ANGELINA GRIMKE

The doctrine of blind obedience and unqualified submission to any human power, whether civil or ecclesiastical, is the doctrine of despotism, and ought to have no place among Republicans and Christians.

The denial of our duty to act in this case is a denial of our right to act; and if we have no right to act, then may we well be termed the white slaves of the North, for like our brethren in bonds, we must seal our lips in silence and despair.

Only let the North exert as much moral influence over the South, as the South has exerted demoralizing influence over the North, and slavery would die amid the flame of Christian remonstrance, and faithful rebuke, and holy indignation.

I have not placed reading before praying because I regard it more important, but because, in order to pray aright, we must understand what we are praying for.

Women ought to feel a peculiar sympathy in the colored man's wrong, for, like him, she has been accused of mental inferiority, and denied the privileges of a liberal education.

I am a mystery to myself.

We Abolition Women are turning the world upside down.

What man or woman of common sense now doubts the intellectual capacity of colored people? Who does not know, that with all our efforts as a nation to crush and annihilate the mind of this portion of our race, we have never yet been able to do it.

I trust the time is coming, when the occupation of an instructor to children will be deemed the most honorable of human employment.

We are commanded to love God with all our minds, as well as with all our hearts, and we commit a great sin if we forbid or prevent that cultivation of the mind in others which would enable them to perform this 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.

Can you not see that women could do and would do a hundred times more for the slave, if she were not fettered?

I appeal to you, my friends, as mothers: are you willing to enslave your children? You stare back with horror and indignation at such questions. But why, if slavery is not wrong to those upon whom it is imposed?

I know that you do not make the laws, but I also know that you are the wives and mothers, the sisters and daughters of those who do.

I recognize no rights but human rights—I know nothing of men's rights and women's rights.

If the law commands me to sin, I will break it.

Our fathers waged a bloody conflict with England, because they were taxed without being represented .... They were not willing to be governed by laws which they had no voice in making; but this is the way in which women are governed in this Republic.

Slavery always has, and always will, produce insurrections wherever it exists, because it is a violation of the natural order of things, and no human power can much longer perpetuate it.

If we surrender the right to speak in public this year, we must surrender the right to petition next year, and the right to write the year after that ... What then can women do for the slave, when she herself is under the feet of man and shamed into silence?

It is my deep, solemn and deliberate conviction that this [abolition] is a cause worth dying for.

O’ Yes. War is better than slavery.

There is something in the heart of man which will bend under moral suasion. There is a swift witness for truth in his bosom, which will respond to truth when it is uttered with calmness and dignity.

Our fathers waged a bloody conflict with England, because they were taxed without being represented. This is just what unmarried women of property are now.

When human beings are regarded as moral beings, sex, instead of being enthroned upon the summit, administering upon rights and responsibilities, sinks into insignificance and nothingness. My doctrine then is, that whatever it is morally right for man to do, it is morally right for woman to do. Our duties originate, not from difference of sex, but from the diversity of our relations in life, the various gifts and talents committed to our care, and the different eras in which we live.

The investigation of the rights of the slave has led me to a better understanding of my own. I have found the anti-slavery cause to be ... the school in which human rights are more fully investigated and better understood and taught than in any other.