American Slavery As It Is
American Slavery As It Is, by Theodore Dwight Weld, 1839.
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Also see below for biographies of the Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimke Weld, and Sarah Moore Grimke, as well as lists of additional readings.
Reverend Theodore Dwight Weld was one of the most important abolitionist leaders in America. Together with his wife, Angelina Grimké Weld, and her sister, Sarah Moore Grimké, they wrote the monumental work, American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses. It was published by the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1839. We have provided the original text of American Slavery As It Is, as printed in the edition of 1839. Please see below for a full introduction to the book.
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Table of Contents (pages v-vi)
Part 1: Introduction through Testimony of William Poe (pages 7-27)
Part 2: Privations of the Slaves (pages 27-45)
Part 3: Testimony of Rev. William T. Allan through Testimony of Angela Grimke Weld (pages 45-57)
Part 4: Testimony of Cruelty Inflicted Upon Slaves (pages 57-72)
Part 5: Tortures of Slaves (pages 72-94)
Part 6: Narrative of Rev. Francis Hawley through Condition of Slaves (pages 94-109)
Part 7: Objections Considered I-III (pages 110-128)
Part 8: Objections Considered IV-VI (pages 128-143)
Part 9: Objections Considered VII (pages 143-161)
Part 10: Objections Considered VII (continued; pages 161-176)
Part 11: Objections Considered VII (continued; pages 176-192)
Part 12: Objections Considered VII (continued; pages 192-210)
Introduction
American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses, by Theodore Dwight Weld (1803-1895), with Angelina Grimké Weld (1805-1879) and Sarah Moore Grimké (1792-1872), was published by the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1839.
Reverend Theodore Dwight Weld was one of the most important abolitionist leaders in America. He was converted to the abolitionist movement in 1830. He began training divinity students at Lane University to be leaders in the abolitionist movement. Weld was also an important orator for the cause, giving hundreds of speeches throughout rural America. He later helped establish the system of lecturing agents for the American Anti-Slavery Society. When he was 33, after giving numerous lectures, his voice gave out and he never fully recovered. Together with his wife, Angelina Grimké Weld, and her sister, Sarah Moore Grimké, they wrote the monumental work, American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses. It was published by the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1839.
Weld and his wife researched more than 20,000 Southern newspapers and documents from the years 1837-1839. They compiled statements of slaveholders and witnesses. Weld vetted the material by an executive committee of prominent abolitionists and anti-slavery activists, and other authorities.
Weld and the Grimké sisters published American Slavery As It Is anonymously in 1839. It was priced at 37 ½ cents. More than 100,000 copies were sold in its first year of publication.
Historians of the abolitionist movement consider American Slavery As It Is to be among the greatest anti-slavery books ever published. It was used by the anti-slavery movement as a primary source document and an argument against slavery.
The book focuses on the horrors of slavery. Specifically, it covers the conditions of slavery, including housing, clothing, diet, and treatment of enslaved individuals.
Harriet Beecher Stowe relied on American Slavery As It Is for her research for Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which in turn became one of the most influential publications of the anti-slavery movement and led to the abolition of slavery.
Weld’s other important works included The Bible Against Slavery (1837), The Power of Congress over Slavery in the District of Columbia (1836), and with co-author James A. Thome, he prepared Slavery and the Internal Slave Trade In the United States, published in 1841.
Weld has been largely forgotten by history. This was due, in part, to his extreme modesty. He accepted no offices or titles, did not attend abolitionist conventions, and published all of his works anonymously. He did not permit his letters, speeches or other writings to be published during his lifetime. In addition, Weld declined to speak to the press, and lectured in areas where Eastern newspapers were not represented by correspondents. He actively discouraged his fellow abolitionists from writing about his work and accomplishments.
Weld outlived most of his fellow abolitionists and anti-slavery activists, living until 1895. He died at the age of 91 in Hyde Park, Massachusetts.
We have provided the original text of American Slavery As It Is, as printed in the edition of 1839. The original text was scanned in its complete form. What you will be reading is the exact text, as it was published by the American Anti-Slavery Society. We have reproduced all of the language and the paragraphs as they appeared in this edition. Some of the language may be offensive, especially in the use of “the N word.”
