I met two remarkable sisters 13 decades after their deaths. From the moment I found them, their words have shown me much. Their hearts have encouraged me greatly.

The two spoke up when it took great courage to do so. They told what they had seen. Their love for God and their heartcry for people compelled them.

Their insights into a past culture show us:

Cruelty can hide in plain sight.

In the name of a God of mercy

Sarah and Angelina Grimké grew up in a slaveholding family – and grew to detest slavery. Their father, a wealthy planter, served as chief judge of the South Carolina Supreme Court. In early adulthood, first Sarah, then Angelina became Quaker and moved north.

In 1837, the antislavery paper, The Liberator, published a personal letter Angelina sent to its editor, William Lloyd Garrison. Overnight, the sisters found themselves at the forefront of the abolition movement. Even in the North, they faced strong opposition, both from those who considered emancipation “radical” and from those who insisted women should not speak in public.

In 1838, Angelina married Theodore Weld. In 1839, Weld, his wife, and her sister produced the volume that ultimately proved second only to Uncle Tom’s Cabin in antislavery influence in the US. American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses contains 210 pages of “well-weighed testimony and well-attested facts,” most drawn from the writings of slaveholders themselves.

Sarah told why she co-edited such a project:

As I left my native state on account of slavery, and deserted the home of my fathers to escape the sound of the lash and the shrieks of tortured victims, I would gladly bury in oblivion the recollection of those scenes with which I have been familiar. But this may not, cannot be. They come over my memory like gory spectres, and implore me with resistless power, in the name of a God of mercy, in the name of a crucified Savior, in the name of humanity; for the sake of the slaveholder, as well as the slave … to give my testimony respecting the system of American slavery.¹

“Forever hereafter, absolute slaves”

Story after story, chart after chart, “a thousand witnesses” expose the gut-wrenching truth of slavery’s cruelty. Testimonies and facts show “the condition of slaves, in all respects” (iv).

Slaves were born, lived, and died under “slave codes” – laws dating back to colonial times. The South Carolina Slave Code of 1740 includes 58 sections that systematically stripped Blacks, and Indians, of inalienable rights endowed by their Creator. The code made it illegal, for example, for slaves to learn to read and write, to gather without white supervision, or to go out of town or off plantation without a permit.

The code declared: “all Negroes … and all their issue and offspring, born or to be born, shall be, and they are hereby declared to be, and remain forever hereafter, absolute slaves, and shall follow the condition of the mother, and shall be deemed, held, taken, reputed and adjudged in law, to be chattels personal, in the hands of their owners and possessors.”²

Chattels means “property.” Thus, by law, persons were declared property.

“They shall not have their liberty”

Theodore, Angelina and Sarah compiled mountainous evidence and stunning firsthand testimony showing how the slave codes played out across the South.

[The law has] taken away from the slave his liberty. It has robbed him of his right to his own body, of his right to improve his mind, of his right to read the Bible, of his right to worship God according to his conscience, of his right to receive and enjoy what he earns, of his right to live with his wife and children, of his right to better his condition, of his right to eat when he is hungry, to rest when he is tired, to sleep when he needs it, and to cover his nakedness with clothing.

This [law] makes the slave a prisoner for life on the plantation, except when his jailor pleases to let him out with a ‘pass,’ or sells him, and transfers him in irons to another jail-yard. This [law] traverses the country, buying up men, women, children – chaining them in coffles, and driving them forever from their nearest friends. It sets them on the auction table, to be handled, scrutinized, knocked off to the highest bidder. It proclaims that they shall not have their liberty; and, if their masters give it them, [the law] seizes and throws them back into slavery. (144)

Slaves were sold at a master’s whim and a master’s death. They were sold when restless masters made the frequent decision to move farther west and south or, even more frequently, when overextended masters needed a quick way to cover their debts.

Murdered by piece-meal

Typically ill-clad, sometimes unclothed, and crowded indiscriminately into drafty one-room huts with dirt floors and no beds, slaves suffered in a myriad of other ways, catalogued in American Slavery As It Is.

“Every body here knows overdriving to be one of the most common occurrences, the planters do not deny it, except, perhaps, to northerners,” said a theological student in Natchez, Mississippi. (35)

Theodore described overdriving this way: “to furnish men at hard labor from daylight till dark with but 1 7/8 lbs. of corn per day, their sole sustenance, is to MURDER THEM BY PIECE-MEAL.” (34)

Slave owners knew as much:

At a meeting of planters in South Carolina, the question was seriously discussed whether the slave is more profitable to the owner, if well fed, well clothed, and worked lightly, or if made the most of at once, and exhausted in some eight years. The decision was in favor of the last alternative.

