E449
;.453
1973 (LC)

En Jttemorg,

ANGELINA GRIMK^ WELD.

BORN IN CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA,
Fbbbuabt 20, 1805.
DIED IN HYDE PARK, MASSACHUSETTS,
October 26, 1879.

Ptitttetf onljD far prfoatt ffitttulatton.

BOSTON :
PRESS OF GEORGE H. ELLIS, 101 MILK STREET.
1880.

CbGlllT.

TO THE OLD ABOLITIONISTS.

Brothers and sisters ! One by one, how fast we drop ! Mow
thin and tottering our ranks to-day! How far sundered the
survivors now, — in the East, in the West, and in all between.
But, to the love that made and keeps us one, distance and time
are nullities. To all who may linger here till these words
reach them,— should they ever, — to every brother and sister
in those sacred bonds, we say, These slight memorials of two •
gone before to light up the Way, and await our coming, were
sketched for you, and to each of you are tenderly dedicated,
in that old-time love.
Hail and farewell!
T. 2>. W.

THE FUNERAL SERVICES.

The funeral services of Angelina Grimke" Weld were held
at the family residence on Fairmount Avenue in Hyde
Park, Mass., at one o'clock on Wednesday, Oct. 29, 1879.
They opened with that touching chant, the pathos of res
ignation, " Thy will be done." The Rev. Doctor Morison,
of Boston, followed with a prayer, so reverent and tender
that it seemed to hallow the hour. He then spoke with
deep appreciation of the character of the deceased, her
example, life, and special work, closing with Scripture
selections. The substance of his address will be found en
tire in the pages which follow.
The next speaker was Elizur Wright, the first corre
sponding secretary and editor of the American Anti-Slavery
Society. Before him were gathered many veteran co-workers
in the anti-slavery cause and conflict. As he rose, memories
of mutual struggles, perils, and triumphs so thronged upon
him that for a moment he stood silent, emotion stifling
speech. His words, given in these pages, are their own
loving attestation.
The Rev. Robert F. Wallcutt followed. For thirty years
he was the publisher of the Liberator, and the beloved fel
low-worker of William Lloyd Garrison, in the Boston Anti-
Slavery office. Unbowed by the weight of eighty-three

6 Angelina Q-rimkS Weld.
years, he rose and vividly recalled his impressions of Ange
lina Grimke', as she swayed the crowds in the Representa
tives' Hall of the State House in Boston, by her anti-slavery
plea before a committee of the Massachusetts Legislature.
He described also the scene when she spoke in the old
Boston Theatre, its great four-galleried auditorium crowded
during six evenings with throngs absorbed and silent.
As Mr. Wallcutt ended, Mrs. Lucy Stone, delayed till then
by an accident on the way, arrived, and was passed through
the crowd to a seat beside the coffin. Looking down upon
those closed eyes, tears filled her own as she rose to speak.
Her special topic was that great first work done for woman
by Angelina and Sarah Grimke' and Abby K>lley, — their
self-sacrifice in those earliest days of struggle which wrung
their souls, and pressed to their unshrinking lips that cup of
trembling. She devoutly thanked God that he had sent in
advance his chosen pioneers, to break a pathway for those
waiting feet eager to follow. As her voice ceased, its pathos
lingered in the silence. After a brief pause, the spell of
that silence was interpreted by Wendell Phillips. Who in
New England, with an ear to hear, has not caught in those
tones the keynote of the spirit whose pulses play through
them? His entire address is given in the following pages.
At its close, the hymn of Bonar, beginning with " Oh for
the peace which flowoth like a river ! " was read and sung.
Then followed a fervent prayer by Dr. Morison, that
strength and healing might be ministered to the bereaved
household in this hour of their deepest need. Next came
the fitting close, in the reading and singing of " Nearer, my
God, to thee." Silently, at a signal, the crowd now moved
in order around the coffin, eaoh pausing a moment over the
serene presence, lying as in peaceful sleep. At length

The Funeral Services. 7
the last look was taken, the coffin-lid closed softly over
the placid face, the cherished form lifted to the bier, borne
to Mount Hope, and tenderly lowered to its final rest, to
moulder back, dust to dust, and mingle with the ashes of
her precious "sister-mother," in that dreamless realm of
silence. There, grouped around the open grave, beside the
"Evergreen Path," uncovered heads bowed low, while broken
Words pressed their way through tears, and the last stanzas
of " Montgomery's Grave " fell faltering from trembling lips.
" There is a calm for those who weep,
A rest for weary pilgrims found ;
And while their mouldering bodies sleep
Low in the ground,
" The soul, of origin divine,
God's glorious image freed from clay,
In heaven's eternal sphere shall shine,
A star of day.
" The sun is but a spark of fire,
A transient meteor in the sky :
The soul, immortal as its sire,
Shall never die."
The hour, the fading day, the cloudless sky, the air asleep,
no leaf astir, the lingering autumn tints, the west aglow
with the sinking sun, — all nature's aspects blent in beauty
shed upon the closing scene their tranquil power. As the
final lines were uttered, the sun's last rays streamed over
the grave, folding lovingly around it their golden winding-
sheet, and crowning it with a halo of living light, — symbol
of life immortal in eternal day I
The funeral services throughout wore no air of gloom.
That sombre crape shrouded no one with its dismal tokens.

8 Angelina G}rimk6 Weld.
The light of a glorious autumn day streamed in through
uncurtained windows. It was not a house of mourning, —
no sad word said, no look of sorrow worn. The tears that
freely fell were not of, grief, but tears of yearning love,
of sympathy, of solemn joy and gratitude to God for such a
life in its rounded completeness, such an example and tes
timony, such fidelity to conscience, such recoil from all self-
seeking, such unswerving devotion to duty, come what
might of peril or loss, even unto death.
Who that loved her did not feel that, however keen the
sense of personal loss, it was all swallowed up in her blessed
deliverance and unspeakable gain ? In the last few months,
how that bowed form, those encumbered movements, lagging
step, tottering gait, speech faltering and broken, all for-
tokened that life's ripened corn was awaiting its garner !
Well might her face brighten as it did, while from day to
day she lay and listened for the welcome foot-fall of the
kindly reaper coming to gather the harvest home.
This outline of the funeral services indicates the order in
which the tributes of the speakers will be given. Dr. Mori-
son, who conducted the exercises, published in the Unitarian
Review for December, 1879, of which he was the editor, the
substance of his address at the funeral, with added details
fittingly oxpounded. We present them herewith in the
form in which the editor introduced thorn to the readers of
the Review.

REMARKS OF JOHN H. MORISON, D.D.
(From the Unitarian Review.)
Recently, at a funeral in Hyde Park, more people than the
largo house could hold came together, to show how much they
honored and reverenced the character and memory of one who
had lived there as if she were the lowliest among the lowly. Her
family had been second to no other in the proudest aristocracy of
the proudest State in the Union. She was born in one of the
chief strongholds of slavery, with all the social, pecuniary, and
political privileges which slavery at the highest point of its
ascendency could bestow. But, from her childhood, she saw the
cruel injustice involved in it. Her clear eye and true heart were
never deceived by the false lights and blandishments which were
thrown around her. In early youth, with all the charm that
beauty, intelligence, and family distinction could give, she left
everything behind, and gave herself entirely to the cause of the
slave. In referring to the testimony of her sister respecting the
evils of slavery, she said : " Of the particular acts Avhich she has
stated, I have no personal knowledge, as they occurred before
my remembrance ; but of the spirit that prompted them, and that
constantly displays itself in scenes of similar horror, the recollec
tions of my childhood, and the cffaceless imprint upon my riper
years, with the breaking of my heartstrings, when, finding that I
was powerless to shield the victims, I tore myself from my home
and friends, and became an exile among strangers, — all these
throng around me as witnesses, and their testimony is graven on
my memory with a pen of fire. Why I did not become totally

10 Angelina Q-rimkS Weld.
hardened under tho daily operation of this system, God only
knows. Even before my heart was touched with tho love of
Christ, I UBcd to Bay, ' Oh that I had tho wings of a dove, that I
might flco away and bo at restl' for I felt that there could be no
rest for mc in the midst of such outrages and pollutions."
Angelina Grimk6, the youngest daughter of Judge Grimk6, of
the Supremo Court of South Carolina, was born in Charleston,
S.C., Feb. 20, 1805, and died in Hyde Park, Oct. 26, 1879. From
her earliest years, her sympathies were with tho cruelly treated
race around her, and she was unspeakably shocked by the terrible
punishments inflicted upon them. 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
creaturo who had been terribly whipped, and do what she could
to assuage his sufferings. At tho 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 what was the meaning of this form, and, on reading
what it was in the Prayer Book, she said that 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 cannot do it."
' This single-hearted truthfulness, without regard to personal con
sequences to herself, was the key to all her conduct.
Some years afterwards, under the influence of a very eloquent
Presbyterian preacher, her religious sensibilities were awakened.
Her eyes were opened to a new world. She was born into a
higher realm of thought and life. Through deeper and more
vital spiritual experiences, she entered into a new life, which took
entire possession of all her faculties. So rapt was she, and con
trolled by these new emotions, so permeated by them was her
whole being, and so did she speak and act as one moved by other
than earthly influences, that her friends, even those who did not
sympathize with her, looked up to her with awe. She joined the

Remarks of John H. Morison, D.D. 1 1
Presbyterian Church, and carried into it tho fervor and strength
of her now regenerated nature. She became a teacher in its
Sunday-school. The day before she died, after a lapse of fifty
years, there camo for her a letter from one of her first Sunday-
school scholars, living now in Georgia, to express thanks for the
unspeakable benefits which her instructions had been to her
during her whole life. Soon Bhe endeavored to impress upon the
officers of the church a sense of what they should do for tho
slaves. Her pleadings for them found no response. The church
had no heart for such things.
"Could it then be a Church of Christ?" There was in Charles
ton at that time a Friends' Meeting-house, where there were only
two worshippers, and they agreed with her in regard to slavery.
For a year she worshipped 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, not
unsanctified or unblessed 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 in her new religious home, 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 1833, 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 worker
in the cause than Angelina Grimk6.
She had not thought at first of speaking in public ; but wher
ever 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

12 Angelina OrimfcS Weld.
her sister Sarah. The numbers and tho interest increased till slie
became widely known. In November, 1836, she was invited by
tho Executive Committoo of tho Anti-Slavery Society to visit
New York and hold private meetings witli Christian women.
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 tho 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 assem
blies in Massachusetts. She spoke with extraordinary power to
crowded audiences in the Odeon, then the largest hall of the
kind in Boston. She went from place to place, in city or conn-
try, for fifteen months, speaking publicly or privately as the occa
sion required.
Veterans in the anti-slavery cause, at her funeral, with stifling
emotion spoke of what she did and was in those troubled and
tumultuous times, when the adversaries of freedom seemed to lie
most entirely in the ascendant. They told how the great quali
ties of her life and character showed themselves in the terriblo
conflict with evil. Wendell Phillips spoke of her as bringing to
the anti-slavery cause a greater help than any other person. He
dwelt, with touching force and beauty, on her power over great
public assemblies. "She swept all the chords," ho said. And
yet it had seemed to him that her eloquence was "that of a
broken heart." As an illustration of this, ho read the following
passage from a letter in which she gave her testimony against
slavery: "I give it," she said, "with a heavy heart. My flesh
crieth outj 'If it be possible, let this cup pass from me ' ; but,
' Father, thy will be done,' ib, I trust, the breathing of my spirit.

