History of Native American

The document I select to annotate on is ‘An Appeal to the Women of the Nominally Free States’ written by Angelina Grimke in 1837. This article was written to assert women’s right to fight for the emancipation of slaves oppressed in the free states and it also emphasised on the importance of equal rights for women to put their thoughts and beliefs into actions politically, domestically or socially. The article was directed to the Women of the Northern free states and it generally exhorted the beliefs of racial and gender equality in rights. The document is based on first-hand experience of Angelina who was born and raised in the South in that era but came to the North (Philadelphia) for her religious belief at first. She had witnessed slavery herself as her family was one of the slaveholders in South Carolina and she was brought up in a conservative environment where women were in a subordinate position to men. Later, her interest switched from religious belief to social justice after a meeting with Lucretia Mott.

The document aims to tell the women of the North that they have responsibilities in the emancipation of slaves and they have roles to play to stop slavery and transform the nation as they are part of the nation too. Most importantly, these are the duties necessary to be performed to God. To achieve all of these, women’s rights came into place and thus, were also emphasised and upheld in this article. The historical context of this article was a middle-class and aristocratic American society during the period of Second Great Awakening before civil war. People during that time are consisted of Evangelical conservatives who valued traditional values that put women in an inferior role to men and other Protestant groups that aimed to promote radical social and moral reforms, for example to abolish slavery and to promote gender and racial equality.

The document portrays the sorrow experienced by women who were interested and concerned in their country’s social and political developments but could do nothing merely due to the fact that they were of a different gender. Angelina in her article criticised and questioned the difference of rights for different genders and stressed that women were part of the citizens and had relations with people, liabilities and duties to their families, government and nation just as men. She also expressed her disapproval when it comes to the restriction of women’s rights in political matters by ironically expressing her sarcastic remarks in saying that women’s influence was dreaded by the nation as they would be powerful just as men had they been given a chance and thus their interference was restricted. The author also reiterated that despite the argument to that females should maintain their dignity, they were not at all precluded from preforming their duties politically, domestically and socially.

As we know, justice is not similar to equality. She also asserted that the denial of women’s rights was in contravention with the Bill of Rights and Preamble of Constitution as women although they can never be equal with men in the clothes they wear, body size, energy and way of thinking, are still citizens of the country and their rights just like men were enshrined in the Constitution itself and only by giving women the rights they were entitled to, justice could be done. The duty of act is similar to the right to act. Denial of either of it to women makes them no difference with the black slaves in the South. Here, we can see the uproar of female rights derived through slavery as even white women were ‘slaves’ only that they were slightly better than their black counterparts. A concept is reinforced here that every individual have the same rights and duties regardless of their gender and skin colour.

Angelina also talks about slavery in her article. From her view, we can see the importance religious revivals play in the process of emancipation of slaves. The new Protestants viewed the same bible but interpreted it in a different way as opposed to what the slaveholders did. God had given a person the free will and liberty to decide for his own future when he was born and by denying such will to the slaves, slavery was regarded as a crime to God which is so unholy and sinful. This leads to the call to abolish slavery. Apart from religious factor, the calling to abolish slavery among women were more prevalent as compared to men as women themselves were also bound to the gates of ‘slaves’ albeit not literally and so when this was coupled with their motherly instincts that they felt so sinful to have the slave women and their children separated, they were more sympathised towards the situations of their black ‘counterparts as compared to men. The restrictions placed on women were basically just slightly better than real slaves when they did not have a chance to express their thoughts and act according to what they wished. Angelina, by saying that Northern women were part of the crime of slavery through the purchasing and making use of the products made by slaves through their hard work, thus showing their support and acknowledging the slave institution, on the other hand encouraged her northern counterparts to treat their slaves as good as possible to reduce the harshness faced by them and to reduce the great prejudice existing at the time. She justified it with religious reason that if they were to be prejudiced towards a coloured person, they were disapproving God’s wish for creating that individual.

Based on my analysis, according to Angelina, women should be given an equal right in politics as you can never judge their ability in dealing with political responsibility unless you can prove it after they are given their chance to be engaged in political reform of the society just as men. From this article, we can see that religious revival is one of the factors that leads to the movements for emancipation of slaves when Angelina mentioned that slavery means depriving a person of liberty, honour and happiness given to him by God at his creation. While Angelina’s efforts to encourage women’s participation to procure emancipation for slaves are commendable and helpful, I think she left out a point, where women can help to change and influence the thoughts and beliefs of men around them through education or through exhortation. This is very important as men, undisputable as the dominants of the leaders of the nation at that time, would accord to the ideology of equal rights between men and women had they be instilled the belief when they were young. Hence, it is important for women to take on the new roles as educators who advocate the idea of equality of rights to men when they are young. Winston Churchill once said, “to change the future, we must change the perception of the young first”.

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