Читать книгу History of Woman Suffrage (Vol. 1-6) - Various - Страница 59

My first introduction to Mrs. Weld was two years after her marriage, when she and her husband had retired from the stormy scenes of the anti-slavery conflict, and in their own home found a harbor of rest, for quiet though useful occupation. In company with my husband and Charles Stuart, a Scotch Abolitionist, we took one of those long closely-covered stages peculiar to New Jersey, for a twelve miles drive to Belleville, where at the door of an old Dutch-built stone house, Theodore Weld and the famous daughters of South Carolina gave us a welcome. There was nothing attractive at first sight in those plain, frail women, except their rich voices, fluent language, and Angelina's fine dark eyes. The house with its wide hall, spacious apartments, deep windows, and small panes of glass was severely destitute of all tasteful, womanly touches, and though neat and orderly, had a cheerless atmosphere. Neither was there one touch of the artistic in the arrangement of the ladies' hair and dresses. They were just then in the Graham dispensation, and the peculiar table arrangements, with no tray to mark the charmed circle whence the usual beverages were dispensed, the cold dishes without a whiff of heat, or steam, gave one a feeling of strangeness; all those delightful associations gathering round a covered dish and hot beefsteak, the tea-pot and china cups and saucers, were missing. A cool evening in the month of May, after a long drive had left us in a condition peculiarly susceptible to the attractions of something hot and stimulating; but they came not. There was no catering in this household to the weaknesses of those who were not yet weaned from the flesh-pots of Egypt. The sharp edge of our appetite somewhat dulled with the simple fare, we were thrown on our own resources, and memories of tea and coffee for stimulus.

After our repast, the high discourse was slightly interrupted by the appearance of the infant, Charles Stuart Weld, and his formal presentation to the distinguished gentleman after whom he was named. And when Mr. Weld told us how near the boy, in the initiative steps of his existence, came to being sacrificed to a theory, the old stone walls rang with bursts of laughter.74 But the chilling environments of these noble people were modified by the sincere hospitality with which we were received. My husband and Mr. Weld had been classmates in Lane Seminary, and were among the students who left that institution when the discussion of the slavery question was forbidden by the President, Dr. Lyman Beecher. They talked with zest of those early days until a late hour. As Charles Stuart and the two sisters were also good conversationalists, I listened with pleasure and profit, and during the three days under that roof obtained much general knowledge of anti-slavery and church history; volumes of information were condensed in those familiar talks, of lasting benefit to me, who then knew so little of reforms.

How changed was the atmosphere of that home to me next day. True, there were still no pictures on the walls, but the beautiful boy in his bath, the sunlight on his golden hair, with some new grace or trick each day, surpassed what any brush could trace. No statues graced the corners; but the well-built Northern hero of many slavery battles, bound with the silken cords of love and friendship to those brave women from the South, together sacrificing wealth and fame and ease for a great principle, formed a group worthy the genius of a Rogers to portray.

It has been my good fortune to meet these noble friends occasionally in the course of our busy lives, sometimes under their roof, sometimes under mine, and as, day by day, the nobility, the transparency, the unselfishness of their characters have grown upon me, the memories of the old stone house and its care-worn inmates, have stood transfigured before me, with almost a celestial radiance. In grouping the main facts of this eventful life, and analyzing the impelling motives that made Angelina Grimké the heroic woman she was, I can not serve her memory better than in giving the beautiful tributes of loving friends at the close of her life.

Angelina, the youngest daughter of Judge Grimké, of the Supreme Court of South Carolina, was born in Charleston, S. C., February 20, 1805. From her earliest years, her sympathies were with the cruelly treated race around her; and when a child, she had her little bottle of oil, and other simple medicaments, with which in the darkness she would steal out of the house to some wretched creature who had been terribly whipped, and do what she could to assuage his sufferings. At the age of fourteen, she was asked by the rector of the Episcopal church to which her family belonged, to be confirmed—a form, she was told, which all her companions went through as a matter of course. But she insisted on knowing the meaning of this form, and, on reading it in the Prayer-Book, she said she could not promise what was there required. "But it is only a form," she was told. "If with my feelings and views as they now are, I should go through that form, it would be a lie. I can not do it." This single-hearted truthfulness, without regard to personal consequences to herself, was the key to all her conduct.