Remarks of John H. Morison, B.D. 13
Oh, the slain of tho daughters of my people I They lie in all tho
ways; their tears fall as the rain, and arc their meat day and
night; their blood runneth down like water; their plundered
hearths are desolate ; they weep for their husbands and children,
because they are not; and the proud waves do continually go
over them, while no eye pitieth, and no man careth for their
souls." The eloquence of a broken heart I Yes, as she gave way to
"the deep yearnings of affection for the mother that bore her,
still a slave-holder, both in fact and in heart; 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
towards it, her language might well remind one of the lamenta
tions of the ancient prophets, or even of the words, " 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. Her prophetic soul lived in a diviner realm,
and in allying itself with the love and the righteousness of God
felt itself reonforced by his almightiness. While therefore she
often spoke from a broken heart, 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 mes
senger from God.
Passages like the following may give some idea of the
solemnity and power with which this high-bred, beautiful South
ern lady, who had left all and taken up her cross in defence of a
poor and friondless 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

14 Angelina QrimM Weld.
arms, to meet no more in time ; I may depict the inflictions of tho blood
stained lash ; but I cannot describe the daily, hourly, ceaseless torture,
endured by the heart that is constantly trampled under the foot of arbi
trary 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, writh
ing, helpless victim I 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 slave-holding com
munity 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 bo 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
reechoed by every mountain and rock.
She who spoke in tones like these never lost any 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 iq

Remarks of John H. Morison, D.D. 15
neither male nor fcmalo." " Sure I am that woman is not to be,
as sho has been, a mere ' second-hand agent' in tho regeneration of
a fallen world, but tho 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 eleva
tion prepared for her by her Maker, and upon whoso summit she
was originally stationed, only 'a little lower than the angels.'"
This lowly, lofty, single-hearted woman did a great work as an
anti-slavery lecturer. But in the midst of it, when she seemed to
bo at the height of her activity and usefulness, she was suddenly
disabled physically for public speaking. It must have been a
terrible disappointment. She uttered no complaint, but bowed
silcutly and submissively to the hand which laid itself so heavily
upon her. A little before this, in 1838, she had been married to
Theodore D. Weld, a man worthy of such a wife. They were
drawn together by the sympathies of kindred natures. He had
been among the most eloquent and effective advocates of the
anti-slavery movement. His voice, too, had been silenced by
physical disability, brought on by long-continued and excessive
exertion. Together they gave up their foremost place upon tho
platform, and opened a school, for many years giving to its
secluded and unexciting duties the same thoughtful and con
scientious care that they had given to their more public calling.
Here she found the fulfilment of words which she had written
when she was most actively before the public. "I believe," she
said then, " that as soon as the rights of women are understood,
our brethren will see and feel that it is their duty to cooperate
with us in this high and holy vocation of training up little chil
dren in the way they should go. And the very fact of their
mingling in intercourse with such guileless and gentle spirits
will tend to soften down the asperities of their characters, and
lothe them with the noblest and sublimest Christian virtues. I
know that this work is deemed beneath the dignity of man ; but
how great the error I I once heard a man, who had labored

16 Angelina QrimM Weld.
extcnsivoly among children, say, ' I novcr foel so near heaven as
when I am teaohing thoso little ones.' Ho was right. And I
trust tho time is coming when tho occupation of an instructor to
children will bo deemed the most honorable of human employ
ments." To her and her husband it was so, because they carried
into it a spirit and wore themselves endowed with gifts and
attainments, which enabled them to fulfil its great and sacred
duties. In 1864, Mr. and Mrs. Wold removed to Hyde Park, where
she and hor sister, Sarah Grimke, spent tho rest of their days.
No one who mot her there would, from anything that he saw
in hor, have any suspicion of the great work which she had
done: sho was interested in her household duties, in the little
charities of tho neighborhood. Once, during the war, nhe
was persuaded to go out of her daily routine, and to attend a
small meeting called for the purpose of assisting the Southern
people, — frecdmen, and those who had formerly held them in
slavery. Very simply and modestly, but very clearly and impres
sively, 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 mixed itself
up with the thought of them. The simplicity, directness, and
practical good sense of her speech then, its kindliness towards
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 pro
prieties or prejudices of social traditions and customs. There
was a refinement and dignity about her, an atmosphere of gentle
ness 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."

Remarks of John H. Morison, B.D. 17
She had gone through many and various experiences. She
had a delicate and sensitive physical organization, which helped
her to enter into the feelings of others, and to make their trials
and sufferings her own. After the illness which obliged her to
give up public speaking, she could not even listen to a story of
wrongs inflicted on others without being made sick by it. What
it must have cost her, with such an organization and with the
most loving affections, to leave her father's house and take up
her testimony against practices and habits cherished there, no one
can tell. Her susceptibility to suffering was in proportion to tho
sensitiveness of her whole nature. She bore in her own person
the sorrows and infirmities of those in whom she was most inter
ested. But she had also her reward. If she wept with those
who wept, and felt in herself the sharpness of their pains, she
experienced also in her own heart the sanctifying and uplifting
power of suffering so endured. She rose constantly into a
diviner peace and joy. With all the fullness and keenness of her
sympathy with those around her, she seemed like one who lived
apart, in a calmer, holier sphere. Her life was one of progress, —
inward, till she had reached the inmost germ ; and then outward,
till she had caused that secret germ to unfold itself in words or
acts of singular beauty and power. In one religious denomina
tion after another, she was quickened by the best it had to give,
and never lost what she had once gained. The reverential
decorum of the church in which she was born, the higher life
into which she entered under the preaching of a Presbyterian
minister, the sense of God's immediate presence in the soul which
must have grown within her during that year of silent worship
with the Friends, made a part of her inmost being, and led her
jfarther and farther into the Holy of Holies.
As she entered more deeply into the mind of Jesus, and, through
tho deepening sympathies of her own nature, came to "know bis
love more fully," she found there what she had longed for, and
tyhat none of these communions had given. She saw in him how
the love of God may fill out our human affections, and endow

18 Angelina Q-rimkS Weld.
them with its own divine efficiency and calmness. Tho incarna
tion of the divine was thus brought home to her as the central
life of all that is best within us, changing us into the same image.
Thus, as she felt, all our faculties, our deepest affections, and the
actions proceeding from them, are made divine by the indwelling
spirit which endows them with its own life, and prompts and
guides and strengthens them in their labors to make the world
• better. There was no fickleness or contradiction in her apparent change
from one organization to another. Through these outward changes
she was always seeking and finding, and thus always approaching
nearer to the heart of all true religion. She rested at last in the
simple religion of Jesus as she found it in the Gospels, and during
her later years worshipped in a Unitarian church, as, more than
any other, accepting Jesus and the Gospels, and leaving them
free to speak for themselves. Through the various churches,
she had come to Jesus himself. In like manner, through differ
ent philanthropical organizations, she had found her way to
that which is the inspiration and the life of them all. There she
was at rest. Knowing what capabilities and susceptibilities there
were within her, we who sometimes saw her in these later years
could not but wonder and admire. " Great peace have they that
love thy law." In that divine peace, she lived. 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 Gar
rison, 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 me1
by surprise, and I greatly feared the abolitionists would be driven back
in the first onset and thrown into confusion. So fearful was I that I
was afraid of even opening one of thy papers lest I should see som?
indications of a compromise, some surrender, some palliation. UndeJ-
these feelings I was induced to read thy appeal to the citizens of Boston.

Remarks of John H. Morison, D.I). 19
Judge, then, what were my feelings on finding that my fears were utterly
groundless, and that thou stoodest firm in the midst of the storm, deter
mined to suffer and to die rather than yield one inch I
Religious persecution always begins with mobs ; it is always unpre
cedented 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 prepare us for all he is preparing for us I
My mind has been especially turned toward those who are standing in
the forefront of the battle ; and the prayer hafl gone up for their preserva
tion, — 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
kay, 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 slave
holders' ; 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
cbuntry desolated with the horrors of a servile war.
I\ 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 anyone to share in the martyrdom
wjtiich she foresaw. The spirit which dictated these sentences
went through her whole life as its ruling influence. No one'

20 Angelina Grimke" Weld.
among " the noble army of the martyrs " ever lived " more ready
to be offered." This was the easy, evcry-day attitude of her
mind. But she was not thinking about it. She entered so
entirely into her Master's spirit, that his yoke was easy to
her, and his burden light. Her elevation of soul was such that
she had become unconscious of any humiliation or self-sacrifice
amid the humblest cares and duties. We might, perhaps, find
her mending a stocking, as if that had been her business in
life. No word of hers related to herself. Her voice was gentle.
There was a refined courtesy about her — in her look and
manner. Her bearing was that of a quiet, retiring, self-forget
ting spirit ; and yet somehow she impressed us, as very few
have ever done, with a sense of moral and spiritual greatness.
"A grand woman" — grand in the highest sense of the word — ¦
we have often heard her called. And yet she was the lowliest
among the lowly. " Whosoever will be great among you shall
be your servant." The servant's place she meekly accepted, but
with no thought of the greatness attendant upon it.
So she lived; and over one who so lives, death can have no
power except to set her free from these earthly limitations, and
thus consecrate and enlarge her influence. Standing by the
silent form from which so much virtue had gone out, we felt that
it yielded up the dear life once enclosed within it, only that it
might be diffused more widely and with new efficiency and
sweetness, as, when the alabaster box was broken, "the house wnu
filled with the odor of the ointment."

REMARKS OF ELIZUR WRIGHT.
We are here in the presence of what makes us "kin to all that
is," to everything that has life. Doubtless life is eternal. But
Whenever there comes forth into this breathing world an individ
ual existence of whatever order, tribe, speoies, or race, sooner or

Remarks of Elizur Wright. 21
later it goes back, ceases to breathe, dies. Even the tallest cedar
of Lebanon, which from generation to generation has looked
down upon the plain, and been blessed as a landmark and a shade
by the weary traveller, must at last grow gray, crumble, moulder,
and mix with the earth. It must die. Indeed, what would life be
without death? Where the freshness and joyousness of youth?
Where the sweet and tender affections that knit together the old
and the young in families and neighborhoods? It was not death
that she who sleeps so peacefully now ever dreaded, but only the
dishonoring, spoiling, and poisoning of life.
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 assas
sins and howling mobs, in her loyalty to truth, duty, and human
ity, 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. Nur
tured 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. Not the fear of poverty, obloquy, or death could induce
her to "smother it. Neither wealth, nor fame, nor tyrant fashion,
rior all that the high position of her birth had to offer, could bribe
her to bate one syllable of her testimony against the seductive
system. Well do I remember when, after the American Anti-Slavery
Society, founded in 1833, 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 slave-holders,
and made all the North sympathize with them, — when the storm

22 Angelina QtrimM Weld.
of public indignation, gathering over tho whole heavens, was
black upon us, and we wore comparatively only a handful, — there
appeared in tho Anti-Slavery office in New York this mild, modest,
soft-speaking woman, then in tho prime of hor beauty, delicate as
the lily-of-the-valley. She placed in my hands a roll of manu
script, beautifully written. It was her " Appeal to the Chris
tian Women op 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 Octo
ber, 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 character
ized 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 cannot exclude Miss Grimkd'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
We had been so often disappointed as to the effect of the best-
written appeals that our prophecy was moderate in its tone.
Happily, however, the result more than justified — it exceeded it.
Let us hope that South Carolina will yet count this noble,
brave, excellent woman above all her past heroes. She it was,
more than all the rest of us put together, who called out what
was good and humane in the Christian Church to take the part of
the slave, and deliver the proud State of her birth from the
monster that had preyed on its vitals for a century. I have no
fitting words for a life like hers. With a mind high and deep

Remarks of Robert F. Wallcutt. 23
and broad enough to grasp tho relations of justice and mercy,
and a heart warm enough to sympathize with and cherish all that
live, what a home she made for my now bereaved brother, — that
brother being such as ho was after those years of labor and poril !
Words cannot paint it. I saw it in that old stone house, sur
rounded with its beautiful garden, at Belleville, on the banks of
the Passaic. I saw it in that busy, bright, and cheery palace of
true education at Eagleswood in New Jersey. I have seen it
here, in this Mecca of the wise. Well done! Oh, well done!
Her whole life has been truly a conquest, a triumph, not only
over the fear of death, but over the fell tyranny and prejudice
which have always hitherto consigned her sex to a pettiness,
nothingness, or absolute thraldom, disgraceful to human nature,
and obstructive to the upward progress of human society.

