Inquiry into the Accordancy of War With the Principles of Christianity…, An.
[Grimké, Sarah Moore]. Dymond, Jonathan and Thomas Smith Grimké. An Inquiry into the Accordancy of War With the Principles of Christianity; and an Examination of the Philosophical Reasoning by Which it is Defended; With Observations on the Causes of War and Some of its Effects… Philadelphia: I Ashmead & Co., 1834.
8vo.; endpapers and preliminaries water-stained; front hinge cracked; dark green floral cloth, calf labels stamped in gilt; tips rubbed, exposing boards; spine slightly cocked, chipped.
First American edition of Dymond’s first published book; with the posthumous first appearance in print of Thomas Smith Grimké’s notes; including a previously unpublished prefatory remark by Sarah Moore and Angelina Emily Grimké, Jonathan’s sisters who gained notoriety for their involvement with Quakers and the Abolitionist circuit. Indeed, the sisters were among the earliest advocates of woman’s suffrage and the rights of women in the abolitionist movement.
Born in Charleston, South Carolina at the pinnacle of slavery, Thomas Smith Grimké (1786-1834), reformer, educator, religious advocate, and orthographer, was reared by affluent and influential parents: his father, John Faucheraud Grimké, was a prominent attorney in Charleston; his mother, May Smith, was a descendant of the second landholder in South Carolina and a devout Puritan.
After graduating from Yale in 1807, Grimké intended to pursue a career in the Episcopalian ministry; however, he acquiesced to his father’s wishes and studied law. His change in vocation led him into politics as a state senator (1826-1830), where he championed unpopular and controversial causes such as opposing the preparation of military resistance by individual states. He was also an ardent patron of temperance and peace, for which he wrote Address on the Truth, Dignity, Power and Beauty of the Principles of Peace (1832), and a series of radical reformation articles that appeared in Calumet, a publication of the American Peace Society, in which he took issue with “advocates of peace who admitted the Scriptural legality of war.”
Grimké, like his sisters, maintained a radical educational philosophy that assumed education “must partake deeply and extensively of the vital sprit of American institutions.” A champion of higher education for women, Grimké devised a curriculum that discriminated against mathematics and classics, which he believed were too utilitarian. Instead, he advocated science, modern history and modern literature, which promoted social progress; he also recommended the use of vocational manuals in schools. He adopted an amended orthography that disregarded silent letters, which he believed stress a consistency that was more appropriate for “democratic, mass education”; his theories achieved their fullest expression in his third work, Oration on American Education (1835). In his final two years, Grimké embraced the belief that the Bible should be uniformly assimilated into every aspect of education, on which his last tract Appropriate Use of the Bible, in Common Education (1833) was founded. Grimké published one final piece that was included in Dymond’s American edition of An Inquiry into The Accordancy of War. A true champion of Dymond, Grimké bestowed ample praise in his dedication:
In presenting you with an American edition of Dymond on War, I feel assur’d that I am rendering an important service to the cause of religion, of our country, and of mankind…In your hand ar, in my opinion, the destiny, not only of the Christian church, but of the institutions of your country.
Grimké never saw the book in print; he died unexpectedly en route to Columbia, Ohio while it was in production. In the Advertisement, his sisters pay grief-stricken homage to their brother. In part:
While we deeply deplore the loss of the best of brothers, out hearts ar often filled with thanksgiving and praise, to “the God of all consolation,” for the sweet assurance we co
Print Inquire