The Grimké sisters were Sarah Moore Grimké (1792–1873) and Angelina Grimké (1805–1879), born in Charleston, South Carolina, into a slaveholding family. Each left the South for Philadelphia and joined the Society of Friends. In 1836–1838 they wrote and spoke against slavery and for the equality of women, and three of those pamphlets are read on this page.
Search “Sarah and Angelina Grimké” and you will find a thousand summaries. This page is not another one. It is a reading of three pamphlets they actually wrote, in 1836 and 1837, while dating their letters in the Friends’ manner and addressing the reader as thee. The sisters are here because those pamphlets are in the corpus. What the pamphlets do not say is not supplied from later biography.
They were Southerners writing north. Sarah Moore Grimké signs her Epistle to the Clergy of the Southern States from New York in “12th Mo. 1836,” “Yours in gospel love.” Angelina E. Grimké signs the Appeal to the Christian Women of the South from Shrewsbury, New Jersey, in 1836, and the Letters to Catharine Beecher from Massachusetts towns in 1837 — Brookline in “6 months 12th,” East Boylston in “10th mo. 2d,” Holliston in “10th month 23d.” That is the whole dated trail the texts themselves give. The rest of their lives is not in these pages.
Lives at a glance
These dates are not in the pamphlets. They are taken from reference biographies (the National Women’s History Museum entries for each sister, checked against the Wikipedia articles) and are set apart here so that the outline and the reading are not confused.
- 1792. Sarah Moore Grimké born in Charleston, South Carolina, 26 November.
- 1805. Angelina Emily Grimké born in Charleston, 20 February.
- 1821. Sarah leaves Charleston for Philadelphia and joins the Friends.
- 1829. Angelina joins her in Philadelphia. Both are Friends there through the years that follow.
- 1836. Angelina’s Appeal to the Christian Women of the South, signed from Shrewsbury, New Jersey. Sarah’s Epistle to the Clergy of the Southern States, signed from New York in “12th Mo. 1836.”
- 1837. Angelina’s Letters to Catharine Beecher, dated from Massachusetts towns between “6 months 12th” and “10th month 23d.” They were issued as a book in 1838.
- 1838, February. Angelina addresses a committee of the Massachusetts legislature.
- 1838, May. Angelina marries Theodore Dwight Weld, who was not a Friend. Reference biographies date the sisters’ separation from the Society of Friends to this marriage. The three pamphlets do not record it, and this site’s collection stops here: the departure is marked, and what followed is not gathered.
- 1873. Sarah dies, 23 December, at Hyde Park, Massachusetts.
- 1879. Angelina dies, 26 October, at Hyde Park, Massachusetts.
Why they belong on a Quaker site
Friends Illuminated collects writers whose printed work is orthodox in the Friends’ sense, even when their later course left the meeting. Earl’s rule on that point is settled: include them, and mark the departure. The Grimkés are the nineteenth-century case.
What the pamphlets show, without any later narrative, is this. Angelina writes to Southern women who had “loved me as a relative” and been bound to her “in Christian sympathy, and Gospel fellowship,” and who watched her
break those outward bonds of union which bound us together as members of the same community, and members of the same religious denomination
— Appeal to the Christian Women of the South (1836)
That break is the Southern church she was raised in, named in her own sentence. It is not a minute of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. The corpus does not record a later disownment, and this site will not invent one. What it does record is the voice of a woman who had already left the South, was writing in the dating and the thee of Friends, and was asking the women she had left behind to read her in “the spirit of calm investigation and fervent prayer.”
Sarah writes as a Southerner still turned toward home:
To my dear native land, to the beloved relatives who are still breathing her tainted air, to the ministers of Christ, from some of whom I have received the emblems of a Saviour’s love; my heart turns with feelings of intense solicitude
— Epistle to the Clergy of the Southern States (1836)
She mentions, in the same opening, “the bon fire at Charleston.” The pamphlets know the cost. They do not narrate a childhood, a father, or a meetinghouse quarrel. Those belong to other books. Here the sisters speak.
The Appeal, 1836 — Angelina to the women of the South
The Appeal opens on Esther: who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this. Then it drops the rhetoric and speaks as a friend.
It is because I feel a deep and tender interest in your present and eternal welfare that I am willing thus publicly to address you.
She is not writing a Northern lecture. She is writing to women who already know her, and to a much larger number who have never heard her name. The argument that follows is scriptural and practical. Dominion in Genesis, she says, is over the creatures — not over a fellow human being. Hebrew servitude is not American slavery. The Gospel of love will not bless the holding of a person as property. Then she tells Southern women what they can actually do: read, pray, speak, and act — including teaching those held in bondage to read, “if it were only that they might read the Bible.”
