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. Grimke, 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 Grimke'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 Grimke, 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 alm