The question of whether women could publicly address “Promiscuous assemblies”—that is, gatherings of men and women—was one that racked the nascent movement for women’s rights in the 1830s. Angelina Grimke, the daughter of a Charleston slaveholders who abandoned South Carolina and became a powerful voice against slavery, spoke to the matter in a letter to a fellow abolitionist and future husband, Theodore Dwight Weld. The occasion for her letter was the possible censure she faced from her antislavery colleagues, the Executive Committee of the American Antislavery Society, for addressing just such a mixed assemblage. As she wrote to another abolitionist, “My idea is that whatever is morally right for a man to do is morally right for a woman to do. I recognize no rights but human rights.”

Angelina Grimké to Theodore Weld

Groton [Mass.] 8^th Month 12. [1837]

My Dear Brother

No doubt thou has heard by this time of all the fuss that is now making in this region about our stepping so far out of the bounds of female propriety as to lecture to promiscuous assemblies. My auditors literally sit some times with “mouths agape and eyes astare”, so that I cannot help smiling in the midst of “rhetorical flourishes” to witness their perfect amazement at hearing a woman speak in the churches.

. . . I am waiting in some anxiety to see what the Executive Committee mean to do in these troublous times, whether to renounce us or not. But seriously speaking, we are placed very unexpectedly in a very trying situation, in the forefront of an entirely new contest – a contest for the rights of woman as a moral, intelligent and responsible being. Harriet Martineau says “God and man know that the time has not come for women to make their injuries even heard of”: but it seems as tho’ it had come now and that the exigency must be met with the firmness and faith of woman in by gone ages. I cannot help feeling some regret that this sh’ld have come up before the Anti Slavery question was settled, so fearful am I that it may injure that blessed cause, and then again I think this must be the Lord’s time and therefore the best time, for it seems to have been brought about by a concatenation of circumstances over which we had no control the fact is it involves the interests of every minister in our land and therefore they will stand almost in a solid phalanx against woman’s rights and I am afraid the discussion of this question will divide in Jacob and scatter in Israel; it will also touch every man’s interests at home, in the tenderest relation of life; it will go down into the very depths of his soul and cause great searchings of heart. . . .

I must confess my womanhood is insulted, my moral feelings outraged when I reflect on these things, and I am sure I know just how the free colored people feel towards the whites when they pay them more than common attention; it is not paid as a RIGHT, but given as a bounty on a little more than ordinary sense. There is not one man in 500 who really understands what kind of attention is alone acceptable to a woman of pure and exalted moral and intellectual worth. Hast thou read Sisters letters in the Spectator? I want thee to read them and let us know what thou thinkest of them. . . As to our being Quakers being an excuse for our speaking in public, we do not stand on this ground at all; we ask no favors for ourselves, but claim rights for our sex. . . . “[I]n Christ Jesus there is neither male nor female.” O! if in our intercourse with each other we realized this great truth, how delightful, ennobling and dignified it would be, . . . I find thou wilt find out my pride in whatever form it appear, well keep a watch, for I have a great deal of it – so much that I should not like at all to see such a “distinguished man” as thyself at one of my lectures; and if moral suasion could keep thee out, I assure thee I would NOT let thee come in, unless I was in so humble a mood as to be ready for a close criticism on the matter and manner of my talk and gesture, etc. . . .How dost thou think I felt at those great meetings in Lowell? 1500 city people in the blaze of a chandelier. Sister says that before I rose I looked as I was saying to myself “the time has come and the sacrifice must be offered.” Indeed I often feel in our meetings as if I was “as a lamb led to the slaughter,” sometimes so sick before I rise that it seems impossible for me to speak 10 minutes; but the Lord is at my right hand. . . .

I am afraid thou art not the only Northern man who thinks I have not lived at the South for nothing, for I do scold most terribly when I undertake to tell the brethren how the North is implicated in the guilt of slavery; they look at me in utter amazement. I am not at all surprised they are afraid lest such a woman should usurp authority over the men. The fact is, I was once a great scold and I am indebted to a slave for curing me of it. It was when I was quite a little girl and she shamed me and coaxed me out of the horrible practice by telling me very affectionately how ugly it was and promising to make me a doll and dress it like a soldier if I would give it up. She made the doll, I made the promise and believe [I have] kept it unbroken to this day so far as slaves were concerned. I think this woman did a great deal towards opening my childish heart to sympathize with these poor suffering bleeding ones. I thank the Lord for it: and to this time I remember that doll and her kind advice with feelings which bring tears to my eyes. . . .

What we claim for ourselves, we claim for every woman whom God has called and qualified with gifts and graces. Can’t thou stand just here side by side with us?

Thy sister in the bonds of woman and the slave.

A.E. Gé.