Some years afterward, under the influence of an eloquent Presbyterian preacher, her religious sensibilities were awakened. Her eyes were opened to a new world. Through deeper and more vital spiritual experiences, she entered into a new life, which took entire possession of all her faculties. She joined the Presbyterian church, and carried into it the fervor and strength of a regenerated nature. She became a teacher in its Sunday-school, and after a lapse of fifty years, there came a letter from one of her first Sunday-school scholars, living in Georgia, to express thanks for the benefits which her instructions had been to her. Angelina soon endeavored to impress upon the officers of the church a sense of what they should do for the slaves, but her pleadings for them found no response. "Could it then," said she, "be a Church of Christ?"

There was in Charleston at that time a Friends' Meeting-house, where there were only two worshipers, and they agreed with her in regard to slavery. For a year she worshiped there in silence. No word was spoken. The two aged men, and this young, accomplished, attractive woman, sat there under a canopy of divine silence, sanctified and blessed to her. At length she felt that her mission there was ended. Her elder sister, Sarah, had united with the Friends in Philadelphia; and she joined her in 1830, giving up in agony of heart all the dear ties that bound her to her home. But even in the Friends' Meeting-house, her eye was quick to see negro seats where women of the despised race were still publicly humiliated. She and her sister seated themselves with them. The Friends were grieved by their conduct, and called them to account. The sisters replied: "While you put this badge of degradation on our sisters, we feel that it is our duty to share it with them."

In 1883, they attached themselves to the American Anti-Slavery Society, and lent their powerful aid to the work which it was doing. There was no more effective or eloquent speaker in the cause than Angelina Grimké. She had not thought at first of speaking in public; but wherever she was, among friends and neighbors, she sought relief to her burdened spirit by testifying to the cruel and fatal influences of slavery. A few women at first came together to meet her and her sister Sarah. The numbers and the interest increased till she became widely known. She and her sister talked to them about slavery in their own parlors. Soon no parlors could hold the throngs that gathered to hear her. The small vestry of a church was given to her, then a large vestry. But this was too small, and the body of the church was opened to the crowd which had been attracted by her. There, on a platform beneath the pulpit, for the first time she stood and spoke at what might be called a public meeting, though she spoke only to women. In the spring of 1837, the sisters went through a similar experience in Boston, speaking to women only. She went to Lynn to address the women, and there men crowded in with their wives and daughters. That was the beginning of women's speaking to promiscuous assemblies in Massachusetts.

"Hers was the eloquence of a broken heart. As she gave way to the deep yearnings of affection for the mother that bore her, still a slaveholder, for her brothers and sisters, a large family circle, and for all who had been most closely bound to her by ties of kindred and neighborhood, she must have felt the desolation of a soul disappointed and broken in its dearest earthly hopes and love. All the sweet and tender affections which intertwine themselves so inseparably with the thought of home had been turned into instruments of torture. As she thought of her native city, and spoke out her feelings toward it, her language might well remind one of the lamentations of the ancient prophets, 'O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee!' But this broken heart had a higher life and a mightier voice than can be given or taken away by any earthly affection. While therefore she often spoke with a pathos which melted and subdued those who listened to her, she also rose into a loftier strain, and spoke with the mingled love and sternness of a messenger from God."

Passages like the following may give some idea of the solemnity and power with which she, who had left all and taken up her cross in defence of a poor and friendless race, could appeal to assembled multitudes:

The sufferings of the slaves are not only innumerable, but they are indescribable. I may paint the agony of kindred torn from each other's arms, to meet no more in time; I may depict the inflictions of the blood-stained lash; but I can not describe the daily, hourly, ceaseless torture, endured by the heart that is constantly trampled under the foot of arbitrary power. This is a part of the horrors of slavery which, I believe, no one has ever attempted to delineate. I wonder not at it; it mocks all power of language. Who can describe the anguish of that mind which feels itself impaled upon the iron of arbitrary power—its living, writhing, helpless victim! every human susceptibility tortured, its sympathies torn, and stung, and bleeding—always feeling the death weapon in its heart, and yet not so deep as to kill that humanity which is made the curse of its existence?

No one who has not been an integral part of a slaveholding community can have any idea of its abominations. It is a whited sepulchre, full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. Blessed be God, the angel of truth has descended, and rolled away the stone from the mouth of the sepulchre, and sits upon it. The abominations so long hidden are now brought forth before all Israel and the sun. Yes, the angel of truth sits upon this stone, and it can never be rolled back again.