The slaveholders generally throughout the far south and south west … believe it for their interest to wear out the slaves by excessive toil in eight or ten years after they put them into the field. (39)

Torture endured by the heart

Angelina wrote:

Only two meals a day are allowed the house slaves – the first at twelve o’clock … There must be a good deal of suffering among them from hunger, and particularly by children. Besides this, they are often kept from their meals by way of punishment. No table is provided for them to eat from … I never saw slaves seated round a table to partake of any meal.

As the general rule, no lights of any kind, no firewood – no towels, basins, or soap, no tables, chairs, or other furniture, are provided … When the master’s work is done, the slave must find wood for himself if he has a fire.

Persons who own plantations and yet live in cities, often take children from their parents as soon as they are weaned, and send them into the country; because they do not want the time of the mother taken up by attendance upon her own children, it being too valuable to the mistress. As a favor, she is, in some cases, permitted to go to see them once a year. So, on the other hand, if field slaves happen to have children of an age suitable to the convenience of the master, they are taken from their parents and brought to the city.

I cannot describe the daily, hourly, ceaseless torture, endured by the heart that is constantly trampled under the foot of despotic power. (55, 56, 57)

Evangelical masters with seared consciences

The research of historian James Oakes attests: “The majority of masters … were evangelicals.”³ Practicing evangelicals. Yet their consciences were “seared as with a hot iron” (1 Tim. 4:2).

Angelina explained:

One who is a slaveholder at heart never recognizes a human being in a slave. (57)

Sarah, Angelina and Theodore recorded many, many eyewitness accounts as to the results. Here is a tiny sample.

Cruelty seldom witnessed

Letter written by Jacob Dunham, captain of a sailing vessel from New York:

Dear sir – Passing your house yesterday, I beheld a scene of cruelty seldom witnessed; that was the brutal chastisement of your negro girl, lashed to a ladder and beaten in an inhuman manner, too bad to describe. My blood chills while I contemplate the subject.

This has led me to investigate your character from your neighbors; who inform me that you have caused the death of one negro man, whom you struck with a sledge for some trivial fault – that you have beaten another black girl with such severity that the splinters remained in her back for some weeks after you sold her – and many other acts of barbarity, too lengthy to enumerate.

And to my great surprise, I find you are a professor of the Christian religion! (177)

Rev. Joseph Hough:

While traveling in the South, [I] put up one night with a Methodist family, and spent the Sabbath with them. While there, one of the female slaves did something which displeased her mistress. She took a chisel and mallet, and very deliberately cut off one of her toes!” (181)

Sarah herself witnessed this:

A slave who had been separated from his wife, because it best suited the convenience of his owner, ran away. He was taken up on the plantation where his wife, to whom he was tenderly attached, then lived. His only object in running away was to return to her.

For this offence he was confined in the stocks six weeks, in a miserable hovel, not weather-tight. He received fifty lashes weekly during that time, was allowed food barely sufficient to sustain him, and when released from confinement, was not permitted to return to his wife.

Blinded to the nature of their own acts

Sarah, continuing:

His master, although himself a husband and a father, was unmoved by the touching appeals of the slave, who entreated that he might only remain with his wife, promising to discharge his duties faithfully. His master continued inexorable, and he was torn from his wife and family. The owner of this slave was a professing Christian, in full membership with the church, and this circumstance occurred when he was confined to his chamber during his last illness. (23)

Sarah and Angelina knew that “master.” They also knew, from seeing it play out again and again:

The state of mind towards others, which leads one to inflict cruelties on them, blinds the inflicter to the real nature of his own acts.

To him, they do not seem to be cruelties; consequently, when speaking of such treatment toward such persons, he will protest that it is not cruelty; though, if inflicted upon himself or his friends, he would indignantly stigmatize it as atrocious barbarity. (123)

And yet, especially as the abolition movement gained steam:

Every thing cruel and revolting is carefully concealed from strangers, especially those from the north. Take an instance. I have known the master and mistress of a family send to their friends to borrow servants to wait on company, because their own slaves had been so cruelly flogged in the work house, that they could not walk without limping at every step, and their putrefied flesh emitted such an intolerable smell that they were not fit to be in the presence of company.

I repeat it, no one who has not been an integral part of a slaveholding community, can have any idea of its abominations. (55)

What insights! And, tragically, true of any abusive system.

