The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation by David Brion Davis

that the Constitution prohibited direct federal intervention against slavery in the existing states). This was a time when American abolitionists hoped to follow the remarkably successful British model of bombarding government with antislavery petitions. CongressmanJohn Quincy Adams, for example, to whom the Convention addressed a special letter of gratitude, was challenging a “gag rule” preventing any consideration or discussion of any antislavery petitions.
    The Convention succeeded in raising funds, coordinating the petition campaign, and preparing six pamphlets and “open letters” including a “Letter to the Women of Great Britain,” “AnAppeal to the Women of the
Nominally
Free States,” drafted byAngelina Grimké,and the “Address to the Free Colored Americans,” drafted by Angelina’s sister,Sarah Grimké. The last two important documents were each prepared by a committee of three and then referred to a committee of nine for revision and publication. Nevertheless, they brought much fame to the Grimké sisters and it is more convenient to refer to the sisters as the authors. 15
    The Grimké sisters were born and reared in South Carolina, the daughters of a rich plantation owner who as an attorney and judge ardently supported the slave regime as well as the subordination of women. Sarah, twelve years older than Angelina, resented the inferiority of her own education as well as her father’s fury over her attempts to teach her personal slave to read. Having accompanied her ill father to Philadelphia for medical care, Sarah moved there upon his death and became aQuaker convert. She persuaded Angelina to become a Quaker and move to Philadelphia in 1829. While the antislavery traditions of the Society of Friends encouraged the sisters to develop and express their own radical abolitionism, they soon clashed with the Quaker establishment over issues of slavery, racism, and especially women’s rights, which the Grimkés saw as essential, since it would free women to help achieve slave emancipation. According to the sisters’ friendCatherine H. Birney, the pamphlets they wrote at the Convention led the way to their becoming the most famous women speakers of the abolitionist movement and among the first women to speak publicly to mixed (then termed “promiscuous”) audiences of women and men. 16
    The Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women evoked much public criticism and ridicule concerning the proper role of women and the standards governing the relationship between blacks and whites. Some white delegates, like the Grimkés, who were acutely sensitive to racial prejudice among abolitionists, recognized that the black women delegates always confronted
both
racism and sexism wherever they turned. While the the Convention was engaged in “animated discussion” of “the province of women,” Angelina Grimké decried the indifference with which American churches had regarded the sin ofslavery and implored every woman to reject
    the circumscribed limits with which corrupt custom and a perverted application of Scripture have encircled her; therefore that it is the duty of woman, and the province of woman, to plead thecause of the oppressed in our land, and to do all that she can by her voice, and her pen, and her purse, and the influence of her example, to overthrow the horrible system of American slavery. 17
    This challenge to institutional religion, implying that individual women could wholly reinterpret Scripture, shocked many delegates and of course invited clerical denunciation, which would persist as the Grimkés launched their fairly brief campaign as abolitionist speakers. The delegates were also divided over whether women should continue to pursue a separate course, as antislavery activists, or demand equality and join men in integrated societies. By 1840, this issue would lead to the major division and split in the national antislavery societies.
    WhileLydia Maria Child opposed the emphasis on