There is a spirit abroad in this country which will not consent to barter principle for an unholy peace—a spirit which will not hide God's eternal principles of right and wrong, but will stand erect in the storm of human passion, prejudice, and interest, holding forth the light of truth in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation; a spirit which will never slumber nor sleep till man ceases to hold dominion over his fellow-creatures, and the trump of universal liberty rings in every forest, and is re-echoed by every mountain and rock.

"She who spoke in tones like these never lost one of her purely feminine qualities. Graceful, gentle, retiring, taking upon herself the lowliest duties as if she had been born to them, this woman, who stood up that her light might shine on all, and reveal to them the terrible atrocities of slavery, was like Jeremy Taylor's taper, which cast ever a modest shadow round itself. She had a very lofty idea of what a woman should be. 'Whatever it is morally right for a man to do, it is morally right for a woman to do. I recognize no rights but human rights. I know nothing of men's rights and women's rights; for in Christ Jesus there is neither male nor female.' 'Sure I am that woman is not to be, as she has been, a mere "second-hand agent" in the regeneration of a fallen world, but the acknowledged equal and co-worker with man in this glorious work. … Just in proportion as her moral and intellectual capacities become enlarged, she will rise higher and higher in the scroll of creation, until she reaches that elevation prepared for her by her Maker, and upon whose summit she was originally stationed, only 'a little lower than the angels.'"

In the darkest hours of that fearful conflict with slavery in which she was engaged, when its advocates were everywhere met with violence, and threatened with death, she wrote to William Lloyd Garrison as follows:

I can hardly express to thee the deep and solemn interest with which I have viewed the violent proceedings of the last few weeks. Although I expected opposition, yet I was not prepared for it so soon; it took me by surprise, and I greatly feared the Abolitionists would be driven back in the first onset and thrown into confusion. I was afraid of even opening one of thy papers lest I should see some indications of a compromise, some surrender, some palliation. But I read thy appeal to the citizens of Boston, and found my fears were utterly groundless, and that thou stoodest firm in the midst of the storm, determined to suffer and to die rather than yield one inch!

Religious persecution always begins with mobs; it is always unprecedented in any age or country in which it commences, and therefore there are no laws by which reformers can be punished; consequently, a lawless band of unprincipled men determine to take the matter into their hands, and act out in mobs what they know are the principles of a large majority of those who are too high in Church and State to condescend to mingle with them, though they secretly approve and rejoice over their violent measures. The first martyr who ever died was stoned by a lawless mob; and, if we look at the rise of various sects—Methodists, Friends, etc.—we shall find that mobs began the persecution against them; and it was not until after the people had thus spoken out their wishes that laws were framed to fine, imprison, or destroy them. Let us, then, be prepared for the enactment of laws, even in our free States, against Abolitionists. And how ardently has the prayer been breathed that God would fit us for all He is preparing for us!

My mind has been especially turned toward those who are standing in the fore-front of the battle; and the prayer has gone up for their preservation, not the preservation of their lives, but the preservation of their minds in humility and patience, faith, hope, and charity, that charity which is the bond of perfectness. If persecution is the means which God has ordained for the accomplishment of this great end—emancipation—then, in dependence upon Him for strength to bear it, I feel as if I could say, let it come; for it is my deep, solemn conviction that this is a cause worth dying for. At one time, I thought this system would be overthrown in blood, with the confused noise of the warrior; but a hope gleams across my mind that our blood will be spilt instead of the slaveholders'; that our lives will be taken, and theirs spared. I say a hope; for of all things I desire to be spared the anguish of seeing our beloved country desolated with the horrors of a servile war.

"These words were written by one who was standing not apart in a place of safety, but in the foremost post of danger, and who knew that she was as likely as any one to share in the martyrdom which she foresaw. The spirit which dictated these sentences went through her whole life as its ruling influence.

"There is the courage of the mariner who buffets the angry waves. There is the courage of the warrior who marches up to the cannon's mouth, coolly pressing forward amidst engines of destruction on every side. But hers was a courage greater than theirs. She not only faced death at the hands of stealthy assassins and howling mobs in her loyalty to truth, duty, and humanity, but she encountered unflinchingly the awful frowns of the mighty consecrated leaders of society, the scoffs and sneers of the multitude, the outstretched finger of scorn, and the whispered mockery of pity, standing up for the lowest of the low. Nurtured in the very bosom of slavery, by her own observation and thought, of one thing she became certain, that it was a false, cruel, accursed relation between human beings. And to this conviction, from the very budding of her womanhood, she was true."