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Biographies of Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimké Weld, and Sara Moore Grimké
WELD, Theodore Dwight, 1803-1895, Cincinnati, Ohio, New York, NY, reformer, abolitionist leader, anti-slavery lobbyist.Co-founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS) in December 1833.Manager, 1833-1835, and Corresponding Secretary, 1839-1840, of the Society.Weld was a prominent leader in the abolitionist movement.He converted many late leaders to the cause.Among them were the Tappan brothers, Congressman Joshua R. Giddings, Edwin Stanton, Henry Ward Beecher and his wife, future author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriett Beecher Stowe.While at Lane University, Weld led debates on slavery.These were very controversial.As a result, the university ended the debates.This led to many of the students at Lane leaving in protest and going to Oberlin College.Many of these students became Agents for the American Anti-Slavery Society.Weld published American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses (1839).Also wrote The Bible Against Slavery (1839) and Slavery and the Internal Slave Trace in the United States (London, 1841).In the 1840s, he worked with prominent anti-slavery Whig Congressmen.
(Barnes, 1933; Drake, 1950, pp. 138, 140, 158, 173; Dumond, 1961, pp. 161, 176, 180, 183, 185, 220, 240-241; Filler, 1960, pp. 32, 56, 67, 72, 102, 148, 156, 164, 172, 176, 206; Hammond, 2011, pp. 268, 273; Mabee, 1970, pp. 17, 33, 34, 38, 92, 93, 104, 146, 151, 152, 153, 187, 188, 191, 196, 348, 358; Pease, 1965, pp. 94-102; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 42, 46, 106, 321-323, 419, 486, 510-512; Sorin, 1971, pp. 42-43, 53, 60, 64, 67, 70n; Thomas, 1950; Abolitionist, Vol. I, No. XII, December, 1833; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 425; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 10, Pt. 1, p. 625; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 681-682; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 22, p. 928; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. II. New York: James T. White, 1892, p. 318; Hinks, Peter P., & John R. McKivigan, Eds., Encyclopedia of Antislavery and Abolition.Westport, Connecticut, Greenwood, 2007, Vol. 2, pp. 740-741; Abzug, Robert H. Passionate Liberator: Theodore Dwight Weld and the Dilemma of Reform, New York, 1980; Dumond, Dwight L., ed., Letters of Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimké Weld and Sarah Grimké, 1822-144, 1965)
Biography from Scribner’s Dictionary of American Biography:
WELD, THEODORE DWIGHT(Nov. 23, 1803-Feb. 3, 1895), abolitionist, was born in Hampton, Conn., the son of Elizabeth (Clark) Weld and the Rev. Ludovicus Weld, a Congregational minister. He was descended from a line of New England clergymen whose progenitor was the Rev. Thomas Weld [q.v.], first minister of Roxbury; his ancestry also included Edwardses, Dwights, and Hutchinsons. In Weld's childhood his family moved to western New York, near Utica, where he passed an active, vigorous youth. Here he met Capt. Charles Stuart [q.v.], principal of the Utica Academy, a retired British officer, who was to influence profoundly his character and his career. In 1825, when Charles G. Finney [q.v.] , the Presbyterian revivalist, invaded Utica, Weld and Stuart joined his "holy band" of evangelists, and for two years they preached throughout western New York. Weld labored chiefly among young men; and when he entered Oneida Institute, Whitesboro, N. Y., to prepare for the ministry, scores of them also enrolled. Here he remained for several terms, his expenses being borne by Charles Stuart, who had long considered him "beloved brother, and son, and friend." During vacations Weld labored for the cause of temperance with such effect that by the end of the decade he was accounted the most powerful temperance advocate in the West. Meantime he had met those philanthropists of New York City; led by Arthur and Lewis Tappan [q.v.], who were financing Finney's revival. Attracted by Weld's talents, they repeatedly urged him to head various reforms which they were backing ; but he steadfastly refused to abandon his preparation for the ministry.
