Epistle to the Clergy of the Southern States
Signed from New York, 12th Mo. 1836, 'Yours in gospel love.' The sister-document of Angelina's Appeal — same year, the ministers rather than the women.
1792–1873 · South Carolina
Sarah Moore Grimké
The elder sister who wrote to the ministers of the South in gospel love
“To my dear native land, to the beloved relatives who are still breathing her tainted air, to the ministers of Christ, from some of whom I have received the emblems of a Saviour's love; my heart turns with feelings of intense solicitude.” — Sarah Moore Grimké
After Friends
Sarah signs the Epistle to the Clergy of the Southern States from New York, ‘12th Mo. 1836,’ ‘Yours in gospel love.’ The dating and the close are the Friends’ own. She writes as a Southerner still turned toward ‘my dear native land’ and toward ministers ‘from some of whom I have received the emblems of a Saviour’s love.’ The corpus collected here is that epistle. It does not record a later meeting minute against her, and this site will not invent one. What it will mark is that her printed Quaker witness, as the record here stands, is this 1836 address; what followed is a different literature, and is not collected here.
Biography
Sarah’s Epistle is the quieter of the two 1836 pamphlets, and the one aimed at the pulpit. She writes “Brethren beloved in the Lord,” not as a stranger.
To my dear native land, to the beloved relatives who are still breathing her tainted air, to the ministers of Christ, from some of whom I have received the emblems of a Saviour’s love; my heart turns with feelings of intense solicitude.
The peculiar guilt she names is not ignorance. It is the clergy’s blessing — men who “sway the minds of a vast proportion of the Christian community” lending slavery the sanction of Scripture. She mentions, in the opening, “the bon fire at Charleston,” the outrages at Nashville, the banishment of Birney. The cost is already in the text. She still writes as a Friend.
The close is dated New York, “12th Mo. 1836,” and signed “Yours in gospel love, Sarah M. Grimké.” That is the whole dated trail this page will own. The Epistle does not narrate a childhood, a father, or a meetinghouse quarrel. Those belong to other books. Here she speaks to the ministers of the South, and she speaks in gospel love.
Life & Ministry
Available Works
Letters & Appeals
Available NowThe Friends Illuminated edition: Angelina's Appeal, Sarah's Epistle, and the complete Letters to Catharine Beecher.
Epistle to the Clergy of the Southern States
In Letters & Appeals1836. Addressed to the ministers of the South, and signed from New York in 12th Mo.