"Well do I remember," said one, "when, after the American Anti-Slavery Society, founded in 1838, had battled for a year or two with the combined forces of the mob, the press, and the commercial, political, and ecclesiastical authorities, and it was said in the highest quarters that we had only exasperated the slaveholders, and made all the North sympathize with them, when the storm of public indignation, gathering over the whole heavens, was black upon us, and we were comparatively only a handful, there appeared in the Anti-Slavery office in New York this mild, modest, soft-speaking woman, then in the prime of her beauty, delicate as the lily-of-the-valley. She placed in my hands a roll of manuscript, beautifully written. It was her 'Appeal to the Christian Women of the South.' It was like a patch of blue sky breaking through that storm cloud." The manuscript was passed round among the members of our Executive Committee, and read with wet eyes. The Society printed it in a pamphlet of thirty-six pages, and circulated it widely. It made its author a forced exile from her native State, but it touched hearts that had been proof against everything else. I remember that the Quarterly Anti-Slavery Magazine for October, 1836, said of it something to this effect:

This eloquent pamphlet is from the pen of a sister of the late Thomas S. Grimké, of Charleston, S. C. We need hardly say more of it than that it is written with that peculiar felicity and unction which characterized the works of her lamented brother. Among anti-slavery writings there are two classes, one specially adapted to make new converts, the other to strengthen the old. We can not exclude Miss Grimké's Appeal from either class. It belongs pre-eminently to the former. The converts that will be made by it, we have no doubt, will be not only numerous, but thorough-going.

"Many of us remember," said another, "with what awakening power such God-inspired souls have roused us from the apathy of our lives. Some great wrong, like slavery, over which the world had slept for ages, becomes thus revealed to the clearer vision. Slavery, war, intemperance, licentiousness, injustice to woman, have thus one after another been brought to the light, as violations of God's eternal laws. The soul of Angelina Grimké, and that of her sister Sarah, were in vital sympathy with all attempts to reform these great wrongs; but the one which then had pre-eminence above all was human slavery. All of us who are advanced in years can recall with what almost overwhelming effect the appeals of our beloved and lamented Garrison first came to our minds. The conscience of the community was slumbering over this sin: his utterances stung it to frenzy. In the midst of it, and in the heartiest response to his appeals, came the gentle, calm voices of Sarah and Angelina Grimké, enforcing those appeals by facts of their own observation and experience. I have said that their nature was full of tenderness and compassion; but, in addition to this, Angelina, especially, possessed a rare gift of eloquence, a calm power of persuasion, a magnetic influence over those that listened to her, which carried conviction to hearts that nothing before had reached." "I shall never forget the wonderful manifestation of this power during six successive evenings in what was then called the Odeon, at the corner of Franklin and Federal Streets. It was the old Boston Theater, which had been converted into a music hall, the four galleries rising above the auditorium all crowded with a silent audience, carried away with the calm, simple eloquence which narrated what she and her sister had seen from their earliest days. And yet this Odeon scene, the audience so quiet and intensely absorbed, occurred at the most enflamed period of the anti-slavery contest. The effective agent in this phenomenon was Angelina's serene, commanding eloquence, a wonderful gift, which enchained attention, disarmed prejudice, and carried her hearers with her."

Wendell Phillips said:

Friends, this life carries us back to the first chapter of that great movement with which the name of Angelina Grimké is associated—when our cities roared with riot, when William Lloyd Garrison was dragged through the streets, when Dresser was mobbed in Nashville, and Mackintosh burned in St. Louis. At that time, the hatred toward Abolitionists was so bitter and merciless that the friends of Lovejoy left his grave a long time unmarked; and at last ventured to put, with his name, on his tombstone, only this piteous entreaty: Jam parce sepulto, "Spare him now in his grave." We were but a handful then, and our words beat against the stony public as powerless as if against the north wind. We got no sympathy from most Northern men: their consciences were seared as with a hot iron. At this time, a young girl came from the proudest State in the slave-holding section. She come to lay on the altar of this despised cause, this seemingly hopeless crusade, both family and friends, the best social position, a high place in the church, genius, and many gifts. No man at this day can know the gratitude we felt for this help from such an unexpected source. After this came James G. Birney from the South, and many able and influential men and women joined us. At last John Brown laid his life, the crowning sacrifice, on the altar of the cause. But no man who remembers 1837 and its lowering clouds will deny that there was hardly any contribution to the anti-slavery movement greater or more impressive than the crusade of these Grimké sisters from South Carolina through the New England States.

