Angelina Grimke
Angelina Grimke was born in 1805 to a prominent slaveholding family in Charleston, South Carolina. Her older sister, Emily, was also her godmother, and the two were very close. Both sisters grew to despise slavery. They moved to Philadelphia to join the Quaker Society of Friends and took up the abolitionist cause in the mid-1830s, eventually joining the American Anti-Slavery Society. In 1836, the women moved to New York to become public advocates of abolitionism. In September of that year, Angelina published an Appeal to the Christian Women of the South, reasoning that an essay addressed to women would reach the whole community, not just the men. The Appeal relied heavily on religious teachings. Slavery was a sin, she said, because it caused human beings to be treated as objects. It stripped them of all their God-given rights. But even more compelling than her abolitionist arguments were her recommendations to the women of the South. She encouraged them not only to pray over the matter, but to speak and act out against slavery. The women of the South can overthrow this horrible system of oppression and cruelty, licentiousness and wrong. Women could petition their state legislatures with the assurance that their opinions would be heard, for there is something in the heart of man which will bend under moral suasion. She vehemently denied the accusations that abolitionists sought to provoke violence in the South, but prophetically proclaimed, There is no doubt there will be a most terrible overturning at the South in a few years, such cruelty and wrong, must be visited with Divine vengeance soon.
Source: http://historyengine.richmond.edu/episodes/view/1012
Additional Resources:
http://www.pbs.org/godinamerica/people/angelina-grimke.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h2939t.html
http://www.nps.gov/wori/learn/historyculture/grimke-sisters.htm
Challenge:
http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/abolitn/abesaegat.html