The close is dated Shrewsbury, New Jersey, 1836, and signed “Your sympathizing Friend, Angelina E. Grimké.”
The Epistle, 1836 — Sarah to the ministers of the South
Where Angelina wrote to the women, Sarah wrote to the clergy. The Epistle is the sister-document of the Appeal: same year, same Southern address, a different audience. She writes “Brethren beloved in the Lord,” and she writes as one who had received the Lord’s supper from some of the men she is now calling to account. The peculiar guilt she names is not ignorance. It is the pulpit’s blessing.
The Charleston bonfire is not a later legend in this text. It is in her opening, alongside Nashville and the banishment of Birney — the cost already paid by those who had tried to send the argument south. She still writes “in gospel love.” That is not a metaphor. It is how she signs.
The Letters to Catharine Beecher, 1837 — Angelina in the field
Catharine Beecher had published an essay telling abolitionists to be quieter, and women among them to keep to the domestic sphere. Angelina’s reply is thirteen letters, written on the road. The first is dated Brookline, Massachusetts, “6 months 12th, 1837,” and it states the ground in one sentence:
The great fundamental principle of Abolitionists is, that man cannot rightfully hold his fellow man as property.
From that she will not be moved. Slaveholding, she says, is man-stealing whether the person was taken in Guinea or born in Carolina; Wesley and Jonathan Edwards are cited in support. The later letters turn from the slave’s title to the speaker’s. Letter XII, East Boylston, “10th mo. 2d, 1837,” is the hinge of the whole volume:
The investigation of the rights of the slave has led me to a better understanding of my own.
And then the doctrine, which she capitalizes in the pamphlet itself — HUMAN RIGHTS NOT FOUNDED ON SEX:
My doctrine then is, that whatever it is morally right for man to do, it is morally right for woman to do.
That is not a later feminist gloss. It is Angelina’s own sentence, written as a Friend on a speaking mission, answering a celebrated woman who had told her to be silent. The last letter is dated Holliston, “10th month 23d, 1837.” The pamphlets end there.
What this site will not do
The readings on this page stay inside the three texts. The dates in Lives at a glance come from reference biographies and are marked as such; nothing from them is read back into the pamphlets. It will not invent a childhood in a judge’s house or a secret school for a waiting-maid. An honest orphan beats a fabricated tie.
It will not pretend the sisters are seventeenth-century First Publishers. They are not. They stand in the line that runs from Margaret Fell’s Women’s Speaking Justified through John Woolman and Anthony Benezet — the Friends’ refusal to treat a human being as property, and the Friends’ refusal to treat the Spirit as a respecter of sex. The pamphlets are the evidence. The biographies of 1838 and after are a different literature.
The Friends Illuminated edition of the three works is Letters & Appeals. Read them. The fire is theirs.
Works on this site
- Sarah Moore Grimké: her author page, with the Epistle to the Clergy of the Southern States (1836).
- Angelina Grimké: her author page, with the Appeal to the Christian Women of the South (1836) and the Letters to Catharine Beecher (1837).
- Letters & Appeals: all three works in one volume. It is a paid modernized edition ($7.99); a sample is on the book page.
Questions about the Grimké sisters
Who were the Grimké sisters? Sarah Moore Grimké (1792–1873) and Angelina Grimké (1805–1879) were sisters born in Charleston, South Carolina, who moved to Philadelphia, joined the Society of Friends, and wrote and spoke against slavery and for the equality of women in 1836–1838.
Were the Grimké sisters Quakers? Yes, in the years of the writings collected here. Sarah moved to Philadelphia in 1821 and Angelina joined her in 1829, and both became Friends there; their 1836 and 1837 pamphlets use the Friends’ dating and plain speech. Reference biographies date their separation from the Society to 1838, the year Angelina married Theodore Dwight Weld, who was not a Friend.
What did the Grimké sisters write? Angelina wrote the Appeal to the Christian Women of the South (1836) and the Letters to Catharine Beecher (written in 1837, issued as a book in 1838). Sarah wrote the Epistle to the Clergy of the Southern States (1836).
Where were the Grimké sisters from? Charleston, South Carolina. Both were born there, Sarah in 1792 and Angelina in 1805, and both left it for Philadelphia.
What is Angelina Grimké known for? For the Appeal to the Christian Women of the South (1836), for the Letters to Catharine Beecher (1837), where she wrote that whatever it is morally right for man to do, it is morally right for woman to do, and for addressing a committee of the Massachusetts legislature in February 1838.
Count me not your “enemy because I have told you the truth,” but believe me in unfeigned affection. — Angelina E. Grimké, Appeal to the Christian Women of the South, Shrewsbury, N. J., 1836