Gifted with rare eloquence, she swept the chords of the human heart with a power that has never been surpassed, and rarely equaled. I well remember, evening after evening, listening to eloquence such as never then had been heard from a woman. Her own hard experience, the long, lonely, intellectual and moral struggle from which she came out conqueror, had ripened her power, and her wondrous faculty of laying bare her own heart to reach the hearts of others, shone forth till she carried us all captive. She was the first woman to whom the halls of the Massachusetts Legislature were opened. My friend, James C. Alvord, was the courageous chairman who broke that door open for the anti-slavery women. It gave Miss Grimké the opportunity to speak to the best culture and character of Massachusetts; and the profound impression then made on a class not often in our meetings was never wholly lost. It was not only the testimony of one most competent to speak, but it was the profound religious experience of one who had broken out of the charmed circle, and whose intense earnestness melted all opposition. The converts she made needed no after-training. It was when you saw she was opening some secret record of her own experience, that the painful silence and breathless interest told the deep effect and lasting impression her words were making on minds, that afterward never rested in their work.

In 1840, '41, this anti-slavery movement was broken in halves by the woman question. The people believed in the silence of women. But, when the Grimkés went through New England, such was the overpowering influence with which they swept the churches that men did not remember this dogma till after they had gone. When they left, and the spell weakened, some woke to the idea that it was wrong for a woman to speak to a public assembly. The wakening of old prejudice to its combat with new convictions was a fearful storm. But she bore it, when it broke at last, with the intrepidity with which she surmounted every obstacle. By the instinctive keenness of her conscience, she only needed to see truth to recognize it, as the flower turns to the sun. God had touched that soul so that it needed no special circumstance, no word of warning or instruction from those about her; for she was ever self-poised.

When I think of her, there comes to me the picture of the spotless dove in the tempest, as she battles with the storm, seeking for some place to rest her foot. She reminds me of innocence personified in Spencer's poem. In her girlhood, alone, heart-led, she comforts the slave in his quarters; mentally struggling with the problems his position wakes her to. Alone, not confused, but seeking something to lean on, she grasps the Church, which proves a broken reed. No whit disheartened, she turns from one sect to another, trying each by the infallible touchstone of that clear, childlike conscience. The two old lonely Quakers in their innocence rest her foot awhile. But the eager soul must work, not rest in testimony. Coming North, at last, she makes her own religion—one of sacrifice and toil. Breaking away from, rising above all forms, the dove floats at last in the blue sky where no clouds reach.

And thus exiled from her native city, she goes forth with her sister to seek the spot where she can most effectually strike at the institution. Were I to single out the moral and intellectual trait which most won me, it was her serene indifference to the judgment of those about her. Self-poised, she seemed morally sufficient to herself. Her instincts were all so clear and right she could trust their lesson. But a clear, wide, patient submission to all suggestion and influence preceded opinion, and her public addresses were remarkable for the fullness and clearness of the arguments they urged. She herself felt truths, but patiently argued them to others.

The testimony she gave touching slavery was, as she termed it, "the wail of a broken-hearted child." It was known to a few that the pictures she drew were of her own fireside. That loving heart! how stern a sense of duty must have wrung it before she was willing to open that record! But with sublime fidelity, with entire self-sacrifice, she gave all she could to the great argument that was to wake a nation to duty. Listen to the fearful indictment she records against the system. And this was not slavery in its most brutal, repulsive form. It was slavery hid in luxury, when refinement seemed to temper some of its worst elements. But, with keen sense of right, even a child of a dozen years saw through the veil, saw the system in its inherent vileness, saw the real curse of slavery in the hardened heart of the slave-holder.