In 1829 Charles Stuart went to England to preach the abolition of West Indian slavery. He soon became noted as a lecturer for the British Anti-Slavery Society, and even more as a pamphleteer; but his most eloquent appeals were addressed to Weld. His persuasions were successful. From 1830 on, Weld was consumed with anti-slavery zeal. His first converts to emancipation were the New York philanthropists. In June 1831 the Tappans called a council in New York City, which proposed the immediate organization of an American anti-slavery society on the British model. After Weld's departure, however, the Tappans decided to postpone organization until emancipation in the British West Indies, which was now assured, had become a published triumph. Previously, Weld had urged the New York philanthropists to found a theological seminary in the West to prepare Finney's converts for the ministry. In the fall of 1831 they acceded, and commissioned Weld to find a site for the seminary. On this journey he advocated the anti-slavery cause at every opportunity. In Huntsville, Alabama, in 1831, he converted James G. Birney [q.v.] , and at Hudson, Ohio, he abolitionized the faculty of Western Reserve College, Elizur Wright, Beriah Green [ q.v.] , and the president, Charles Backus Storrs. For the seminary he selected a project already begun, Lane Seminary at Cincinnati, Ohio. The Tappans secured Lyman Beecher [q.v.], most famous preacher of his time, as president, and a notable faculty. Weld supplied the bulk of the students from the converts of Finney's revivals. Among them he organized in 1834 a "debate" on slavery (Barnes, post, p. 65), which won not only the students, but also Beecher's children, Harriet and Henry Ward, and several Cincinnatians, among them Gamaliel Bailey [q.v.].
Meanwhile, the New York philanthropists had organized the American Anti-Slavery Society. Unfortunately they adopted the British motto of "immediate emancipation"; and though they defined the motto as "immediate emancipation, gradually accomplished," the public interpreted it as a program of immediate freedom for the slaves. The pamphlet propaganda based upon this motto failed disastrously both North and South, and the society's agents, almost without exception, were silenced by mobs. Weld saved the movement from disaster. Forced out of Lane Seminary by its angry trustees in the fall of 1834, he trained the ablest of his fellow students and sent them out as agents for the American Anti-Slavery Society. Adopting Finney's methods, they preached emancipation as arevival in benevolence, with a fervor which mobs could not silence. Among them, Henry B. Stanton [q.v.] and James Thome became well known; but thirty- two other "Lane rebels" did their parts in establishing the movement in Ohio, western Pennsylvania and New York, Rhode Island and western Massachusetts. Weld, "eloquent as an angel and powerful as thunder," accomplished more than all the rest combined. Indeed, the anti-slavery areas in the West and the field of Weld's labors largely coincide. Among his converts, Joshua R. Giddings, Edwin M. Stanton [q.v.], and others were later prominent in politics; while the anti-slavery sentiment among New-School Presbyterians was largely due to his agitation among the ministers.
By 1836 the success of Weld's agents was so apparent that the American Anti-Slavery Society decided to abandon the pamphlet campaign, and devote all its resources toward enlarging his heroic band. Weld himself selected the new agents, to the number of seventy, gathered them in New York, and for weeks gave them a pentecostal training in abolitionism. One of the new agents at this conference was Angelina Grimke [q.v.], daughter of a prominent South Carolina family, whom Weld specially trained in the months that followed. During the next few years the "Seventy" consolidated the anti-slavery movement throughout the North. After the· agents' conference, Weld, whose voice was permanently injured, continued to work for the cause. He took over the society's publicity, and initiated a new and successful pamphlet campaign among the converts of the "Seventy," in which the most widely distributed tracts, though published anonymously or under the signatures of other authors, were all from his pen. In addition he directed the national campaign for getting anti-slavery petitions to Congress. On May 14, 1838, he married Angelina Grimke, by whom he had three children.