Evil disguised as good

Decades ago, Sarah and Angelina spoke out with broken hearts over the unspeakable cruelties slaves experienced. They also grieved for their family members and other slaveholders, “both in fact and in heart.”

Angelina wrote:

Even were slavery no curse to its victims, the exercise of arbitrary power works such fearful ruin upon the hearts of slaveholders, that I should feel impelled to labor and pray for its overthrow with my last energies and latest breath. (52)

These days, I’m grieving. So many evangelicals are caught up into a culture of cruelty, yet blinded to it. We’re experiencing what the sisters witnessed.

Treacherous people – powerful and wealthy, power-hungry and greedy – lead the way. Their tactics?

→ Cast themselves as noble saviors of the people they want to beguile. Choose other people to scapegoat. Label them, “the problem.”

→ Incite selfishness and offense. Stoke followers’ pride, resentment, fear, delight in violence, determination to control.

→ Provoke followers to despise those “not us.” Start with words.

Call whole groups of people chattel, scum, savages, animals, etc. Use words that label human beings as: Less than human. Less than us. Needing our rule. Deserving to be “kept in their place” and exploited, evicted, decimated.

→ Write such cruelty into law.

→ Declare such cruelty biblical, God-ordained, good. Twist scriptures to prove it.

→ Silence and shun those who object. Start with words. When someone is awakened to injustice, for example, call them “incendiary,” or woke. Say it with disdain. Close ranks and use force as needed to eliminate any dissenting voice.⁴

→ Masterfully, disguise all that evil as good.

It’s easy to teach people
to treat like dirt
the “other” you have taught them
to see as dirt.

What’s not easy? To see it happening where you do NOT want it to be true.

Cruelty dehumanizes us

What Sarah and Angelina Grimké cried nearly two centuries ago, I echo today:

Cruelty profoundly harms its victims.

Cruelty works “fearful ruin upon the hearts”
of those who embrace it
and blind themselves to it.

As we seek to dehumanize others, we turn our own hearts to stone.

Lord our God, soften our hearts! Open our eyes! Pour out on your people a spirit of grace and supplication! May we see, and grieve, and turn from, any ways we have cooperated with cruelty hidden in plain sight.

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All of this post, except the introduction and the two concluding sections, is excerpted and adapted from We Confess: The Civil War, the South and the Church, c. 2011; e-book rev. 2020.

Image by Carol M. Highsmith, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

A tale of two pictures

When I discovered the Grimké sisters – and for years afterward – the only photos I could find of them online were the two below, apparently made from wood carvings.

I wondered who had made those pictures, and why that person had given the sisters such sour, hardened faces. Someone wanting to cast the two two women as “the problem,” perhaps?

I’ve read much of Sarah and Angelina’s story and many of their writings, and neither picture portrayed the women I had come to know.

So I asked Skip Rohde, an accomplished artist whom I’m delighted to have as a cousin: “Could you take the faces in those pictures and soften them into the compassionate, courageous women their writings reveal them to be?”

Skip accepted the challenge, and created the pictures of Sarah and Angelina Grimké featured within this post.

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Tell us about past events so that we can reflect on them and understand their consequences. (Isa. 41:22 CJB)

See also

• People of God, befriend the forsaken
• So blinded for so long, I choose light
• Isn’t it time to leave the past behind?
• This “good Christian girl” is a woman now
•  The Civil War, the South and the church
  * * *
• Treachery and divorce: When God sees betrayal – explores what the Bible says about treachery in general, as well as in marriage.
• Illusionists! The abusers we have not seen – probes the workings of abusive systems, as well as individual abusers.
• Resented without a cause
• The truth will set you free

Footnotes

1. American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses (New York: American Anti-Slavery Society, 1839), 22. In this post, all other quotations from this source are noted by page numbers in parenthesis in the text. ↩︎
2. 1740 South Carolina Slave Code. Acts of the South Carolina General Assembly, 1740 # 670. Transcription from McCord, David J., ed. The Statutes at Large of South Carolina. Vol. 7, Containing the Acts Relating to Charleston, Courts, Slaves, and Rivers. Columbia, SC: A.S. Johnston, 1840, 397. ↩︎
3. James Oakes, The Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982), 27. ↩︎
4. The Grimké sisters personally experienced such cruelty. They were condemned and their lives threatened, in the North, as well as the South, because they were women, speaking out against slavery and in behalf of the equality of women. In 1838, in Philadelphia, a mob attacked the place where Angelina was speaking and then, the next day, burned the empty building down. And still, in 1839, the sisters co-authored American Slavery As It Is. ↩︎