A few years of active life, extensive and most influential labor, many sheaves and a rich harvest, God's blessing on her service, then illness barring her from the platform. How serenely she took up the cross! So specially endowed; men bowing low so readily to the power and magic of her words; she could not but have seen the grand possibilities that were opening before her. How peacefully she accepted the bond, and set herself to training others for the work against which her own door was shut! East, West, North, and South, come up to give testimony that these later years bore ample fruit. How many souls have cause to thank that enforced silence! I have listened to such testimonies, spoken sometimes in tears, on the shores of the Great Lakes and beyond the Mississippi."

From the following facts and anecdotes told by her husband, we see that Angelina united with the highest moral heroism, the physical courage and coolness in the hour of danger that but few men can boast. Theodore D. Weld, in his published sketch, says:

Though high physical courage is also fairly inferrable from her anti-slavery career, yet only those most with her in life's practical affairs can appreciate her self-poise in danger. Peril was to her a sedative; it calmed and girded her, bringing out every resource, and making self-command absolute. She knew nothing of that flutter which confuses. Great danger instantly brought thought and feeling to a focus, and held them there. Several perilous emergencies in her life are vividly recalled—such as being overturned while in a carriage with a child in her arms, the horse meanwhile floundering amid the débris, a shaft broken, and dash-board kicked into splinters. At another time, shots at the road-side set off the horses in a run. Seeing her husband, in his struggle to rein them in, jerked up from his seat and held thus braced and half-standing, she caught him round the waist, adding her weight to his, and thus enabled him to pull the harder, till the steady, silent tug upon the reins tamed down the steeds. Her residence at Belleville, N. J., had no near neighbors, stood back from the road, and was nearly hidden by trees and shrubbery. The old stone structure, dating back to 1700, was known as the "haunted house." Being very large, with barn, sheds, and several out-houses, it was specially attractive to stragglers and burglars. Stories had been long afloat of outrages perpetrated there, among which was a murder a century before, with a burglary and robbery more recent. We had not been long there, when one night Angelina, waked by suspicious noises, listened, till certain that a burglar must be in the house. Then, stealing softly from the room, she struck a light, and explored from cellar to attic, looking into closets, behind doors, and under beds. For a slight, weak woman, hardly able to lift an empty tea-kettle, thus to dare, shows, whether we call it courage or presumption, at least the absence of all fear. None of the family knew of this fact, until an accident long after revealed it.

Some years after this, when visiting in a friend's family in the absence of the parents, she often took the children to ride. Upon returning one day, she said to the cook, "Maggie, jump in, and I'll give you a ride." So away they went. Soon a by-road struck off from the main one. Turning in to explore it, she found that it ran a long way parallel to the railroad. Suddenly Maggie screamed: "O missus! I forgot. This is just the time for the express, and this is the horse that's awful afraid of the cars, and nobody can hold him. Oh, dear, dear!" Seeing Maggie's fright, she instantly turned back, saying, "Now, Maggie, if the train should come before we get back to the turn, do just what I tell you, and I'll bring you out safe." "Oh, yes, missus! I will! I will!" "Mark, now. Don't scream; don't touch the reins; don't jump out; 'twill kill you dead if you do. Listen, and, as soon as you hear the cars coming, drop down on the bottom of the wagon. Don't look out; keep your eyes and mouth shut tight. I'll take care of you." Down flat dropped Maggie on the bottom, without waiting to hear the train. Soon the steam-whistle screamed in front, instead of rear, as expected! Short about she turned the horse, and away he sprang, the express thundering in the rear. For a mile the road was a straight, dead level, and right along the track. At utmost speed the frantic animal strained on. On plunged the train behind. Neither gained nor lost. No sound came but the rushing of steed and train. It was a race for life, and the blood horse won. Then, as the road turned from the track up a long slope, the train shot by, taming the horse's fright; but, as his blood was up, she kept him hard pushed to the crest of the slope, then slacked his pace, and headed him homeward. Faithful Maggie stuck fast to her promise and to the wagon-bottom, until told, "It's all over," when she broke silence with her wonderments. When she got home the kitchen rang with exclamations. That race was long her standing topic, she always insisting that she wasn't scared a bit, not she, because she "knew the missus wasn't."

While living in New Jersey, word came that a colored man and his wife, who had just come to the township, were lying sick of malignant small-pox, and that none of their neighbors dared go to them. She immediately sought them out, and found them in a deplorable plight, neither able to do anything for the other, and at once became to them eyes, hands, feet, nurse, care-taker and servant in all needed offices; and thus, relieved in nursing and watching by a friend, her patients were able, after three days, to minister in part to each other. Meanwhile, no neighbor approached them.