The last phase of Weld's agency was the most significant of all. Certain of his converts in the House of Representatives, having determined to break with the Whig party on the slavery issue, summoned Weld to Washington to act as their adviser. Here he helped secure the adherence of John Quincy Adams; and when Adams opened their campaign against slavery in the House, Weld served as his assistant in the trial for censure which followed ( C. F. Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, vol. XI, 1876, 626 pp. 75-79). For two crucial sessions, 1841-43, he directed the insurgents; and then, an anti-slavery bloc within their party being well established, he withdrew from public life. His influence, however, remained paramount. His lobby at Washington was continued by Lewis Tappan; and its organ, the National Era, was edited by Weld's convert, Gamaliel Bailey. In its columns was first published Uncle Tom's Cabin, which, as Harriet Beecher Stowe herself declared, was crystallized out of Weld's most famous tract, American Slavery As It Is (Barnes, p. 231). Moreover, as the movement spread westward, in almost every district it centered about some convert of Weld or his disciples.
Measured by his influence, Weld was not only the greatest of the abolitionists; he was also one of the greatest figures of his time. His anonymity in history was partly due to his almost morbid modesty. He accepted no office, attended no conventions, published nothing under his own name, and would permit neither his speeches norhis letters to be printed. His achievements as evangelist for Western abolitionism were not recorded in the press, largely because he would not speak in the towns, where Eastern papers then had correspondents. Convinced that the towns were subject to the opinion of their countryside, and that "the springs to touch, in order to win them, lie in the country" (Weld-Grimke Letters, post, I, 287), Weld and his agents spoke only in the villages and the country districts of the West, away from public notice and the press. After the Civil War, Weld took no part in the controversies among the abolitionists as to their precedence in history, and he refused to let friends write of his own achievements. He survived all of his fellow laborers, dying at the age of ninety-one at Hyde Park, Mass., where he had made his home for thirty-two years.
Weld's chief works are: The Bible Against Slavery (1 ed., 1837); "Wythe," The Power of Congress over Slavery in the District of Columbia ( 1 ed., 1836); J. A. Thome and J. H. Kimball, Emancipation in the West Indies (1 ed., 1837); American Slavery As It Is ( 1 ed., 1839). With J. A. Thome he prepared Slavery and the Internal Slave Trade in the United States, published by the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society in 1841.
[This account of Weld's life was pieced together from newspapers, letters and pamphlets of the time. It is more fully presented in G. H. Barnes, The Anti-slavery Impulse, 1830-1844 (1933); and G. H. Barnes and D. L. Dumond, eds., Letters of Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimke Weld, and Sarah Grimke, 1822-1844 (2 vols., 1934). See also C. H. Birney. The Grimke Sisters. Sarah and Angelina Grimke (1885); obituary in Boston Evening Transcript, Feb. 4, 1895.] G.H.B.
Biography from Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography:
WELD, Theodore Dwight, reformer, born in Hampton, Connecticut, 23 November, 1803. He entered Phillips Andover Academy in 1819, but was not graduated, on account of failing eyesight. In 1830 he became general agent of the Society for the promotion of manual labor in literary institutions, publishing afterward a valuable report (New York, 1833). He entered Lane Theological Seminary, Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1833, but left that institution on the suppression of the Anti-slavery Society of the seminary by the trustees. Mr. Weld then became well known as an anti-slavery lecturer, but in 1836 he lost his voice, and was appointed by the American Anti-Slavery Society editor of its books and pamphlets. In 1841-'3 he labored in Washington in aid of the anti-slavery members of Congress, and in 1854 he established at Eagleswood, New Jersey, a school in which he received pupils irrespective of sex and color. In 1864 he moved to Hyde Park, near Boston, and devoted himself to teaching and lecturing. Mr. Weld is the author of many pamphlets, and of “The Power of Congress over the District of Columbia” (New York, 1837); “The Bible against Slavery” (1837); “American Slavery as it Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses” (1839); and “Slavery and the Internal Slave Trade in the United States” (London, 1841). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI. pp. 425.
