IN REPLY TO AN ESSAY ON SLAVERY AND ABOLITIONISM, ADDRESSED TO A. E. GRIMKÉ. REVISED BY THE AUTHOR. BOSTON: PRINTED BY ISAAC KNAPP, 25, CORNHILL. 1838. Entered according to the Act of Congress in the year 1838, by Isaac Knapp , in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of Massachusetts....

Brookline , Mass., 6 month, 12th, 1837 . My Dear Friend : Thy book has appeared just at a time, when, from the nature of my engagements, it will be impossible for me to give it that attention which so weighty a subject demands. Incessantly occupied in prosecuting a mission, the responsibilities of which task all my powers, I can reply to it only by desultory letters, thrown from my pen as I travel from place to place. I prefer this mode to that of taking as long a time to answer it, as thou dids

Brookline , Mass., 6th month, 17th, 1837 . Dear Friend : Where didst thou get thy statement of what Abolitionists mean by immediate emancipation? I assure thee, it is a novelty. I never heard any abolitionist say that slaveholders ‘were physically unable to emancipate their slaves, and of course are not bound to do it,’ because in some States there are laws which forbid emancipation. This is truly what our opponents affirm; but we say that all the laws which sustain the system of slavery are unj

Lynn , 6th Month, 23d, 1837 . Dear Friend :—I now pass on to the consideration of ‘the main principle of action in the Anti-Slavery Society.’ Thou art pleased to assert that it ‘rests wholly on a false deduction from past experience.’ In this, also, thou ‘hast not been sufficiently informed.’ Our main principle of action is embodied in God’s holy command—‘Wash you, make you clean, put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes, cease to do evil, learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve t

Danvers , Mass., 7th mo., 1837 . Dear Friend :—I thank thee for having furnished me with just such a simile as I needed to illustrate the connection which exists between the North and the South. Thou sayest, ‘Suppose two rival cities, one of which becomes convinced that certain practices in trade and business in the other are dishonest, and have an oppressive bearing on certain classes in that city. Suppose, also, that these are practices, which, by those who allow them, are considered as honora

Newburyport , 7th mo. 8th, 1837 . Dear Friend : As an Abolitionist, I thank thee for the portrait thou hast drawn of the character of those with whom I am associated. They deserve all thou hast said in their favor; and I will now endeavor to vindicate those ‘men of pure morals, of great honesty of purpose, of real benevolence and piety,’ from some objections thou hast urged against their measures. ‘Much evidence,’ thou sayest, ‘can be brought to prove that the character and measures of the Aboli

Amesbury , 7th mo. 20th, 1837 . Dear Friend : The aggressive spirit of Anti-Slavery papers and pamphlets, of which thou dost complain, so far from being a repulsive one to me, is very attractive. I see in it that uncompromising integrity and fearless rebuke of sin, which will bear the enterprize of emancipation through to its consummation. And I most heartily desire to see these publications scattered over our land as abundantly as the leaves of Autumn, believing as I do that the principles they

Haverhill , Mass., 7th mo. 23, 1837 . Dear Friend :—Thou sayest, ‘the best way to make a person like a thing which is disagreeable, is to try in some way to make it agreeable.’ So, then, instead of convincing a person by sound argument and pointed rebuke that sin is sin , we are to disguise the opposite virtue in such a way as to make him like that, in preference to the sin he had so dearly loved. We are to cheat a sinner out of his sin, rather than to compel him, under the stings of conviction,

Groton , Mass., 6th month, 1837 . Dear Friend :—In my last, I commented upon the opposition to the establishment of a College in New Haven, Conn., for the education of colored young men. The same remarks are applicable to the persecutions of the Canterbury School. I leave thee and our readers to apply them. I cannot help thinking how strange and unaccountable thy soft excuses for the sins of prejudice will appear to the next generation, if thy book ever reach their eye. As to Cincinnati having b

Brookline , Mass., 8th month, 17th, 1837 . Dear Friend :—Thou sayest ‘There are cases also, where differences in age, and station, and character, forbid all interference to modify the conduct and character of others.’ Let us bring this to the only touchstone by which Christians should try their principles of action. How was it when God designed to rid his people out of the hands of the Egyptian monarch? Was his station so exalted ‘as to forbid all interference to modify his character and conduct

Brookline , Mass., 8th month, 28th, 1837 . Dear Friend : I come now to that part of thy book, which is, of all others, the most important to the women of this country; thy ‘general views in relation to the place woman is appointed to fill by the dispensations of heaven.’ I shall quote paragraphs from thy book, offer my objections to them, and then throw before thee my own views. Thou sayest, ‘Heaven has appointed to one sex the superior , and to the other the subordinate station, and this withou

East Boylston , Mass., 10th mo. 2d, 1837 . Dear Friend : In my last, I made a sort of running commentary upon thy views of the appropriate sphere of woman, with something like a promise, that in my next, I would give thee my own. The investigation of the rights of the slave has led me to a better understanding of my own. I have found the Anti-Slavery cause to be the high school of morals in our land—the school in which human rights are more fully investigated, and better understood and taught, t

Holliston , Mass., 10th month, 23d, 1837 . My Dear Friend : I resume my pen, to gather up a few fragments of thy Essay, that have not yet been noticed, and in love to bid thee farewell. Thou appearest to think, that it is peculiarly the duty of women to educate the little children of this nation. But why, I would ask—why are they any more bound to engage in this sacred employment, than men? I believe, that as soon as the rights of women are understood, our brethren will see and feel that it is t