Some striking traits were scarcely known, except by her special intimates; and they were never many. Her fidelity in friendship was imperishable. Friends might break with her; she never broke with them, whatever the wrong they had done her. She never stood upon dignity, nor exacted apology, nor resented an unkindness, though keenly feeling it; and, if falsely accused, answered nothing. She never spoke disparagingly of others, unless clearest duty exacted it. Gossips, tattlers, and backbiters were her trinity of horrors. Her absolute truthfulness was shown in the smallest things. With a severe sincerity, it was applied to all those customs looked upon as mere forms involving no principle—customs exacting the utterance of what is not meant, of wishes unfelt, sheer deceptions. She never invited a visit or call not desired. If she said, "Stay longer," the words voiced a wish felt. She could not be brought under bondage to any usage or custom, any party watch-word, or shibboleth of a speculative creed, or any mode of dress or address. In Charleston, she was exact in her Quaker costume, because, to the last punctilio, it was an anti-slavery document; and for that she would gladly make any sacrifice of personal comfort. But, among the "Friends" in Philadelphia, she would not wear an article of dress which caused her physical inconvenience, though it might be dictated by the universal usage of "Friends." Upon first exchanging the warmth of a Carolina winter for the zero of a Northern one, she found the "regulation" bonnet of the "Friends" a very slight protection from the cold. So she ordered one made of fur, large enough to protect both head and face. For this departure from usage, she was admonished, "It was a grief to 'Friends,'" "It looked like pride and self-will," "It was an evil example," etc. While adhering strictly to the principles of "Friends," neither she nor her sister Sarah could conform to all their distinctive usages, nor accept all their rules. Consequently, their examples were regarded as quiet protests against some of the settled customs of the Society. Such they felt bound to make them in word and act. Thus they protested against the negro-seat in their meeting-house, by making it their seat. They also felt constrained to testify against a rule requiring that no Friend should publish a book without the sanction of the "Meeting for Sufferings"; so, also, the rule that any one who should marry out of the Society should, unless penitent, be disowned. Consequently, when Angelina thus married, she was disowned, as was Sarah for sanctioning the marriage by her presence. The committee who "dealt" with them for those violations of the rule, said that if they would "express regret," they would relieve the meeting from the painful necessity of disowning them. The sisters replied that, feeling no regret, they could express none; adding that, as they had always openly declared their disapproval of the rule, they could neither regret their violation of it, nor neglect so fit an occasion for thus emphasizing their convictions by their acts; adding that they honored the "Friends" all the more for that fidelity which constrained them to do, however painful, what they believed to be their duty.

Angelina's "Appeal to the Christian Women of the South" "made her a forced exile from her native State." As she never voluntarily spoke of what she had done or suffered, few, if any, of the Abolitionists, either knew then, or know now, that she was really exiled by an Act of the Charleston city government. When her "Appeal" came out, a large number of copies were sent by mail to South Carolina. Most of them were publicly burned by postmasters. Not long after this, the city authorities learned that Miss Grimké was intending to visit her mother and sisters, and pass the winter with them. Thereupon the mayor of Charleston called upon Mrs. Grimké, and desired her to inform her daughter that the police had been instructed to prevent her landing while the steamer remained in port, and to see to it that she should not communicate, by letter or otherwise, with any persons in the city; and, further, that if she should elude their vigilance, and go on shore, she would be arrested and imprisoned, until the return of the steamer. Her Charleston friends at once conveyed to her the message of the mayor, and added that the people of Charleston were so incensed against her, that if she should go there, despite the mayor's threat of pains and penalties, she could not escape personal violence at the bands of the mob. She replied to the letter, that her going would doubtless compromise her family; not only distress them, but put them in peril, which she had neither heart nor right to do; but for that fact, she would certainly exercise her constitutional right as an American citizen, and go to Charleston to visit her relatives, and, if for that the authorities should inflict upon her pains and penalties, she would willingly bear them, assured that such an outrage would help to reveal to the free States the fact that slavery defies and tramples alike constitutions and laws, and thus outlaws itself.

