 Individualism, a reader, edited by George H. Smith and Marilyn Moore, narrated by James Foster. 19. From Letters to Catherine E. Beecher, Angelina E. Grimke Letters to Catherine E. Beecher in reply to an essay on slavery and abolitionism, Boston, Isaac Knapp, 1838. Angelina Grimke, 1805 to 1879, like her sister Sarah Grimke, was a prominent abolitionist and an early crusader for women's rights. This excerpt from one of her abolitionist tracks shows the crucial role that the individualist principle of self-ownership played in the anti-slavery movement. The great fundamental principle of abolitionists is that man cannot rightfully hold his fellow man as property. Therefore, we affirm that every slaveholder is a man-stealer. We do so for the following reasons. To steal a man is to rob him of himself. It matters not whether this be done in Guinea or Carolina. A man is a man. And as a man, he has inalienable rights, among which is the right to personal liberty. Now, if every man has an inalienable right to personal liberty, it follows that he cannot rightfully be reduced to slavery. But I find in these United States 2,250,000 men, women, and children robbed of that to which they have an inalienable right. How comes this to pass, where millions are plundered, are there no plunderers? Then the slaves have been robbed of their liberty, who has robbed them? Not the man who stole their forefathers from Africa, but he who now holds them in bondage no matter how they came into his possession, whether he inherited them or bought them or seized them at their birth on his own plantation. The only difference I can see between the original man-stealer who caught the African in his native country and the American slave-holder is that the former committed one act of robbery, while the other perpetrates the same crime continually. Slave-holding is the perpetrating of acts all of the same kind in a series, the first of which is technically called man-stealing. The first act robbed the man of himself and the same state of mind that prompted that act keeps up the series, having taken his all from him, it keeps his all from him, not only refusing to restore, but still robbing him of all he gets and as fast as he gets it. Slave-holding then is the constant or habitual perpetuation of the act of man-stealing. To make a slave is man-stealing, the act itself, to hold him such is man-stealing, the habit, the permanent state made up of individual acts. In other words, to begin to hold a slave is man-stealing, to keep on holding him is merely a repetition of the first act, a doing of the same identical thing all the time. A series of the same acts continued for a length of time is a habit, a permanent state, and the first of this series of the same acts that make up this habit or state is just like all the rest. If every slave has a right to freedom then surely the man who withholds that right from him today is a man-stealer though he may not have been the first person who has robbed him of it. Hence we find that Wesley says, men-buyers are exactly on a level with men-stealers. And again, much less is it possible that any child of a man should ever be born a slave. Here also Jonathan Edwards, to hold a man in a state of slavery is to be every day guilty of robbing him of his liberty or of man-stealing. And Grodius says, those are men-stealers who abduct, keep, sell or buy slaves or free men. If thou meanest merely that acts of the same nature but differently located in a series are designated by different terms, thus pointing out their different relative positions, then thy argument concedes what we affirm, the identity in the nature of the acts, and thus it dwindles to a mere philological criticism or rather a mere play upon words. This has been Individualism, a Reader, edited by George H. Smith and Marilyn Moore, narrated by James Foster. Copyright 2015 by the Cato Institute. Production copyright 2015 by the Cato Institute.