Mass Moments: Teachers' Features

Document HS II-11 “Are We Aliens Because We Are Women”? Angelina Grimké Addresses Massachusetts Legislature, 1838.

In the winter of 1838, Angelina Grimké addressed a committee of the Massachusetts legislature. No advance notice had been given, but word-of her appearance had spread, and the hall was full to overflowing. A fellow abolitionist in attendance wrote, “For a moment a sense of immense responsibility resting on her seemed almost to overwhelm her … but this passed quickly, and she went on to speak gloriously.”
….In the age which is approaching she should be something more—she should be a citizen…. I hold, Mr. Chairman, that American women have to do with the subject [of slavery], not only because it is moral and religious, but because it is political, inasmuch as we are citizens of this republic and as such our honor, happiness and well-being are bound up in its politics, government and laws.”
Quoted in The Grimké Sisters from South Carolina: Pioneers for Women’s Rights and Abolition, by Gerda Lerner (Houghton Mifflin, 1967; University of North Carolina, 2006).
QUESTIONS:
Why did Angelina Grimké use questions rather than statements in her testimony?
What roledid she believe women played in allowing slavery to continue in the U.S.?
What was the most radical thing she said to the legislative committee?

Mr. Chairman, I stand before you as a citizen, on behalf of the 20,000 women whose names are enrolled on petitions which have been submitted to the Legislature …. These petitions relate to the great and solemn subject of slavery…. And because it is a political subject, it has often tauntingly been said, that women had nothing to do with it. Are we aliens, because we are women? Are we bereft of citizenship because we are mothers, wives and daughters of a mighty people? Have women no country … no partnership in a nation’s guilt and shame?