Question

Summary of the Angelina Grimke speech.

Answer 1

On February 21, 1838 Grimké spoke to the joint special committee of the Massachusetts General Court charged with responding to the large number of anti-slavery petitions that the legislature had received. Its hearing that day took place in the capitol’s largest space, the 500-seat House chamber, to accommodate the huge crowd that attended.In her remarks (posted below) Grimké called on the legislators to respond to the request of the 20,000 white and black Massachusetts women who had signed the overwhelming majority of the petitions. The signers asked the legislature to demand that the U.S. Congress banish slavery from the District of Columbia, the only part of the nation over which the national legislature possessed undisputed Constitutional control. Success would end slavery in the capital, and thus provide a powerful symbol of progress towards the abolitionists’ larger goal, the end of slavery in all the states. Grimké also spoke of the risks slavery posed to the nation, the greater security that would come from immediate emancipation, the impressive character of free colored people, and the cruelty of race prejudice.She opened her speech, however, by making the case for her decision to speak. No woman had ever addressed a legislative body, not only because women could not vote or run for office, but also because of the firm societal conviction that women did not belong in what was called “the public sphere.” Indeed, a woman who spoke to a mixed audience gathered for any purpose was considered a seductress, since she was putting her body on display before men. Just a few years before, also in Boston, Maria W. Stewart, a published author, free woman of color, and the first American woman to speak to a mixed audience, faced just such criticisms, and more. In four eloquent speeches she gave in 1832 and 1833, she urged men to sign petitions to end slavery in the District of Columbia and advocated for the liberty and equality for her race and for her right to speak as a woman. She paid a price for her break with tradition. Given the severity of the racist and sexist backlash against her, she felt she had no choice but to cease lecturing thereafter. the remarks (again, posted below) which are the only part of Grimké’s speech that survives, she tackled the charge of seductress head on by distancing her unorthodox action from that of another petitioning woman, the famous Biblical figure, Queen Esther of Persia. Grimké’s Bible-reading audience knew that Esther, like the King’s lower status wives, lived in the harem, and served him sexually. It was not her place to request anything of her king. But one day, risking her life, she begged him to save her people, the Babylonian Jews.She believed that the slave masters would be judged and punished by God for the sin of slavery.He found himself expanding his views to not only anti-slavery, but anti-racism.In terms of her persuasion of arguments, it proved to be effective in her methods involving secular justifications for equality of rights contrasted with other religious justifications. This helped against slavery and increasing equality for women's rights.Speaking as a southern woman who had seen firsthand the "demoralizing influence" of slavery and its "destructiveness to human happiness," Angelina Grimké Weld gave an inspiring speech at Pennsylvania Hall amidst a tumult of rocks thrown through windows and the shouting of an unruly mob.By the day of her second speech, she was fully in charge. “I spoke with far more freedom,” she reported to her friend. “I felt as if could stand up in the dignity of my moral being and face a frowning world … I was perfectly calm.”Applause greeted her as she entered the hall with Sarah. They wore simple gray dresses and white caps, having converted from the Presbyterian to the Quaker faith some years before. The audience was notably diverse: the benches were filled with women, the aisles and edges of the room with men, and both white and black citizens were present. There were supporters, skeptics, the curious, and the hostile. When Angelina rose to speak, hisses sizzled from the back doorway. She wrote a friend later, “My heart had never quailed before but it almost died within me at that tremendous hour.” The room was rowdy but by speaking loudly she succeeded “in hushing down the noise of the people.”