REMARKS OF ROBERT F. WALLCUTT.
Our beloved friend was a mother in our Israel. Many older
than she can trace some of the richest elements in their moral
growth largely to her. Her great heart inspired her with great
truths, which, as she uttered them, took captive those who heard.
Many of us remember with what awakening power such God-
inRpired souls have roused us from the apathy of our lives. Some
great wrong, like slavery, over which the world had slept for
a^es, bocomes thus revealed to tho clearer vision. Slavery, war,
intemperance, licentiousness, injustice to woman, have thus one
after another been brought to the light, as violations of God's eter
nal laws. The soul of Angelina Grimk6, 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

24 Angelina GrirnkS Weld.
lamented Garrison first came to our minds. Tho conscience of
the community was slumbering over this sin : his utterances
stung it to frenzy. In tho midst of it, and in heartiest response
to his appeals, came the gentle, calm voices of Sarah and Angelina
Grimke, enforcing those appeals by facts of their own observation
and exporience. I have said that their nature was full of tender
ness and compassion; but, in addition to this, Angelina, espe
cially, 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,
— a building, long since removed, at the corner of Franklin and
Federal Streets. It was the old Boston Theatre, 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 effect
ive agent in this phenomenon was Angelina's serene, commanding
eloquence, a wonderful gift, which enchained attention, disarmed
prejudice, and carried her hearers with her.
What a loss to the cause of anti-slavery truth it was when
afterwards her health gave way, and hor public advocacy was
withdrawn ! She felt the privation deeply ; but we all felt it still
more. A powerful agency in arousing the conscience, and mould
ing anew that public sentiment which was to control the decision
of the great question, was struck down : and we were sad.
Though enfeebled, she lost not a jot of her interest in the
great work for humanity and right. She went on perseveringly
in such other ways as her strength permitted; and her great
heart of love, which from childhood so felt for the slave, still
.went forth, wherever she was, to sympathize with the lowly ones

Remarks of Lucy Stone. 25
within hor reach. Many suoh in this community will miss her
comforting presence, and that of her sister, in their humble
homes, and will long cherish their memories.
And now this beloved friend has gone ; and yet she is not
gone. Her genial and loving spirit, so tender and sympathetic, is
stil^in our hearts, to help, to elevate, and bless us. This bereaved
family feel deeply this consolation ; especially our brother here,
whose life has long been so completely identified with hers. He
feels it as no other can. The thought of her, which to us is
indeed a delightful recollection of a dear friend, to him becomes
a heart-felt presence, never failing to impart to his loneliness a
precious influence. She is still with him ; only it is as if for a
time she had passed into another room in God's great house, thus
veiled from his view, but ever, with more or less distinctness, by
day and by night, she will come to him, until at length that veil
shall be lifted, and he will again find himself with her in that
other room.

REMARKS OF LUCY STONE.
Arriving too late to hear most of what others have said, I yet
wish to add my tribute of love for this departed friend. She
will always be hallowed in the memory and held in the hearts of
those who knew her. But, outside of her home circle, the gen
eration that is alive to-day did not know her. The frail and
slender woman who went in and out before her neighbors here
carried no sign of the heroine who for the sake of justice had
successfully confronted and assaulted the gigantic system of slav
ery forty-three years before, who encountered and overcame the
custom and prcjudioe and religious teaching which commanded
and demanded tho silence and subjection of womon. To those
around hor she scorned a quiet, gontlo woman, devoted to hor
home, her husband, and her ohildron. And such she was. But
those whose memory goes back to the time of fiery trials, in the
4

26 Angelina GrimkS Weld.
early anti-slavery days, know that tho world never held a nobler
woman. The slaves' oause was her cause. She had counted tho
cost, renouncing everything. For their sake, she endured all the
persecution which sectarian bigotry and pro-slavery hatred could
devise against tho first woman who dared to "speak in the church,"
or anywhere else in public, even for the slaves. It is impossible
for those who to-day see and hear women as ministers and lect
urers to understand tho state of mind and feeling forty-three
years ago, when no woman's voice was heard in public, and when
the injunction for her to "keep silence" in the church was held
to bo as sacred as the commandment, "Thou shalt not steal."
It was at suoh a time that this sainted woman and her sister
Sarah Grimk6 came with tho one groat purpose to "remember
those in bonds as bound with them," with tho cry, " Woe is
me if I preach not this gospel." The eloquence which is born of
earnestness in a noble purpose gave her anointed lips. That
purpose set around her a defence so high and strong that all the
shafts and arrows of pro-slavery malignity fell harmless at her
feet. She never stopped to think of herself. " " Silence ! " cried
the Pulpit. She spoke right on. "Shame!" said the Press.
" You are seeking notoriety," said all the gossips, and " getting
out of your sphere." How like forgotten echoes those words
come back ! Angelina Grimk6, if she heard, did not heed. A
friend who knew her singleness of purpose, stung by the injus
tice and meanness of these attacks, prepared a reply. But when
Angelina heard of it, she refused to permit its publication, saying,
" It is not necessary." Like the moral heroine that she was, she
held on the " even tenor of her way," answering nothing.
The women of to-day owe more than they will ever know to
the high courage, the rare insight, and fidelity to principle of this
woman, by whose suffering easy paths have been made for them.
Neither the justice of hor cause, nor its great need, nor the
quiet, persuasive eloqnenoe with which she plead the cause of the
slave, saved her and her equally noble coadjutors, Sarah M.
Grimke and Abby Kelly Foster, from the pitiless scorn of men
and women,

Remarks of Wendell Phillips. 27
But if for onoo their lips had turned white with fear, or their
feet fled boforo tho mob, the banner for tho equal rights of
women, which now floats plain in sight, would still bo furled.
Hor example has a bugle-call to all other women. Who can
tell how many have been quickened in a great life purpose by the
heroism and self-forgetting devotion of hor example, whose silent
Voice we shall never hear, but who, "being dead, yet speaketh"?

REMARKS OF WENDELL PHILLIPS.
Friends, this life carries us back to the first chapter of that
great movement with which her name is associated, — to" 1835,
'36, '37, '38, 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 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." As Friend Wright has said, we were but
a handful, and our words beat against the stony public as power
less 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 came 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 influ
ential 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

28 Angelina Grimke Weld.
that there was hardly any contribution to the anti-slavery move
ment greater or moro impressive than the crusade of these
Grimkfi sisters from South Carolina through the New England
States. These who know best tho influences which surrounded her in
her early home can best appreciate the struggle there must have
been before sho could break away from that circle, and come to
give her testimony on tho other side. Sho was a person of the
strongest attachments, — where she loved, she loved intensely, —
and her family she carried in her heart of heart, and they idol
ized her. She had a rare fascination, even for those nearest to
her; and her readiness for the hardest sacrifice had awed them to
a most admiring respect, while she was yet in extreme youth.
Alone her mind had opened, self-moved, led only by the inner
light of her own conscience, to truth after truth, and duty after
duty ; outgrowing the Church, whose hollowness became painful
to her, till she found shelter among the Quakers. Soon her
zealous, intrepid energy, and eagerness for active assault on the
fearful system whose wickedness she had fathomed, made her
impatient of their quiet. She came North to the abolitionists.
All this was a training and self-sacrifice which had fitted her
marvellously well to touch other hearts. Gifted with rare elo
quence, she swept the chords of the human heart with a power
that has never been surpassed, and rarely equalled.
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 Grimke the opportunity to speak
to the best culture and character of Massachusetts ; and the pro-

Remarks of Wendell Phillips. 29
found impression then made on a olass not often found 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 after
wards 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 Grimkcs 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,
Bhe 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 Spenser'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
seot to another, trying eaoh by the infallible touohstone of that
clear, childlike conscience. The two old lonely Quakers in their

80 Angelina GrimkS Weld.
innocence rest her foot awhile. But tho eager soul must work,
not rest in testimony. Coming North, at last, sho makes hor
own religion, — one of sacrifice and toil. Breaking away from,
rising above all forms, the dove floats at last in tho blue sky
where no clouds roach.
In the " Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses against Slavery,"
we find her letter, " tho wail of a broken-hearted child." With
rare frankness, in words which it must have cost such a heart as
hers exquisite pain to write, after reminding us that it was under
her own roof and in the houses of her near kindred that she had
seen slavery, she testifies that, worse even than its influence on
the black, was its blighting effect on the white man : —
While I live, and slavery lives, I must testify against it. If I should
hold my peace, " the stone would cry out of the wall, and the beam out
of the timber would answer it." But though I feel a necessity upon me,
and a " woe unto me," if I withhold my testimony, I give it with a heavy
heart. " Father, thy will bo done." " For day and night their blood runs
down like water. And the broad waves continually go over them, for no
eye pities, and no man cares for their souls."
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 fulness 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

Remarks of Wendell Phillips. 31
that the pictures she drew were of her own fireside. That loving
heart! how stern a sense of duty must have wrung it before sho
was willing to open that record ! But with sublime fidelity, with
entire self-sacrifice, sho 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 vileuoss, saw the real curse of slavery in the hard
ened 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.
You the dear ones, so warmly loved, over whose comfort and
welfare she watched with such tireless care, you know she has
not left you. She has not gone away, she has only gone before.
She may be with us and see our actions, and perhaps help us.
Yes, by these recollections of her noblo life, she loads us up
higher. My friend Wright spoke of her visits to the slave huts ;
and in the door of the great hereafter they wait, these grateful
Sotlls, to thank her for the kindness done them in South Carolina.
This is no place for tears. Graciously, in loving kindness and
tenderly, God broke the shackles and freed her soul. It was not

32 Angelina GrimkS Weld.
tho dust which surrounded her that we loved. It was not tho
form which encompassed her that we revere. But it was the
soul. Wo linger a very little while, hor old comrades. Tho hour
comes — it is even now at tho door — that God will open our eyes
to see her as sho is: tho white-soulod child of twelve years old
ministering to want and sorrow; tho ripe life, full of great influ
ences; the serene old ago, example and inspiration whose light
will not soon go out. Farewell, for a very little while. God '
keep us fit to join thee in that broader service on which thou hast
entered.

TO THE KEADEB.

