Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
5
“facts and FACTS”: Abolitionists'Database
Innovations
Ellen Gruber Garvey
I
t is well known that
American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a ThousandWitnesses
had a tre-
mendous impact on the U.S. abolition movement when it was published by the Ameri-
can Anti-Slavery Society in 1839. Produced through the collaboration of Angelina
Grimké Weld, her husband, Theodore Weld, and her sister, Sarah Grimké, the topic
offered American abolitionists new ammunition for their spoken and written war
against slavery.
1
What is less well known, however, is that
American Slavery As It Is
was
the product of a new way of using media, one that is now familiar to us through our
computer-based keyword and Lexis/Nexis searches. The topic combined personal tes-
timony from those who lived, or who had lived, in the South, some of them former
slaveholders, elicited via a form letter—a questionnaire of sorts—with evidence gleaned
from a vast archive of newspapers. Here I will focus on that innovative use of newspa-
pers, for in writing
American Slavery As It Is
, the Grimkés and Weld reconceptualized the
press to mine it as a database, and modeled ways other abolitionists could use the press
and the writings of the South against itself.
2
Sarah and Angelina Grimké were born into a slaveholding family in South Carolina
but rejected that life to become ardent abolitionists, traveling New England as accom-
plished, convincing speakers, testifying to their direct experience of seeing the effects
of slavery on both slaves and owners. They drew on their experience in their writings
as well. (Angelina Grimké wrote the only antislavery work by a Southern white woman
addressed to other Southern women,
An Appeal to Christian Women of the South
, 1836).
When Angelina Grimké married the abolitionist and reformer Theodore Dwight Weld
in 1838, both were in frail health. They settled in Fort Lee, New Jersey, with Angelina's
sister, and all three retired from public speaking. Abolitionist friends were dismayed
at losing such effective orators. The three next took up an extraordinary work,
American
Slavery As It Is
, the most widely read antislavery publication until the novel
Uncle Tom ' s
