angelina, meanwhile, was on her own spiritual and intellectual journey from the Episcopal Church, with its emphasis on the rule of the clergy, to the more democratic Presbyterian Church, and from a merely argumentative to a highly opinionated anti-slavery activist. But she could not abide the idea of Christians owning other Christians, and she too became attracted to the Quaker religion and its dedication to peace and equality.In November 1829 Angelina stopped her onewoman crusade in Charleston and headed north to be with Sarah in Philadelphia. Soon she too had joined the Quakers.Back home, she threw herself into discovering all she could about the Quaker movement, also known as the Religious Society of Friends, and its outright opposition to slavery. She also took to wearing the plain habit of Quaker women, and in 1821 she relocated to Philadelphia to live alternately with Israel's family in the country and his sister Catherine Morris in the city, supported by the interest on her inheritance. In May 1823 Sarah Grimk� became a full member of the Friends.From an early age Sarah became aware of the unjust treatment meted out to slaves. When at the age of five she saw a slave being beaten, she tried to run away from home to a place where there was no slavery. Later, in her speeches, she recalled the many harrowing experiences of slavery she had witnessed, ranging from whippings to torture at the local workhouse where slaves were sent to be disciplined. She even witnessed the gruesome spectacle of the severed head of an escaped slave on a pole by a country roadside, placed there as a warning to other would-be runaways. What she saw was to turn her into a rebel.Angelina became the focus of Sarah's existence and by the time the former started to talk she addressed her elder sister as "mother."In the mid-1830s there was an explosion of anti-slavery societies in the North, as well as female versions of such groups in which women were able to play a leadership role previously denied them. Both sisters began to engage more and more in the antislavery movement, Sarah through reading and study, and Angelina by attendance at meetings of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society.The era also saw a great deal of violence directed at such activities, even in the North, where slavery for many people was little more than an abstract idea. Most had never witnessed it personally.Looking after her dying father all alone and staying with Quakers in Philadelphia for months on either side of his death seem to have hardened and focused her, resolving many issues. On the ship back to Charleston she was befriended by a prosperous Quaker family called Morris, who gave her books and tracts. She started a correspondence with Israel Morris, the head of the family.But Sarah and Angelina were to reject the highly privileged existence spread out before them by the simple accidents of their births. Instead they both moved north, embraced principle, and devoted their lives to campaigning for the abolition of slavery and for women's rights.In February 1805 Mary Grimke produced her 14th and last child, Angelina Emily. Sarah begged her parents to make her the new child's godmother and to give her a major central role in raising the girl; they assented in part to relieve some of the child-rearing burden from Mary and in part to cheer up the morose Sarah.In 1818 Judge Grimk� fell seriously ill, and in the spring of 1819 his Charleston doctor referred him to a Philadelphia specialist. Sarah accompanied her father on the sea journey. After two months the doctor could do no more than recommend the sea air and the bathing at Long Branch, New Jersey. Father and daughter traveled there, but to no avail. Judge Grimk� died with Sarah as his sole mourner.Both sisters still struggled to find their niche. Initially their mission to abolish slavery had little real direction, partly because the Quakers considered their views too radical. While Quakers might be against slavery, their social activism was unlikely to extend beyond praying for a solution. Angelina yearned for an activist role, while her elder sister was more cautious.Sarah's family was devoutly Episcopalian, and she taught Sunday school to younger slave children. When she asked why she couldn't teach them to read so they could discover the Bible for themselves, her father replied that the 1740 Better Ordering and Governing of Negroes and Slaves Act levied a fine of �100 (about $10,000 today) for educating such people or employing slaves with these skills. Sarah's reaction was to teach her young black maid, Hetty, to read secretly at night until her mother discovered them; Sarah was severely admonished by her father, and Hetty was very lucky to escape a severe whipping. Sarah later wrote:"! 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 key hole screened, and flat on our stomachs before the fire, with the spelling-book under our eyes, we defied the law of South Carolina."Time Among the QuakersSeeking a Niche

The era also saw a great deal of violence directed at such activities, even in the North, where slavery for many people was little more than an abstract idea. Most had never witnessed it personally.