right of petition for the dumb and stricken slave; no business to join, in
any way, in the excitement which anti-slavery principles are producing in
our country; no business to join abolition societies, &c. &c.; thou
professest to tell our sisters what they are to do, in order to bring the
system of slavery to an end. And now, my dear friend, what does all that
thou hast said in many pages, amount to? Why, that women are to exert
their influence in private life, to allay the excitement which exists on
this subject, and to quench the flame of sympathy in the hearts of their
fathers, husbands, brothers and sons. Fatal delusion! Will Christian women
heed such advice?
Hast thou ever asked thyself, what the slave would think of thy book, if
he could read it? Dost thou know that, from the beginning to the end, not
a word of compassion for _him_ has fallen from thy pen? Recall, I pray,
the memory of the hours which thou spent in writing it! Was the paper once
moistened by the tear of pity? Did thy heart once swell with deep
sympathy for thy sister _in bonds_? Did it once ascend to God in broken
accents for the deliverance of the captive? Didst thou ever ask thyself,
what the free man of color would think of it? Is it such an exhibition of
slavery and prejudice, as will call down _his_ blessing upon thy head?
Hast thou thought of _these_ things? or carest thou not for the blessings
and the prayers of these our suffering brethren? Consider, I entreat, the
reception given to thy book by the apologists of slavery. What meaneth
that loud acclaim with which they hail it? Oh, listen and weep, and let
thy repentings be kindled together, and speedily bring forth, I beseech
thee, fruits meet for repentance, and henceforth show thyself faithful to
Christ and his bleeding representative the slave.
I greatly fear that thy book might have been written just as well, hadst
thou not had the heart of a woman. It bespeaks a superior intellect, but
paralyzed and spell-bound by the sorcery of a worldly-minded expediency.
Where, oh where, in its pages, are the outpourings of a soul overwhelmed
with a sense of the heinous crimes of our nation, and the necessity of
immediate repentance? Farewell! Perhaps on a dying bed thou mayest vainly
wish that ‘_Miss Beecher on the Slave Question_’ might perish with the
mouldering hand which penned its cold and heartless pages. But I forbear,
and in deep sadness of heart, but in tender love though I thus speak, I
bid thee again, Farewell. Forgive me, if I have wronged thee, and pray for
her who still feels like
Thy sister in the bonds of a common sisterhood,
A. E. GRIMKÉ.
P. S. Since preparing the foregoing letters for the press, I have been
informed by a Bookseller in Providence, that some of thy books had been
sent to him to sell last summer, and that one afternoon a number of
southerners entered his store whilst they were lying on the counter. An
elderly lady took up one of them and after turning over the pages for some
time, she threw it down and remarked, here is a book written by the
daughter of a northern dough face, to apologize for our southern
institutions--but for my part, I have a thousand times more respect for
the Abolitionists, who openly denounce the system of slavery, than for
those people, who in order to please us, cloak their real sentiments under
such a garb as this. This southern lady, I have no doubt, expressed the
sentiments of thousands of the most respectable slaveholders in our
country--and thus, they will tell the North in bitter reproach for their
sinful subserviency, after the lapse of a few brief years, when interest
no longer padlocks their lips. At present the South feels that she must at
least _appear_ to thank her northern apologists.
A. E. G.