The preceding sketch of the funeral services, with the
tributes to the deceased given entire, fills out the original
plan of this memorial. Since then the writer has received
various suggestions from early abolitionists, whose practical
wisdom gives weight to their opinions, that illustrations of
her prominent traits drawn from the facts of her life should
be added in much greater detail than was possible at the
funeral. The substance of these suggestions may be thus
expressed in brief: The circumstances of this case are
unique. The causes which shaped them, the elements of
character revealed, the forces that impelled, the obstacles
and perils encountered, the ties of home and kindred sun
dered for conscience' sake, — these are not private property :
they belong to humanity, and humanity should have its own.
No shrinking of morbid delicacy should be allowed to with
hold them. Look at the case as it is. Just as- William
Lloyd Garrison, half-stripped of clothing by a mob, had been
dragged and driven through the streets of Boston, its mu
nicipal authorities looking quietly on, then, in our darkest
hour, we first heard of Angelina Grimke". Her private letter
to Mr. Garrison, written immediately after the mob, and pub
lished by him in the Liberator, — its calm, strong words of
cheer, its lofty courage and heroic devotion, its serene spirit
of self-surrender, even unto martyrdom, — thrilled us all.
Then her " Appeal to the Christian Women of the South "
is

84 Angelina Q-rimkS Weld.
was fdllowed by fifteen months of public speaking and writ
ing against slavery. After which, exhausted by overwork,
and at last physically disabled, she withdrew from the plat
form into a retirement wholly shrouded from the public eye.
Her antecedents in Charleston most of the abolitionists
know nothing of; and the few that know anything have it
only in isolated fragments. Here and there one knows that
what she did, sacrificed, and dared in her native city, then
slavery's intensest focus, was a marvel of unswerving fidelity
to truth, of moral courage, personal sacrifice, and Christian
heroism, too precious to be lost. We ask no elaborate biog
raphy, but for those illustrations of her character which,
wherever known, cannot fail to quicken earnest aspirations
after a noble, heroic, self-forgetful life.
Convictions similar to those here expressed had previously
half-formed in the writer's mind. But, as strong affinities
magnify the traits seen through them, self-distrust withheld
him from adding anything to the utterances at the funeral.
But further reflection, fortified by the convictions of trusted
friends, unswayed by personal bias, has reversed his first
decision. Hence the details which follow.
It is perhaps needless to say, what each must see as he
reads, that the sketches which follow are in no sense bio-
graphical, neither a history of the life nor of the character
of the deceased, but simply illustrations of those character
istics which stood so far in the foreground that all who saw
her long, in near view, could not but see those birth-marks
indelible, whose deep traces were imprinted upon every
period of her life. In delineating these, the writer has
restricted himself to such acts, facts, and passages as serve to
illustrate the specific traits named by the different speakers
at the funeral.

MEMORIAL SKETCHES.

Dr. Moeison said in his remarks at the funeral: "There is
something very affecting, sublime, in her absolute self-forgetful-
ness, which made vanity and display impossible. She seemed
absolutely free from all ambition."
Mr. Phillips said, "Were I to single out the moral and intel
lectual trait which most won me, it would be her serene indiffer
ence to the judgment of those about her."
These traits stand out upon her whole life. The truths which
she grasped were to her God's voice, so ringing ever in her soul
that no clamor of passion could drown it. They buoyed her aloft
where no selfish appeal could reach her. Her refusal, at thirteen
years old, to bind herself by those vows in the Episcopal order and
rite of confirmation, illustrates an elevation above public opinion,
a fidelity to conscience, and a moral courage, which had, thus early,
crystallized into character. In infancy, she had been baptized in
the ancestral church of her family. When told by its rector that
the rite of confirmation was an ancient sacred usage, to which all
conformed, and that, if she persisted in her refusal to do what all
baptized children of the church did at her age, she would forfeit
the blessing which the bishop's hands would otherwise confer, she
replied : " I cannot do it, sir. Feeling as I do, it would he a false
hood." No persuasion could avail to change her purpose. She felt
keenly the mortification and grief of her friends, and the wonder-

36 Angelina GrimkS Weld.
ing stare and averted'faces of her mates. Those she could bear ;
but she could not lie.
She learned afterward from her family that the rector pro
nounced it an ominous symptom in one so young, which he feared
might ripen into insanity.
She continued to attend regularly tho Episcopal Church four or
five years longer. Then the Rev. Dr. Waddel, of Georgia, came to
preach in Charleston. The fame of his eloquence, added to the
subject of his sermons, "Practical Religion," drew her to hear him.
As she listened, a new light dawned. Then first she saw that
outward forms are no part of Christ's religion, which she saw to be
an inward life, — the love of all being, the wishing and willing of
good to all, the law of love, the golden rule, impartial and universal,
to be wrought out in loving acts. She saw that external form is
the mere shell, which but rings the louder when the kernel is gone.
Filled with this conviction, a new necessity was upon her, and act
it out she must. The' truth she saw, she must live. The only
light she had she must walk by. Her soul-hunger had tasted the
kernel, and could be mocked with the husk no longer. So, thence
forward, sh« attended the preaching of Drs. Waddel and McDowell,
of the Presbyterian Church. There she had found a vital truth,
unseen till then, except as a faint glimmer, and that not as a thing
of personal concernment.
"Surely," she^thought, "those who proclaim it cannot fail to live
it. In such a church, I can find a home." So, asking no counsel
of man, thither she went. After interviews with the minister and
the session of the church, she was cordially welcomed to its mem
bership, took at once a class of young ladies in its Sunday-school,
and threw into the work her whole soul.
As from Sunday to Sunday she taught her pupils, and pondered
the means of culture lavished upon them, in place of the fines and
imprisonment denounced by the laws against all who should teach
the slaves even the alphabet, the contrast smote her with horror.
Upon exploring further, she found that no law forbade their verbal
moral instruction. So, going to her mother, She asked if she

Memorial Sketches. 87
might have their slaves como into the house every morning, and
hear her road the words of Christ and talk about them. Her
mother replied with much feeling, "You may, my child, and I will
come and sit with you." The slaves hailed with joy the good
news. At the hour, her mother and sisters came and sat by her.
Eagorly, at the glad signal, in came tho slaves. After roading
from tho Sermon on tho Mount, sho spoko to thorn of tho simple
truths of tho gospel, thon knoolod and prayed with thorn. This
morning worship with the slaves she continued daily when at homo,
while she remained in Charleston. Their simple words of gratitude
for her sympathy and love were constant and full of heart.
Wo now tako up whore we left it her experience in the Presby
terian Church. Soon we find hor discussing slavery with her
minister, the Rev. Dr. McDowell. He listened, said that slavery
was in itself a great evil, that the system was wrong, but to uproot
it would deluge the city with evils vastly greater. All we could
do was to pray and wait. She suggested, "pray and work," and
urged him to preach about it, at least to speak of it as he had just
spoken to her. After frequent talks, they began a correspondence.
Several letters passed, but with no result that promised action.
She then went to the elders of the church, all slave-holders. They
listened with courtesy, told her that, young as she was (then but
eighteen), it was not strange that she should feel thus, but that
riper years and wider experience would surely set her right. She
then turned to the private members. One mistress of slaves said,
"Slavery has embittered my whole life." Another, "It is the
greatest of curses to us, but I see no possible escape." Another
said, "I sympathize with you, but cannot see a ray of hope."
After long working and waiting, hopeless at last of action by her
church, she felt that it could be her church no longer, and that to
continue in it was to partake of its guilt.
Meanwhile, she had received from her sister Sarah in Philadel
phia several Quaker books. She studied their "testimonies," was
.impressed by them all, but hailed with exultation that against
slavery, and at once began to cast about for Quakers in Charles-

88 Angelina GrimkS Weld.
ton. Two only wore found, both old men. She asked, "Are
there no others in tho city?" "No." "Do you meet for wor
ship?" "Yes: there is a little meeting-house in tho suburbs
where wo go Sabbath mornings." "Can I meet with you?"
" Yes, if thee feels moved to come." What should sho do ? She
had hoped to find a homo for her spirit in the Presbyterian
Church, but had found instead that it scouted the spirit of Christ,
while clinging to his name. Her mind was made up with a heavy
heart ; but, nothing doubting, she went to her minister, telling him
that the same sense of duty which constrained her to join the
church compelled her now to leave it. What should she do next ?
Whore go ? Should she leave her mother, sisters, and brothers, —
sho was the youngest of fourteen children, — and join her sister
Sarah in Philadelphia, who had long been urging her to come?
, She yearned to act against slavery where it was, where her whole
life had been spent in the midst of it, — to act directly upon it
by example, testimony, and personal effort. In the Presbyterian
Church, her hunger had at first found food, but soon found in it a
deadly poison. She saw all the churches in the same condemna
tion. She looked and prayed for light, but darkness was every
where : and she in it alone. No ! one ray of light had come to her :
she had found two Quakers I Both were heartily outspoken in
their condemnation of slavery. Should she join them in their
testimony, put on the Quaker garb, go to the Quaker meeting,
adopt the plain language ? Each of these would be a stringent
anti-slavery document, as also the fact that she had left the Pres
byterian Church because of its pro-slavery idolatry; and, if she
were to stay in Charleston, should join the Quaker society because,
without compromise, it was a public protest against the system.
Besides, in staying, she might, by sympathy and loving services,
"remember those in bcftids as bound with them" more effectually
than would be possible, if seven hundred miles away. She might
also, by conversation and correspondence with her slave-holding
kindred and acquaintances, stir in some of them latent thought,
heart, and conscience into action. At last doubt vanished. She

Memorial Sketches. 39
would stay, watch, and work longer still. So the next Sunday,
when the family carriage rolled away to St. Philip's Church, she,
clad in the Quaker garb, severely plain, of ono color, and wearing
the small, close-fitting cap and bonnet, and muslin kerchief crossed
in front, took her solitary way to the outskirts, entered the little,
dingy meeting-house, and sat in silence with the two aged men
during their usual two hours of worship. At the close, each ven
erable Friend came kindly, took her hand, greeted her with encour
aging words, arid said farewell. These tender greetings every
Sunday were the only words which broke the silence of those
meetings during the entire year.
That year ended as it began. She had done what she could.
What had she done ? Just this. She had convinced herself that
it was impossible for one in the midst of slavery to act effectually
. against it. The problem was solved. To live among its horrors ;
to see it year by year wax stronger and more horrible, and yet to
be helpless to mitigate its horrors; to know that deliverance must
be forever hopeless, except from without, — would be to her a living
death. Should she stay there, thus dying by piecemeal ? How
gladly would she do it, if that would help to bring rescue ! But
now, clear as noon, she saw it, that, if she could do anything any
where, it must be elsewhere than in the slave States. But what
could she do anywhere ? She had no plan, no thought. She stood
at the parting of the ways, pondered long, and waited for light.
At last it came. Eagerly she seized it. Life there was but death
misnamed. Self-exile was tho sole alternative ; and, though that
sho knew was tho straining of her hoartstrings to breaking, sho
broke them, and the struggle was over. Then all darkness fled,
and daylight streamed.
She knew that wherever she could find froe breath to breathe,
and liberty to work in getting it for others, there only could be the
home of her heart. Longer she could not live in the midst of
slavery,— her eye shocked, her ear pained, her heart sick, — go to
the free States she must. Of what she could do there, she had no
conception. That she could do nothing in Charleston, she had

40 Angelina GrimkS Weld.
proved. Affinities irrepressible drew her northward. There she
seemed to see hands ever beckoning. Thonce, by day and night,
she seemed to hear voices crying, " Come hither I leave thy coun
try and thy kindred and thy mother's house, and it shall be shown
thee what thou hast to do." Why need sho wait longer ? She .
saw the needle of her life point steadily to the pole-star and settle.
She followed it, and found in the free North her home and her
work. Late in the fall of 1830, a few weeks before the first num
ber of the Liberator was issued, she left all, and went never to
return. The anguish which this act of self-exile caused her is best
told thus in her own words. Years after this, writing to her
husband, she said : —
The recollections of my childhood, and the effaceless imprint upon my
riper years, with the breaking of my heartstrings when, finding that I was
powerless to shield the victims, I tore myself from my home and friends,
and became an exile among strangers, — all these throng around me as wit
nesses, and their testimony is graven on my memory with a pen of fire.
Her sister Sarah, whom she loved to call her " sister-mother,"
had already lived several years in Philadelphia. There she joined
her, and the "Friends' meeting" to which she belonged.
A year before leaving home, she had heard of Mr. Garrison's
imprisonment in Baltimore ; and, a few months after that, tidings
of his lectures against slavery, in Philadelphia, New York, and
New England, came hurtling around her in the Charleston air, and
for a time startling the slave-holders. That fact revealed to her
the vulnerable point of the system. Impregnable from within, it
lay open to assault from without. Agitation and discussion in the
free States could reach its life.
In 1865, at the end of the war, one of her older sisters came
to reside with us at Hyde Park. Though aflame with pro-slavery
affinities, regarding abolitionism with horror, and intensified by the
loss of all her property in the Rebellion, she yet said to me, with
great emphasis, in speaking of the anti-slavery course of her sis
ters, that, though she looked upon them as the victims of an utter
delusion, yet she profoundly honored their unselfish devotion, con-