GRIMKÉ, Sarah Moore, 1792-1873, Society of Friends, Quaker, reformer, radical abolitionist, feminist, orator, author, women’s rights advocate, political activist.Wrote An Epistle to the Clergy of the Southern States, 1836.Member of the Anti-Slavery Society of New York.Sister of abolitionist leader Angelina Emily Grimké.(Birney, 1885; Ceplair, 1989; Drake, 1950, pp. 157-158; Dumond, 1961, pp. 190, 275; Lerner, 1967; Mabee, 1970, pp. 47, 92, 129, 141, 194, 266, 342; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 44, 162, 199, 290, 308, 322-323, 362, 416, 433, 465, 519; Soderlund, 1985, p. 13; Van Broekhoven, 2002, pp. 26-31, 36, 63, 70, 80, 97, 99, 100, 114, 122, 148; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 768; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 1, p. 635; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 379-382; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 9, p. 627; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. II. New York: James T. White, 1892, p. 325; Barnes, Gilbert H., ed. Letters of Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimké Weld, and Sara Grimké, 1822-1844, 2 Vols. 1934.)
Biography from Scribner’s Dictionary of American Biography:
GRIMKE, SARAH MOORE November26, 1792- December 23, 1873) and her sister, ANGELINA EMILY(February 20, 1805-0ctober 26, 1879), anti-slavery crusaders and advocates of woman's rights, were born in Charleston, South Carolina. Their parents, Judge John Faucheraud Grimke [q.v.] and Mary Smith Grimke, were wealthy, aristocratic, and conservative; but Sarah and Angelina early showed signs of dissatisfaction with their environment. Neither social gaiety nor the formalism of the Episcopal Church met their needs; and their tender, reflective natures made them question the institution of slavery. Sarah, the elder sister, greatly influenced Angelina in this revolt, though at the age of thirty Angelina was in advance of her more conservative sister. 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 [q.v.], 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. 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.
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 (Sept. 19, 1835). 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, this shy, blue eyed young woman, courteous and gentle in bearing, 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 (Liberator, August 11, 1837). Whittier, though he defended "Carolina's high-souled daughters," at the same time urged them to confine their arguments to immediate emancipation (John Albree, ed., Whittier Correspondence, 1911, p. 265).
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. 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" (p. 45). Angelina, in her Appeal to the Women of the Nominally Free States (1837), strongly insisted on women's equal responsibilities for the nation's guilt and shame and on their interest in the public weal. Gradually many ofthe opponents of slavery were wonover to the cause of woman's rights, and the introduction of the question into the anti-slavery agitation by the Grimkes was an important factor in the development of both causes.
On May 14, 1838, Angelina married the Abolitionist, Theodore Dwight Weld. They had one child, Charles Stuart. Since she suffered from ill health after marriage, which made the strain of public lectures seem unwise, she and her sister aided Mr. Weld in conducting a liberal school at Belleville, New Jersey. Later the family removed to Hyde Park, Massachusetts, where both the sisters died. The latter part of their lives was marked by devotion to their work of teaching and by an indomitable interest in the causes to which both had contributed.
[Catherine H. Birney, The Grimke Sisters: Sarah and Angelina Grimke (1885); Theodore D . Weld, In Memory: Angelina Grimke Weld (1880), containing sketch of Sarah Moore Grimke; South Carolina History and Genealogy Magazine, January 1906; E. C. Stanton and others, Historyof Woman Suffrage, vol. I ( 1881); F. J. and W. P. Garrison , Wm. Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879: The Story of His Life Told by His Children (1885-89); Woman's Journal, January 3, 1874, November 1, 1879; Boston Transcript, Oct. 28, 1879; Garrison MSS. in the Boston Public Library.]M.E. C.
