rers of the opposite sex, even in the limited society
to which she was confined. Nor can we wonder that, with a heart so
susceptible to all the finer emotions, she should have preferred the
companionship of one to that of all others. But though for more than
two years this friendship--for it never became an engagement--absorbed
all her thoughts, to the exclusion even of her studies, I must conclude
from the plain evidence in the case that it was only a warm
_friendship_, at least on her side, not the strong, enduring love,
based upon entire sympathy, which afterwards blessed her life. It owed
its origin to her admiration for intellectuality in men, and its
continuance to her womanly pity; for the object of her preference
suffered much from ill-health, which at last gave way altogether in the
latter part of 1832, when he died.

To the various emotions naturally aroused during this long experience,
and to the depression of spirits which followed the final issue, we may
perhaps partially ascribe Angelina's indifference to the excited state
of feeling throughout the country on the subject of that institution
which "owned no law but human will."

In November, 1831, Sarah Grimke once more, and for the last time,
visited Charleston.

In December, the slave insurrection in Jamaica--tenfold more destructive
to life and property than the insurrection of Nat Turner, in Virginia,
of the preceding August--startled the world; but even this is scarcely
referred to in the correspondence between the two sisters. But that
Angelina, at least, was interested in matters outside of her religion,
we gather from a postscript to one of her letters. "Tell me," she says,
"something about politics."

This refers to nullification, that ill-judged and premature attempt at
secession made by the Calhoun wing of the slave power, which was then
the most exciting topic in South Carolina. Thomas Grimke was one of the
few eminent lawyers in the State who, from the first, denounced and
resisted the treasonable doctrine,--he so termed it in an open letter
of remonstrance addressed to Calhoun, McDuffie, Governor Hayne, and
Barnwell Rhett, his cousin and legal pupil, who was afterwards
attorney-general of the State.[1] Mr. Grimke represented at that time
the city of Charleston in the State Senate; and in a two days' argument
he so triumphantly exposed the sophistries and false pretences of the
nullifiers, that his constituents, enraged by it, gathered a mo