Memorial Sketches. 41
science, moral courage, and "fidelity to an idea." She then re
ferred to that period in Angelina's home-life which tho foregoing
details describe, and said of it that, though she considered her
views and her enthusiasm excited by them as utterly irrational,
yet so absolute was her sense of duty and her self-sacrifice, her
superiority to public sentiment, and her moral courage/ that " she
seemed to us at home like one inspired," and " we all looked upon
her with a feeling of awe."
Upon her becoming a member of tho "Friends' meeting" in
Philadelphia, what was her amazement to find that tho Religious
Society of Friends, whose moral courage in rebuke of slavery had
put to shame all other churches, — that they had installed the
" negro pew " as a permanent fixture in their house of worship !
Thenceforward the two sisters made that "negro pew" their per
manent seat, thus recording their public protest against that un
christian abomination. This was ever after their invariable rule.
Wherever, in city or country, they entered a church having a
negro seat (then they all had), they found their way to it, and
shared with the occupants that spurning thus meted out to them.
A similar public protest against a similar public wrong, the two
sisters, in company with forty other women, publicly recorded in
Hyde Park, Mass., ten years ago, by going to the polls in a body,
at the March meeting, through the fiercest snow-storm of the sea
son, and silently depositing their votes in a box placed at the plat
form for them by one of the selectmen. They thus emphasized
their solemn protest against that political ostracism of woman,
perpetrated upon the entire sex by a government proclaiming in
its fundamental law that it derives "its just power from the consent
of the governed" and yet says to every woman, You shall have
no voice in the choice of your rulers, no effective influence or word
in aiding public order and morality, education, temperance, purity,
none in all means and measures for the protection of life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness, and, besides this, leaving thus every
vital interest of a majority of its citizens to the mercy of a male
monopoly, itself a minority ; thus assuming that the enactment of

42 Angelina Q-rimkt Weld.
laws for the protection of everything dear to human welfare is an
exclusive and inalienable masculine prerogative.
In the addresses at the funeral, frequent reference was made to
the fact that ill-health compelled her to decline public speaking.
From infancy, though sound vitally, she had very little muscular'
strength. Upon growing toward womanhood, she had occasional
faintings, with loss of consciousness. These attacks, though last-
. ing but a few minutes, were followed by days of nervous prostra
tion, though never sufficient to keep still her ever-busy hands.
These faintings, continuing at intervals during life, were preceded
by seasons of mental trial, anxiety, and exhausting cares, from
which her later years were never exempt. With these exceptions,
and the chronic effects of certain bodily injuries, her health was
uniformly good. Indeed, she never had but one "fit of sickness."
During the last weeks of 1837, after a spring, summer, and fall of
incessant lecturing in Massachusetts, she found herself utterly
worn out by this constant speaking, with exhausting rides over
country roads, being almost every day the guest of new hosts,
besides being subject to great irregularities in diet, in which were
included neither flesh nor fish, neither butter nor milk, neithef tea
nor coffee, nor any sugars, syrups, rice, or other products of slave
labor, for she would use none of them. Added to these was much
loss of sleep, by sitting up late after lecturing to talk with new-
formed anti-slavery friends. Besides, more exhausting than all,
she had for many weeks of her lecturing set apart the late hours
of night for writing a series of letters to Miss Catharine E.
Beecher, in reply to her book, " Miss Beecher on the Slave Ques
tion," which she had addressed to "Angelina E. Grimkd." These
letters, thrown from her pen as she went from place to place,
were published weekly in the Liberator, and afterward in a book
of one hundred and thirty pages, published by Isaac Knapp, of
Boston. These labors, continued for nine months, with no vaca
tion, quite broke her down. Her dear friends, Samuel and Eliza
Philbrick, alarmed at her condition, laid loving hands upon her,
Saying, "You must Stop." So, by a compulsion as wise as impera-

Memorial Sketches. 43
tive, they took her and her sister Sarah to their beautiful home
in Brookline, Mass., where she was tenderly cared for through a
typhoid fever. From that utter prostration she never wholly recov
ered. While yet unable to bear the effort, she spoke upon slavery
before a Committee of the Massachusetts House of Representatives,
and then gave six lectures in the Old Boston Theatre, besides
lecturing in other places in Massachusetts and at Providence and
elsewhere in Rhode Island, during the wiuter and spring of 1838.
In May of that year, she married. Early in hor married life, she
was twice severely injured. These injuries, though wholly unlike,
were in their effect a unit, one causing, the other intensifying a
life-long weakness. Together they shattered incurably her nervous
system. The one was wholly internal: the other caused a deep
wound which never healed. Such was the effect upon her, that
ever after she was forced to avoid exciting scenes and topics, espe
cially slavery, its effects upon slave and master, also the wrongs of
woman as wrought out in her legal, ecclesiastical, educational, and
political disabilities, by which through all time she had been fet
tered, shrivelled, and palsied. Add to these the horrible inflictions
upon children by passionate parents and teachers. Once hearing
the frantic screams of a whipped child, alternated with outbursts
of parental rage, prostrated her for an entire day, and filled with
moanings the fitful dreams of a half-sleepless night. These severe
injuries, with the morbid ailments resulting, unbraced for life her
. nervous system. All special mental anxiety and distress produced
thenceforward such faintness and sense of sinking that from the
first she would say : "My mission is over. He who gave it has
taken it." She never afterward spoke in public. Sometimes,
though rarely, she would speak in private circles and at informal
gatherings upon some vital topic, but only in a conversational tone,
and for a short time, but would uniformly withhold herself from
all places, scenes, and subjects strongly appealing to her emotional
nature. The morbid unrest caused by those injuries, and some
times intensified into agony, she bore in silence. The exceptions
were very rare ; yet, when greatly worn, life's corrosions would

44 Angelina Grimke' Weld.
occasionally strike out a momentary flash of impatience, causing a
grief which would not be comforted. Very few even of her most
intimate friends knew of the sufferings caused by these physical
injuries, which she endured silently, making no sign. Indeed,
none but her husband and sister knew them at all as they were, and
even their knowledge came almost as much from inference as
otherwise. Her instinctive reserve and reticence about personal
discomforts and trials, however severe, were absolute.
The last time that she spoke in public was in the "Pennsylvania
Hall," Philadelphia, the evening after her marriage. The next.
evening, the new, noble edifice, just dedicated to liberty, and cost
ing forty thousand dollars, was burned by a mob. They first tore
up the seats and platform, chopped into pieces its costly furniture,
piled the whole upon the floor, and made a bonfire of it, while the.
flaming hall rang with frantic yells of the mob, as they cursed the
abolitionists. At the time, place, and scene when and where
Angelina Grimke made her last public anti-slavery utterance, amid
the howlings of an infuriated rabble, Abby Kelly made her first.
Who of the abolitionists, save their great leader and inspirer, has
done, dared, and suffered more, and more nobly, than Abby Kelly
Foster ? Blessings on her and ner heroic husband, those self-
forgetting lives, now broken down long before their time by wasting
trials, struggles, hardships, and exposures 1
Mr. Wright spoke at the funeral of Angelina Grimkd's coming
to the office of the American Anti-slavery Society in 1835, and
handing him, in manuscript, her "Appeal to the Christian Women
of the South." As that appeal brought to the early abolitionists
most timely help in their utmost need, something of its history
may well go with it. The first thought of it came to hor thus.
In the winter of 1834, she met, in Philadelphia, a distinguished
mombor of tho Society of Friends, a lady of rare gifts and graces,
namod Porker.
Noarly forty yoars ago, Friend Porker modo to mo the following
statement. I give its substance, but cannot give her words. Their
purport I distinctly recall, and some of her expressions verbatim.

Memorial Sketches. 45
She said: When I first met Angelina, I felt "so drawn to her"
that I said, Do come and spend the summer with me at my home
in Shrewsbury, N.J. In June she came. Thenceforward we were
constantly together. I soon saw that she was burdened. Though
genial, cheerful, and sometimes playful, yet, through it all, I saw
a sorrow sitting at her heart. Her whole air and aspect, though
beautifully gentle and serene, revealed to me a travail of spirit,
such as I have rarely seen. As we came together almost strangers,
it took a little time to establish those mutual relations which make
friends at home with each other. With such a congenial nature as
hers, that interval was very brief. Almost at once we were as old
friends. Then, as though casually, she spoke of slavery. Know
ing that she had spent her life in the midst of it, I asked questions
that broached the subject. The mystery was solved, and the bur
den revealed. After that, whether we sat or walked or rode, or
were busied in house affairs, one thought absorbed her, and soon
slavery became our permanent topic. The more we talked, the
more to me its abolition seemed hopeless. Not so to her. She
would say : " Deliverance must come. How I know not ; but come
it must, and can come only through the influence of the free States.
And it must come soon, or all must go down in blood." (The " Nat
Turner " insurrection in Virginia had, not long before this, startled
all the South.) She would often say : " Is there nothing that I can
do ? The churches all seem drugged to death," etc. Thus, day
after day, slavery was the topic between us, and with her the bitter
anguish. At length, one evening, she seemed quite overwhelmed. Together
we sat a long time in silence. Turning at last to kiss me good
night, she spoke no word, but her tears fell on my face. She went
to her chamber, and I to mine. Our rooms joined. I lay and lis
tened, could not sleep. For a long time no sound came. I knew
she could not have gone to bed. At last I rose and listened, caught
faint, smothered sounds. It was plain she was weeping. I longed
to go in and weep with her,o but her emotion seemed too sacred for
the presence of another. I lay down, waited long, suspense grew

46 Angelina GrimkS Weld.
into pain, then rose and listened again, caught stifled sobs. 1
could wait no longer, and softly entered. There she lay upon the
carpet in the moonlight, her face buried in a pillow. As I kneeled
and spoke, she turned, saying, " Oh, dear, what have I done ? I
must have kept you awake. Pray go to bed and sleep. I will go
immediately." She rose at once, and with tender words we parted.
In the morning when she camo down, her step and look told that
the storm had passed. She said: "It has all come to me. I see
it now. I will write an ' Appeal to the Christian Women of the
South.'" The burden had rolled off. She seemed as light-hearted
as a singing bird, and as soon as breakfast was over went to her
chamber, and began to write her " Appeal," continuing it from day
to day till it was finished. I have thus given the substance of
Friend Parker's statement. Would that I could have given it all
in her own beautiful words !
Angelina's sister, Mrs. Anna Rutledge Frost, the sole survivor
of the fourteen children of their parents, is now residing in Charles
ton, at tho ago of eighty-four. Speaking in a late letter of the
foregoing statement of Mrs. Parker, sho says: "Tho circum
stances related by Friend Parker of Angelina's mental suffering
aro to mo deeply interesting. Dear creature ! How little I knew
of tho dark, deep waters through which sho was passing ! Had I
known tho weight of that burden on her heart, mine surely must
have gone out to her in sympathy ; but,' unfortunately, we were
looking through different glasses. I was already enlisted in the
colonization cause, and had manumitted my slaves, and taken them
to Philadelphia." In a letter dated Charleston, Nov. 17, 1879,
Mrs. Frost says : " Many thanks for the paper " (Wendell Phillips's
remarks at the funeral) "containing such a beautiful tribute to my
precious sister. It is not only all true, but a vast deal more might
have been said of her self-sacrificing spirit and of her labors of love
for the down-trodden slaves. In her early career, we could not see
eye to eye upon this momentous subject. The immediate emanci
pation of millions of slaves seemed to me to involve the destruction
of multitudes of our own race. Facts have proved the contrary,