Biography from Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography:
GRIMKE, Sarah Moore, reformer, born in Charleston, South Carolina, 6 November, 1792; died in Hyde Park, New York, 23 December, 1873. After the death of her father, she and her sister Angelina, afterward Mrs. Theodore D. Weld (q. v.), having long been convinced of the evils of slavery, emancipated their Negroes and left their home. In her own account of the event, Miss Grimké says: “As I left my native state on account of slavery, deserted the home of my fathers to escape the sound of the driver's lash and the shrieks of the tortured victims, I would gladly bury in oblivion the recollections of those scenes with which I have been familiar. But it may not, cannot be; they come over my memory like gory spectres, and implore me with resistless power in the name of humanity, for the sake of the slave-holder as well as the slave, to bear witness to the horrors of the southern prison-house.” Miss Grimké went to Philadelphia in 1821, and became one of the most active members of the Anti-slavery Society, also advocating women's rights. She lectured in New England, and afterward made her home with the Weld family, teaching in their school, which was established in Belleville, New Jersey, in 1840. She published in 1827 an “Epistle to the Clergy of the Southern States” — an effective anti-slavery document and afterward wrote “Letters on the Condition of Woman and the Equality of the Sexes” (Boston, 1838). She also translated Lamartine's “Joan of Arc” (1867). [Appleton’s 1900] pp,768.
GRIMKÉ, Angelina Emily (Angelina Grimké Weld), Society of Friends, Quaker, reformer, radical abolitionist leader, feminist, author, orator; wrote An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South, 1836, member Anti-Slavery Society of New York.Sister of abolitionist leader Sarah Moore Grimké.Married to noted abolitionist Theodore Weld.
(Barnes & Dumond, 1934; Ceplair, 1989; Drake, 1950, pp. 157-158, 173n; Dumond, 1961, pp. 90, 93, 185, 190-193, 195-196, 278-279; Lerner, 1967; Lumkin, 1974; Mabee, 1970, pp. 13, 28, 35, 36, 93, 129, 140, 188, 190, 191, 194, 213, 241, 266, 347, 348, 358, 376; Perry, 2001; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 44, 162, 173-174, 199, 289, 290, 308, 321-322, 416, 465, 511; Soderlund, 1985, p. 13; Van Broekhoven, 2002, pp. 26-31, 36, 63, 70, 80, 97, 99, 100, 114, 122, 148; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. II, p. 768; Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI, p. 425; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 4, Pt. 1, p. 634; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985, pp. 379-382; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 9, p. 621; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. II. New York: James T. White, 1892, p. 325; Barnes, Gilbert H., ed. Letters of Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimké Weld, and Sara Grimké, 1822-1844, 2 Vols. 1934.)
Biography from Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography:
WELD, Angelina Emily Grimké, reformer, born in Charleston, South Carolina, 20 February, 1805, is the daughter of Judge John F. Grimké, of South Carolina, but in 1828, with her sister, Sarah M. Grimké (q. v.), she joined the Society of Friends in Philadelphia, afterward emancipating the slaves that she inherited from her parents in 1836. She was the author of an “Appeal to the Christian Women of the South,” which was republished in England with an introduction by George Thompson, and was associated with her sister in delivering public addresses under the auspices of the American anti-slavery society, winning a reputation for eloquence. The controversy that the appearance of the sisters as public speakers caused was the beginning of the woman's rights agitation in this country. She married Mr. Weld on 14 May, 1838, and was afterward associated with him in educational and reformatory work. Besides the work noticed above, she wrote “Letters to Catherine E. Beecher,” a review of the slavery question (Boston, 1837). Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. VI. pp. 425.
Bibliographies
Theodore Dwight Weld Bibliography
Abzug, Robert H. Passionate Liberator: Theodore Dwight Weld & the Dilemma of Reform. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980.
Barnes, Gilbert Hobbs. The Anti-Slavery Impulse, 1830-1844. 1933.
Barnes, Gilbert Hobbs. The Anti-Slavery Impulse, 1830-1844. With an Introduction by William G. McLoughlin. New York: Harcourt, 1964.
Barnes Gilbert H. and Dwight L. Dumond, eds. Letters of Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimké Weld, and Sarah Grimké, 1822-1844, 2 vols. 1934.
Birney, Catherine H. The Grimké Sisters: Sarah and Angelina Grimké. 1885.
Malone, Dumas, ed. Stowe, Theodore Dwight Weld, in Dictionary of American Biography, Vol. XVIII. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1936, pp. 625-627.
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Sarah Moore Grimké and Angelina Grimké Weld Bibliography
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Source: Weld, Theodore Dwight. American Slavery As It Is. New York: The American Anti-Slavery Society, 1839.