When the American Anti-Slavery Society wrote to Miss Grimké, inviting her to visit New York city, and hold meetings in private parlors with Christian women, on the subject of slavery, upon reading their letter, she handed it to her sister Sarah, saying, "I feel this to be God's call. I can not decline it." A long conversation followed, the details of which I received from Sarah not long after; and, as they present vividly the marked characteristics of both sisters, I give in substance such as I can recall.

S.—But you know that you are constitutionally retiring, self-distrustful, easily embarrassed. You have a morbid shrinking from whatever would make you conspicuous.

A.—Yes, you have drawn me to the life. I confess that I have all that, and yet at times I have nothing of it. I know that I am diffident about assuming responsibilities; but when I feel that anything is mine to do, no matter what, then I have no fear.

S.—You are going among strangers, you wear strange garments, speak in a strange language, will be in circumstances wholly novel, and about a work that you never attempted, and most of those who will listen to you have prejudices against Abolitionists, and also against a woman's speaking to any audience. Now in all there embarrassing circumstances, and in your lack of self-confidence when you come to face an unsympathizing audience, does not it seem likely that you will find it impossible to speak to edification, and thus will be forced to give it up altogether?

A.—Yes, it seems presumptuous for me to undertake it; but yet I can not refuse to do it. The conviction is a part of me. I can not absolve myself from it. The responsibility is thrust upon me. I can not thrust it off.

S.—I know you will not and can not. My only desire is for you deliberately to look at all things just as they are, and give each its due weight. If, after that, your conviction is unchanged, with my whole heart I'll help you to carry it out. There is but one thing more that I think of. If you were to go upon this mission without the sanction of the "Meeting for Sufferings," it would be regarded as disorderly, a violation of the established usage of the Society, and they would probably feel compelled to disown you. [This was prior to the disownment that followed the marriage].

A.—As my mind is made up absolutely to go, I can not ask their leave to go. For their fidelity to their views of duty, I honor them. It is a grief to me to grieve them, but I have no alternative. Very unpleasant it will be to be disowned, but misery to be self-disowned.

S.—I have presented these considerations, that you might carefully traverse the whole question and count all the costs. I dare not say a word against your decision. I see that it is final, and that you can make no other. To me, it is sacred. While we have been talking, I, too, have made my decision. It is this: where you go, I will go; what you do, I will to my utmost help you in doing. We have always thought and wept and prayed together over this horrible wrong, and now we will go and work together. There will be a deal to be done in private also; that I can help you about, and thus you will have the more strength to give to the meetings.

So Miss Grimké wrote at once to the committee, accepting their invitation, thanking them for the salary offered, but declining to receive any; informing them that her sister would accompany her, and that they should both go exclusively at their own expense.

In 1864, Mr. and Mrs. Weld removed to Hyde Park, where the sisters spent the rest of their days. No one who met Angelina there would have any suspicion of the great work which she had done: she was interested in her household duties, and the little charities of the neighborhood. Once, during the war, she was persuaded to go out of her daily routine, and to attend a small meeting called for the purpose of assisting the Southern people—freedmen, and those who had formerly held them in slavery. Very simply and modestly, but very clearly and impressively, she spoke of the condition of things at the South, of her friends there, and how we could best help them—all in the most loving and tender spirit, as if she had only grateful memories of what they had been, and as if no thought of herself mingled with the thought of them. The simplicity, directness, and practical good sense of her speech then, its kindliness toward those who had done her the greatest wrong, and the entire absence of self-consciousness, made those who heard her feel that a woman might speak in public without violating any of the proprieties or prejudices of social traditions and customs. There was a refinement and dignity about her, an atmosphere of gentleness and sweetness and strength, which won their way to the heart. To those who knew her history, there was something very affecting, sublime, in her absolute self-forgetfulness. As one who knew her most intimately said, "She seems to have been born in that mood of mind which made vanity or display impossible. She was the only person I have ever known who was absolutely free from all ambition."

Space prevents a fitting record of the noble words and deeds of Sarah Moore Grimké. She published in 1838, a volume of "Letters on the Equality of the Sexes," which called out much discussion on woman's position in both State and Church. The last time Angelina spoke in public was at the Loyal League Convention in New York in 1863. She took an active part in the discussion of resolutions, speaking clearly and concisely on every point, and read a beautiful address she had prepared—"To the Soldiers of our Second Revolution." All through the years that Angelina was illustrating woman's capacity on the platform by holding her audiences spell-bound, Sarah was defending woman's right to be there with her pen.