Memorial Sketches. 47
and greatly do I rejoice that tho oppressed have been set free.
Our dearest Angy ! How little I used to appreciate the vast sacri
fices she was making, in relinquishing the approval, and incurring
forever the displeasure of the friends and relatives she best loved,
by devoting herself to the abolition of slavery. I have, however,
long seen the sublimity of her character, and been convinced that
to her intensely sensitive soul it must have been absolute mental
crucifixion." In speaking of her devotion to duty, Mrs. Frost says : " I am
sure nothing, no one, could have made her swerve in her fidelity to
any duty." In illustrating her spirit of self-sacrifice, Mrs. Frost
continues : " While she was residing at  , she came one day
and induced me to receive into my family a school-teacher of very
slender means, and then far gone in consumption, saying that she
wished to come and nurse and wait upon her as long as she lived.
And most faithfully did she devote herself to the poor consumptive,
even performing for her the most menial offices till her death at
the end of three months."
Upon looking over what has been written, I perceive that an
incident has been omitted which reveals, perhaps more impressively
than any other, the intensity of her abhorrence of slavery, and her
heroic fidelity to conscience in acting it out, while yet in her early
girlhood. I had supposed that hor age at the time was eighteen
years ; but upon inquiring of her sister, Mrs. Frost, she informs
me that she was then but sixteen. The facts are these. Her
mother gave her at that age a slave girl, to be her waiting-maid,
saying : " Angelina, I am going to give you a new responsibility,
by making you the mistress of Kitty. She is to be your waiting-
maid. You are to own her, have her as your property from this
time. I give her to you." They talked over the matter in sub
stance thus: "Mother, I can't have a slave. I have no right to
Kitty. YShe belongs to herself, not to me. She is not my prop
erty, and I can't hold her as mine. Besides, I don't need to be
waited on. I can wait on myself." "Well, if you insist upon
waiting on yourself," said the mother, "you can do it, but remem-

48 Angelina GrimkS Weld.
ber that I have given Kitty to you. There is your cousin : he
appliod for her to wait on his wife. I told him I was going to
give her to you. He'll give you so much a quarter for her."
" Mother, I cannot take what sho earns. I have no right to it."
Tho matter ended thus. The mother hired out the girl to tho
applicant, telling him to pay the quarter's wages to Angelina. So,
on pay day, he came, saying, "Here, Miss Angelina, is what I
owe you for Kitty." The reply was: "The money isn't mine.
I didn't earn it, and I can't take it. Kitty did, and hers it is. It
belongs to her, and no one elso has a right to it." He replied (he
was a- lawyer) : " You don't understand the law. Your mother has
given you Kitty. She is your legal property, you own her. Now,
if tho owner of slaves pays them wages, he forfeits his owner
ship. Then the State steps in and becomes the owner, and sells
them ; for, in law, every slave must have an owner, and the slave
can't own what ho earns. The law forbids emancipation. If you
refuse to be her owner, it's all the worse for Kitty. The State
sells hor at once, and whore she'll be taken to there is no telling.
So, if you wish to do Kitty the greatost favor you can, keep her as
your proporty," etc. Thus the bowildcred child found herself in a
quandary. What should she do ? She knew not what to do, but
knew well what not to do. A slave-holder she would not be.
Kitty's earnings she would not touch. In hor dilemma, she re
solved to cut the knot which she could not untie. So, going
straight to her mother, she said: "Mother, if your giving of
Kitty to me makes me her owner, then my giving her back to you
makes you her owner again ; and, dear mother, I do just that thing
now. I give her back to you, for I cannot own a slave." The
mother, seeing the daughter's deep emotion, and feeling that her
sense of right, however mistaken, was sacred, yielded at once,
and never again alluded to the subject.
In the tributes at the funeral, strong emphasis is given to moral
courage. Though high physical courage is also fairly inferrible
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

Memorial Sketches. 49
to her a sedativo : it calmod and girded hor, 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 per
ilous emergencies in her life are vividly recalled, — such as the
being overturned, while in a carriage, with a child in her arms, the
horse meanwhile floundering amid the debris, a shaft broken and
dashboard kicked into splinters. At another time, shots at tho
roadside 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, as ho tugged at the reins, she caught him
round the waist, adding her weight to his, and thus, by holding
him down, enabled him to pull the harder, till the steady, silent tug
upon the reins tamed down the steeds. Another. In a small sail
boat, in the middle of the Hudson River, a sudden gust tore the sail
from its fastenings, and in an instant filled the boat, till it barely-
floated. If the gust had not gone as soon as it came, probably not
one on board could have been saved. It was only with great diffi
culty and danger that the drenched company in the water-logged
boat reached the shore. Another. In bathing at the Raritan Bay,
and unable to swim, she was once swept beyond her depth, and
rescued with great difficulty. In all those cases, she was silent
and self-possessed, and holpod to keep others so. Another. Her
rosidonco at Bollevillo, N.J., had no noar neighbors, stood back
from tho road, and was nearly hidden by trees and shrubbory.
Tho old stono structuro, dating back to 1700, was known as tho
"haunted houso." Being vory large, with barn, sheds, and soveral
out-houses, it was specially attractive to stragglers and burglars.
Stories had been long afloat of outrages perpetrated there, among
which were a murder a century before, with a burglary and rob
bery more recent. These stories, meant to be appalling, warned
us what to expect. We had not been long there, when one night,
waked by suspicious noises, she listened, till certain that a burglar
must be in the house. So, stealing softly from the bed and room,
lest she should wake her husband, she struck a light, and ex-

50 Angelina GrimM Weld.
plorod from cellar to attic, looking into closots, behind doors, and
under beds. For a slight, weak woman, hardly able to lift an
empty teakettle, 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. When
remonstrated with upon its rashness, she said, "Oh, the dear
Father takes care of me." When urged to promise that, when she
heard another burglar, she would wake her husband, " I promise,"
she said, "on condition that, when you go after him, I am to go
with you."
Some years after this, when spending time 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 : " 0 missus ! I forgot. This is just tho time for the
express, and this is the wrong horse, that's awful afraid of the cars,
and nobody can hold him in. Oh, dear, dear ! " Seeing Maggie's
fright, sho instantly turned back, saying, " Now, Maggie, if tho
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, tho express thundering in tho rear. For
a mile the road was a straight, dead level, and right along the track.
At utmost speed, the frantic animal strained om 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

Memorial Sketches. 51
slopo, tho train shot by, taming the horse's fright; but, as his blood
was up, she kept him hard pushed to tho 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."
Another. While living in New Jersey, word came that a col
ored 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, partly 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 unkind-
ness, 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 cus
toms 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. In that state
of permanent weakness induced by her chronic ailments, she habit
ually worked so beyond her strength as often to be unable to bear
the presence of company, hence many times could neither invite

52 Angelina GrimkS Weld.
it nor try to protract its stay. Hence those lacking the charity
which trusts a friend for a good reason, when it is unknown, might
take offence. She could not be brought under bondage to any
usage or custom, any party watch-word, or shibboleth of a specu
lative 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, in form unlike the
" regulation " bonnet, and 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 princi
ples of "Friends," neither she nor her sister Sarah could conform to
all their distinctive usages, nor accept all their rules. Conse
quently, 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. Thus
they declined to use certain ungrammatical forms of speech, as thee
for thou, which were, so far as they knew, then universal among
the Philadelphia Friends. 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 mar
riage 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

Memorial Sketches. 53
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 empha
sizing 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.
Mr. Wright, in his remarks at the funeral, said that her " 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 Grimk6 was
intending to visit her mother and sisters, and pass the winter with
them. Thereupon, tho Mayor of Charleston called upon Mrs,
Gritnk6, and desired her to inform hor daughter that the police
had boon instructed to prevont hor landing whilo tho steamer
remained in port, and to soe to it that she should not communicate,
by lotter or otherwise, with any persons in tho city ; and, further,
that if sho should eludo their vigilance, and go on shore, sho
would be arrested and imprisoned, until the return of the steamer.
Her Charleston friends at once conveyed to hor 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 hands of the mob. She replied to the letter that her going
would doubtless compromiso hor family f — not only distress them,
but put thorn in poril, which sho had neither hoart nor right to
do | but for that fact, she would certainly oxorcise hor constitu
tional 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

54 Angelina Grimkd Weld.
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 itsolf.
It was stated at the funeral that the Executive Committee of
the American Anti-slavery Society wrote to Miss Grimk6, 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 cannot decline it." A long conversation fol
lowed, the details of which I received from Sarah not long after ;
and, as they present vividly the marked characteristics of both
sisters, I give here, in substance, such as I can recall, throwing it
into the form of a dialogue, and indicating each speaker by her
initial. S. — Don't decide suddenly. Consider it well. If you go, you
assume a great responsibility.
A. — I feel that I have nothing to decide : it is decided for me.
You know how long I have been trying to find out what more I
can do for the anti-slavery cause. Now here the Executive Com
mittee have asked me to do a work which they think will help it
greatly. They have thrown the door wide open without my knock
ing at it, or dreaming there was such a door, or ever having a
thought, if there were such a one, that it was one for me -to enter.
This is all like a dream now ; but I can't undream it, and I can't
resist it. I must go.
S. — But consider, you have never spoken in public, never even
to an audience in a parlor. Besides, for four years you have been
attending the meetings of "Friends," where all are free to speak
as the spirit moves, and, though you have felt deeply upon many
of those subjects, you have never in the meeting uttered a word.
A. — You are right. I have never spoken, but I never felt that
I must speak. If I had ever felt that inward constraint upon me
that I have felt to do many other things, I should most certainly
have spoken. When I did those things, I could not help doing
them ; and, in doing each, I felt a blessing in my soul. Just so I
feel about this.

Memorial Sketches. 55
S. — But you know that you are constitutionally very retiring,
solf-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. Just
so I feel now.
S. — Think of another thing : you are going among strangers,
you wear strange garments, speak in a strange language, will bo
in circumstances wholly novel, and about a work that you never
attempted, never thought of, 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 these embarrass
ing circumstances, and in your lack of self-confidence and all
experience, 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, preposterous, for me to under
take it ; but yet I cannot refuse to do it. The conviction is a part of
mo. I cannot absolvo myself from it. The responsibility is thrust
upon mo. I cannot thrust it off. What duty presses me into, I
cannot press myself out of.
S. — I know you will not and cannot. 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
of course prior to the disownment that followed the marriage.J
A. — As my mind is made up absolutely to go, I cannot 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 alterna-

56 Angelina GrimkS Weld.
tive. Vory unpleasant it will be to bo disowned, but misery to be
self-disowned. S. — I have presented these considerations, that you might care
fully 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 wo 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 hor
rible 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 Grimke 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 and
co-operate with her in her mission, and that they should both go
exclusively at their own charges.
The foregoing details were given to me by sister Sarah more
than forty years ago. I made no notes of them then, and have
made none since, nor of any other facts stated in these desultory
sketches. The main thoughts and facts, scope and spirit of them
all, I vividly recall. Here and there I remember snatches of words
and phrases, and now and then a sentence verbatim ; but all that I
assume to give in these details is the substance, not in the main
the language in which it was clothed.
That early shattering of her nervous system, already spoken
of, with its waste of vital power, added to the heavier burdens
which weighed down life's decline, brought on their natural result,
long foreseen, — the paralysis which wore out her latest years.
The first stroke, which fell upon her six years since, brought out
an element of character known previously only to those who knew
her best. Its immediate occasion was this : For weeks she had
visited almost daily a distant neighbor, far gone in consumption,
whose wife was her dear friend. One day, over-heated and tired
out by work and a long walk in the sun, she passed their house ia

