Our Blood: Prophecies and Discourses on Sexual Politics

personal; ” no longer to barter the image of God in human shambles for corruptible things such as silver and gold. 8

Angelina exhorted white Southern women, for the sake of all

women, to form antislavery societies; to petition legislatures;

to educate themselves to the harsh realities of black slavery; to

speak out against black slavery to family, friends, and acquaintances; to demand that slaves be freed in their own families; to pay wages to any slaves who are not freed; to act against the law by freeing slaves wherever possible; and to act

against the law by teaching slaves to read and to write. In the

first political articulation of civil disobedience as a principle of

action, she wrote:

But some of you will say, we can neither free our slaves nor

teach them to read, for the laws of our state forbid it. Be not

surprised when I say such wicked laws ought to be no barrier in

the way of your duty. . . If a law commands me to sin I will

break it; if it calls me to suffer, I will let it take its course unresistingly. The doctrine of blind obedience and unqualified sub­

mission to any human power, whether civil or ecclesiastical, is

the doctrine of despotism... 9

This tract was burned by Southern postmasters; Angelina was

warned in newspaper editorials never to return to the South;

and she was repudiated by her family. After the publication of

her “Appeal, ” she became a full-time abolitionist organizer.

Also in 1836, in a series of letters to Catherine Beecher,

Angelina articulated the first fully conceived feminist argument against the oppression of women: Now, I believe it is woman’s right to have a choice in all the laws

and regulations by which she is to be governed, whether in

Church or State; and that the present arrangements of society. . .

are a violation of human rights, a rank usurpation of power, a

violent seizure and confiscation of what is sacredly and inalienably hers—thus inflicting upon woman outrageous wrongs, working mischief incalculable in the social circle, and in its influence on the world producing only evil, and that continually. 10

Her feminist consciousness had grown out of her abolitionist

commitment: “The investigation of the rights of the slave has

led me to a better understanding of my own. ”11

Also in 1836, Sarah Grimke published a pamphlet called

“Epistle to the Clergy of the Southern States. ” In it, she refutes

the claims by Southern clergy that biblical slavery provided a

justification for Amerikan slavery. From this time on, Sarah

and Angelina were united publicly and privately in their political work.

In 1837, the Grimke sisters attended an antislavery convention in New York City. There they asserted that white and black women were a sisterhood; that the institution of black

slavery was nourished by Northern race prejudice; and that

white women and black men also shared a common condition:

[The female slaves] are our countrywomen— they are our sisters;

and to us as women, they have a right to look for sympathy with

their sorrows, and effort and prayer for their rescue. . . Our people have erected a false standard by which to judge man’s char­

acter. Because in the slave-holding States colored men are

plundered and kept in abject ignorance, are treated with disdain