Memorial Sketches. 57
returning homo, too much overdone to call, as sho thought to do,
and had gone a quarter of a mile toward home, when it occurred
to her, Mr. W. may be dying now ! She turned back, and, as she
feared, found him dying. As she sat by his bedside, holding his
hand, a sensation never felt before seized her so strongly that she
at once attempted to withdraw her hand, but saw that she could
not, without disturbing his last moments, disengage it from his
grasp. She sat thus, in exceeding discomfort, half an hour, with
that strange feeling creeping up her arm and down her side.
At last, his grasp relaxed; and she left only able to totter, and
upon getting home, she hardly knew how, declined supper, and
went at once to bed, saying only, " Tired, tired." In the morning,
when her husband rose, she said, "I've something to tell you."
Her tone alarmed him. "Don't be alarmed," she said. To his
anxious question, " Pray, what is it ? " she said again : " Now you
mustn't be troubled. I'm not. It's all for the best. Something
ails my right side. I can't move hand or foot. It must be paral
ysis. Well, how thankful I should be that I have had the perfect
use of all my faculties, limbs, and senses for sixty-eight years, and
now, if they are to be taken from me, I shall have it always to be
grateful for that I have had them so long. Why, I do think I am
grateful for this too. Come, let us be grateful together." Her
half-palsied husband could respond only in weakest words to the
appeal of his unpalsied wife. While exulting in the sublime tri
umph of her spirit over the stroke that felled her, well might he
feel abashed, as he did, to find that, in such a strait, he was so poor
a help to her who, in all his straits, had been such a help to him !
After a pause, she added: "Oh, possibly it is only the effect of my
being so tired out last night. Why, it seems to me I was never
half so tired. I wonder if a hard rubbing of your strong hands
mightn't throw it off." Long and strongly he plied with friction
the parts affected, but no muscle responded. All seemed dead to
volition and motion. Though thus crippled in a moment, she
insisted upon rising, that she might be ready for breakfast at the
usual hour. As the process went on, she playfully enlivened it

58 Angelina GrimM Weld.
thus : " Well, here I am a baby again, — have to be dressed and
fed, perhaps lugged round in arms, or trundled in a wheel-chair,
taught to walk on one foot, and to write and sew and darn stock
ings with my left hand. Plenty of new lessons to learn, that will
keep me busy. See what a chance I have to learn patience. The
dear Father knew just what I needed," etc.
Soon after breakfast, she gave herself a lesson in writing with
' her left hand, stopping often, as she slowly scrawled on, to laugh
at her "quail tracks." After three months of tireless persistence,
she partially recovered the use of her palsied muscles ; so that she
could write, sew, knit, wipe dishes, and sweep, and do — "very
shabbily," as she insisted — almost everything that she had done
before. During the six years that remained of her life here, she had
what seemed to be two other slight shocks of paralysis, — one two
years since, the other some "three weeks before her death. This
last was manifest in the sudden sinking of her bodily powers, pre
eminently those of speech. During all those years, she looked
upon herself as "a soldier hourly awaiting orders," often saying
with her good-night kiss, " Maybe this will be my last here,"
or "Perhaps I shall send back my next from the other shore," or
"The dear Father may call me from you before morning," or
"Porhaps, when I wake, it may be in a morning that has no night:
then I can help you more than I can now."
Many letters received ask for her latest views and feelings about
death and the life beyond, — as one expresses it, "when she was
entering the dark valloy." Answer: The "valley" she saw, but no
darkness, neither night nor shadow, — all was light and peace. On
the future life, she had pondered much, but ever with a trust ab
solute and an abounding cheer. Fear, doubt, anxiety, suspense,
she knew nothing of : none of them had power to mar her peace or
jostle her conviction. Her state of mind touching her own future
ever moved on in the same even tenor, — quiet, restful, cheerful,
unexcited, equally free from ecstasy and indifference. To this
¦there were, during the last two weeks of her life, signal excep-

Memorial Sketches. 59
tions. Some of their details, written while fresh in memory, were
sent to our daughter, then eight hundred miles away. Those let
ters have just been returned by our request, that extracts from
thorn may servo here as a general answer to special questions
asked. The following extract describes a scene during her last week,
after the palsy, which had for weeks been stealing over her speech,
now locked it fast : —
" The sixth night before her last, upon coming into her room at
one o'clock, I found her sitting up in bed, with Stuart and Anna
supporting her. With her face aglow with exultation, she was
singing, — not in words, for paralysis had usurped speech.
Stretching out her arms and pressing her lips to mine, the note
swelled into a strain so exultant that still it sings to me, and
echoes in my dreams.
From then till seven o'clock, she was all the time humming, in a
kind of rhythmical chime inexpressibly tender, and bespeaking
perfect peace, while her face shone with a look so serene that day
and night it beams upon me still. During those six hours, without
the least apparent fatigue, and without ceasing, that rhythmical
chime, soft as the warble of a bird, gently rose and fell, in even
flow, swaying as thought and feeling came and went, through the
slight varyings of her mental mood. Fearing that such incessant
tension would exhaust her, — for the humming was ceaseless even
while we were changing her position, — we often begged her to rest ;
but her look, and a slight movement of head and hand, said more
plainly than words could, " Oh, no I it does not tire, it rests me."
At last, as the clock struck seven, she sank into a quiet sleep for
hours. Upon waking, the same mellow humming awoke also, as of
its own accord, playing on in the old glad key ; and thus for three
days and nights, except when asleep, or at intervals when being
cared for, as in giving nourishment, etc., that low, purling carol
kept singing itself, as though it were her very breath of life, spon
taneous. As we stood around her, straining to catch again some fragmen-

60 Angelina GrimkS Weld.
tary word, she would turn her eyes upon our faces, one by one, as
though lovingly piercing our inmost ; but, though all speech failed,
the intense longing of that look outspoke all words. Thus, this
scene of spontaneous song, so full of solemn joy, was to us all the'
more wondrous and hallowed, since none of us could remember
when we had heard her sing before for years. Once only through
it all, her speech came partially for a moment, and these words
dropped one by one, in single syllables, "I'm sing-ing to the
dear Fa-ther, — hap-py, hap-py, hap-py," many times reiterated, till
articulation died away. Then, though vocal sound ceased, the
same movement of the lips continued, and in it the eye saw that
word " hap-py " written and spoken more impressively than any
tones could voice it. Then came a vain struggle to speak on, but
no words came ! Only abortive sounds painfully shattered ! How
precious those unborn words ! Oh, that we knew them ! The
following extract is from a previous letter to our daughter : —
" When her speech failed, after that sinking in which she
seemed dying, she strove to let us know that she knew it by trying
to speak the word ' death.' After much effort, a broken sound
came like det-eth. Divining her thought at last, I said, ' Is it
death?' Then in a kind of convulsive outburst came, 'Death,
death.' Thinking that she was right, that it was indeed to her
death begun, of what could die, thus dating her life immortal, I
said, ' No, — oh, no ! not death, but Life Immortal ! ' She instantly
caught my meaning, and cried out, 'Life E-ter-nal! E-ter-nal Life!'
Then for some minutes came a struggling tumult of mingled
sounds, but oh ! all unvoiced. She soon sank into a gentle sleep
for hours. When she woke, what seemed that fatal sinking had
passed. I must describe to you a characteristic scene in her sleep,
while she could yet articulate.
" One night, while watching with her, after she had been a long
time quietly sleeping, she seemed to be in pain, and began to toss
excitedly. It was soon plain that what seemed bodily pain was
mental anguish. She began to talk earnestly in mingled tones of
pathos and strong remonstrance: she was back again among the

Memorial Sketches. 61
scenes of childhood, talking upon slavery. At first, only words
could be caught here and there, but enough to show that she was
living over again the old horrors, and remonstrating with slave
holders upon the wrongs of slavery. Then came passages of
Scripture, — their most telling words given with strong emphasis,
the others indistinctly; some in tones of solemn rebuke, others in
those of heart-broken pathos, but most distinctly audible only in
detached fragments. There was one exception, — a few words ut
tered brokenly, with a half-explosive force, from James v. 4, ' The
hire of the laborers, . . . kept back by fraud, crieth ; and the cries
are . . . in the ears of the Lord.' I forget whether I told you that,
as far back as that intense heat in August, which so prostrated her,
she said to me one day, with a serene animation, 'The strength
that I have lost in these dog-days will not come back to me. I
shall not see another winter here. The next shock will be the
last.' While she could speak, she expressed the utmost gratitude
that ' the dear Father ' was loosening the cords of life so gently
that she had no pain. Even when for a number of days in
succession the difficulty in breathing was such that for much of
each night she could not lie down, she still insisted that, though
quite ' troublesome,' her difficulty in breathing was not 'painful.'
Indeed, it is settled that she had properly no disease. That par
alytic influence which began with a shock six years ago has been
gradually doing its work ever since, — just perceptibly moving
down the inclined plane of vitality, till, the last life-force spent,
her breath camo no more ! "
Certain misconceptions of the relation of the sisters to emanci
pation call for correction here. They date back more than forty
years, to the publications of the British and Foreign Anti-slavery
Society in London. These misstatements were corrected at the
time in the anti-slavery publications, both here and in England.
Since their deaths, these statements have been revived, and sent
afloat thrdugh the newspapers. Within a month, an extract from
Miss Martineau's English work, published in the Norfolk County
Ga&ette, stated, in substance, that the sisters "emancipated the

62 Angelina GrimkS Weld.
slaves upon their estates in Carolina," gave them land, instructed
them, etc., thus "reducing themselves to penury." Whereas they
neither owned an "estate," nor any land in Carolina or in any
other slave State. Besides, each slave State law made emancipa
tion impossible ! Further, neither sister was ever the legal owner
of a slave. Even the slave-woman " Kitty " was never legally the
property of Angelina. All the facts in question, of which the
writer has knowledge are the following : —
1st. When their mother informed the sisters, in 1835, that she
was soon to make her will, they requested that she would include
her slaves in their portions, that they might set them free. To
this she assented. When she died, some years after this, but four
of her slaves remained. These were included respectively in the
portions of Sarah and Angelina, and were set free. They after
ward purchased another slave, once in the family, and set him free.
Before the death of Mrs. Grimke, Angelina and her sister, Mrs.
Frost, purchased jointly of their mother a slave-man, and brought
him to the North, provided for him a situation in which he earned
enough to buy a lot of land in the outskirts of Philadelphia, upon
which he built him a small house, where he lived in honest indus
try, and was respected as an exemplary good man until his death,
twenty years since. One of his frequent exclamations, in contrast
ing his condition in slavery with his life in freedom, was, " Well,
dis is heaben, sure ! "
2d. In November, 1839, Angelina, in making provision for the
then to her not improbable contingency of sudden death, prepared
a communication to her husband, filled with details concerning
themselves alone. This was enclosed in a sealed envelope, ad
dressed to him with this direction : " To be opened after my
death." In conformity with this direction, her husband, after her
decease, broke the seal, and found among many details this item :
"I also leave to thee the liability of being called upon eventually
to support in part four emancipated slaves in Charleston, S.C.,
whose freedom I have been instrumental in obtaining." It is plain
from the wording of the letter that she had never stated that fact

Memorial Sketches. 63
to him before. She lived forty years after writing it and putting
its contents under seal ; and yet, during all those years, she never
gave him the least intimation of her having freed those four slaves.
It must have been done while she still lived in Charleston. Her
sister Sarah lived with us from the day of Angelina's marriage
till her own death, nearly thirty-five years ; and, though it was
always her delight to give me minute details of her sister's life
from earliest childhood, the fact that she never spoke of that eman
cipation is to me clear proof that she never knew of it. This is
another illustration of that trait already delineated, of never volun
tarily alluding to any act of hers which would attract that honor
which cometh from man. " When thou doest alms, let not thy left
hand know what thy right hand doeth." How few of those who
quote these words of Jesus live them !
A word as to the condition of those slaves set free, and yet not
legally emancipated. The process was this. One of their brothers,
a slave-holder, yet deeply respecting tho conscientious convictions
of his sisters, aided in carrying them out, by taking personally a
bill of sale for each of the slaves, thus becoming technically their
legal owner, responsible for them to the State, like any other legal
owner. While exercising over them none of the authority of
ownership, he shielded them from all the liabilities of slaves, leav
ing them free to live and work, make bargains, receive and spend
their wages where, when, and as they pleased, he acting gratui
tously as their friendly adviser and practical guardian, thus enab
ling them to live free in the climate and surroundings of their
birth, and among their friends.
In describing the case of the slave-woman " Kitty," I omitted to
state the fact that Angelina, upon arriving at womanhood, deter
mining to purchase hor and hor children and set thom free, ar
ranged with her brother to negotiato for thoir purchase with their
mistress. She, learning for whom and for what purpose the pur
chase was desired, cut short the negotiation by a peremptory refu
sal to sell them for such a purpose at any price. Consequently,
Kitty, her children, and grand-children continued slaves until

64 Angelina GrimkS Weld.
1865, when the United States Army entered Charleston and car
ried into effect the Proclamation of President Lincoln. Kitty
still lives there in a comfortable old ago. The foregoing statement
contains all the facts upon the subject of which the writer has any
knowledge. Many of the preceding details illustrate the characteristics of
both the sisters, Angelina and Sarah ; but more of them, those of-
the former. The pages which follow are more especially devoted
to those of the latter.

In gemots

OF

SARAH MOORE GRIMKE.

BORN IN CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA,
November 26, 1792.
DIED IN HYDE PARK, MASSACHUSETTS,
December 23, 1873.

MEMOKIAL SKETCHES.

Though, interspersed throughout the preceding pages, frequent
allusions are made to Sarah M. Grimke, with incidental illustra
tions of her spirit, character, and life, yet these memorial sketches
cannot fitly be brought to a close without more extended details,
in grateful testimony and tribute to her whose whole life was an
abounding benediction outflowing upon all. After her death, it
was long in the heart of our lamented Garrison to write a memo
rial of her, abundant materials for which had been gathered and
arranged for that purpose. But increasing weakness and pain,
with other infirmities, long chronic, forced him to postpone it from
time to time, in hope that recuperated strength might warrant its
prosecution. It became plain, at length, that he could not with
out peril attempt the work, and thus the hope was regretfully
relinquished. Many of tho oarlier abolitionists woll know and profoundly
appreciated Sarah M. Grimk6, and will gladly welcome the just
and beautiful tribute to her loving spirit and saintly character,
which Mr. Garrison rendered at her funeral. This tribute seems
appropriately to belong to the conclusion of this memorial. It
will therefore be reserved as the utterance of its final words, and,
with it, the tender tributes rendered by others, upon the same
occasion. Meanwhile,' the writer, one with her in the same house
hold for thirty-six years, a brother with an older sister, beloved
and revered, gratefully records his loving veneration. In looking

68 Sarah Moore GrimkS.
back over those years, so rife with searching and decisivo tests, he
can recall no one whose character seems to him a nobler model.
It is a tribute to her of merest justice to say that, a love distilling
ever like the dew upon all around, truth with no alloy, perfect
independence and integrity, inviolable friendship, inflexible justice,
intuitive conscience, with utmost fidelity to conviction, a moral
courage that never blenched, and a sympathy outwclling always,
wherever there was need of loving service to sufferer or sinner, —
these, all these, stand out upon her life in strongest relief, from
childhood till death. Whether special events called them into
action or not, they always wrought with unfaltering persistence,
and with never a trace of self-assertion.
Public sentiment, however ferocious, was powerless, either to
make her withhold her testimony, or, in giving it, to swerve a hair
from the line drawn by conscience. Who felt more keenly than
she the pangs of every sufferer ? It was a sympathy ever in
exhaustless outflow, eager to toil, endure, dare, die, if need be, for
its sacred objects, counting it all joy.
An incident in her early girlhood revealed the quality and
depth of her nature, while it foretokened that indissoluble tie
between herself and her younger sister, which, despite their dif
ference in age, seems to have made their souls twin-born, as it
made their lives inseparable. When Angelina was born, Sarah,
who was not yet thirteen years old, entreated her parents to let
her stand sponsor at the babe's baptism. They, thinking it only
a childish impulse that would soon pass, waived the question. But
Sarah, nothing daunted, plied them again and again, with an
intensity which excited their wonder. They replied : " You are
too young to take upon you such a responsibility. You cannot
fully appreciate it, and would shrink from it, if you could. You
must be willing to leave that to us." But it all availed nothing.
Her heart was set upon being the very godmother of the babe.
She longed to profess for it, and in its nam*e, the Christian faith,,
and to bind herself to train it in the way it should go. The
parents, awed at last by her importunity, could refuse no longer.

Memorial Sketches. 69
So tho exultant child stood godmother at tho baptism of her baby
sister. That soul-travail yearning thus intensoly to bless the new-born
babe, — who can estimate its power in casting the character and
moulding the life of Angelina Grimk6 ?
It was when Sarah was about the same age that she used
secretly to teach her slave waiting-maid to read. To avoid dis
covery, this was done only at night, and never by lamp-light.
Night after night, she would lie down with her before the fire,
and teach her by its light. For a while, these contraband excur
sions into the alphabet by fire-light escaped detection, but were at
last discovered and summarily stopped, according to law. For the
acquisition of letters by a slave was a crime against the State ;
and whoever abetted the act was legally subject to pains and
penalties. These were brandished in terrorem over both the cul
prits ; and the deadly plague was stayed !
In reply to a request from the author of " Slavery as it is " that
she would prepare for that book a narrative of such atrocities per
petrated upon slaves as had fallen within her own knowledge,
Sarah wrote a series of details, describing shocking enormities,
" most of which," she says, " came under my own personal observa
tion." These details were printed in the volume entitled "Ameri
can Slavery as it is ; or, The Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses,"
published by the American Anti-slavery Society, in 1838. Of the
effect of that work upon American slavery, the editor of Zion's
Herald, a Methodist paper then published in New York City, said,
"The weight of the blow which that book inflicted upon slavery, it
would be scarcely possible to estimate : it was deadly, and from it
the monster never recovered." Each of the sisters furnished an
extended contribution to that work. Sarah prefaced hers with the
fervid, telling words which follow : —
As I left my native State on account of slavery, deserting the home of
my fathers, to escape the sounds of the lash and the shrieks of tortured
victims, I would gladly bury in oblivion the recollection of those scenes
with which I have been familiar. But this may not, cannot be : they

70 Sarah Moore GrimkS.
come over my memory like gory spectres, and implore me, in the nome
of humanity, for tho sake of tho slave-holder as well as the slave, to bear
witness to tho horrors of tho Southorn prison-house. I fool impelled by a
saored souse of duty to my country, and by sympathy for the bleeding
victims of tyranny and lust, to give my testimony respecting the system
of American slavery, and to detail facts which have come under my own
personal observation. The actors in these tragedies were all men and
women of the highest respectability, and of the first families of South
Carolina, and, with one exception, citizens of Charleston ; and their
cruelties did not in the slightest degree affect their standing in society.
Traits similar to those characteristic of the two sisters, as delin
eated in the foregoing sketches, marked others of their household.
Its now sole surviver, Mrs. Frost, in early youth the wife, and in
six months the widow, of an Episcopal clergyman in Charleston,
left her native city and all her own and her husband's kindred,
and went alone to sojourn among strangers, making Philadelphia
her settled residence, that she might thus shield her only child
from the palsying contact of slavery. Mrs. Frost emancipated her
slaves, brought them with her, and made permanent provision for
them in Pennsylvania.
One of their brothers, the Hon. Thomas S. Grimke, was the
only eminent lawyer in South Carolina who,'- from the first,
denounced and resisted nullification. He published an open letter
>of indignant remonstrance, addressed to John C. Calhoun, George
McDuffie, Governor Hayne, and Robert Barnwell Rhett, his cousin
and legal pupil, then Attorney-General of the State, proclaiming
their acts unconstitutional and their utterances treasonable.
Representing at that time the city of Charleston in the State
Senate, Mr. Grimke' so triumphantly exposed, in a two-days argu
ment before the Senate, the sophistries and false pretences of the
nullifiers, that his constituents, enraged by it, and by his public
letter to Calhoun and McDuffie, chose rather to mob him than to
grapple with his logic. So, with threats of personal violence, they
improvised a mob to attack his house. Hearing of it, Mr. Grimke
sent his family into the country, and ordered his parlors illumi-

Memorial Sketches. 71
taatod. That done, throwing opon his doors, and taking his soat
upon tho porch in front, he awaited the onsot. Whon tho howling
hordo came, upon finding tho house illuminated, and its owner
advanced to the front, ready to be mobbed in such a cause, they,
baffled, began to falter, and, finding their pluck fast oozing, looked
blank, tried to hoot, balked at it, broke ranks, straggled wide, and
slunk away.
In the fall of 1834, Mr. Grimke, invited to address an educa
tional convention of the Western States at Cincinnati, and to
deliver orations at college commencements in the West, passed,
on his way thither, some days with his sisters in Philadelphia,
discussing with them the question of slavery.
Upon leaving, he said : " I expect to be back here in six weeks.
Pray get for me all the abolition works, both English and Ameri
can, which are, in your judgments, best worth studying, and get
them packed ready for me to take when I return to Carolina.
You know," he said, " how long I've been trying to get time to
explore this question of slavery, but professional pressures have
seemed to make it impossible. I have now arranged for leisure
to do it when I get back." The books were ready for transporta
tion before the six weeks expired. While the sisters were await
ing his return, the tidings came that he was dead of cholera.
On his way from Cincinnati to meet his brother Frederick, then
holding a term of the Supreme Court at the State capital, he was
seized with a paroxysm which forced him to stop at a wayside
inn, twelve miles from Columbus, and far from village and phy
sician. A messenger was despatched to his brother, who instantly
adjourned court, and hastened to him with a physician. He
found him already speechless, able only to turn upon him a look
of recognition, smile, press his hand, and die.
Knowing his candor, conscience, and courage, his sisters had
never a doubt that, had he lived, he would have boldly taken his
stand against slavery, and, as was his wont, publicly propagated
his convictions, and thus would doubtless have fallen in his
native city, its first victim and martyr in the cause of impartial

72 Sarah Moore Grimkd.
liberty and righteous law. A letter just received from their
sistor, Mrs. Frost, now living in Charleston, speaks thus of these
events: "When brother Thomas was staying at my house in
Philadelphia, in 1834, ho and Angelina often discussed the slave
question, and ho promised her that he would examine the Subject
thoroughly, as soon as he returned to Charleston ; and I have no
doubt that, had he lived, he would have freed his slaves, and
given to Angelina every aid in his power in prosecuting the work
to whioh she had religiously devoted herself."

FUNERAL SERVICES.

The funeral of Sarah M. Grimke' was held at the family
residence, on Fairmount Avenue, Hyde Park, Mass., Decem
ber 26, 1873.
They were conducted by the Rev. Francis C. Williams,
then the pastor of the Hyde Park Unitarian Church.
The following are extracts from his just and tender
tribute to the character of the deceased: —

REMARKS OF MR. WILLIAMS.
It were unfitting, dear friends of this household, that any out
of your own circle should speak of her virtues, and of the blessed
influence of her life whom God has called out of this world, —
it were unfitting but that you may know to-day how much we
feel with you, and appreciate her character as an example and
help to all of us, in our homes and social life. To hear this will
not be a pain to you; and to say it, simply and heartily, is a
privilege to us.
It would be unfitting that to you, her old friends, who have
labored so long with her in the cause of humanity, we neighbors
10

74 Sarah Moore Grimke".
of this town, which is but of yesterday, should speak of her devo
tion to that cause in all its forms, except that you may know and
rejoice that to the last, while her mind could plan, her pen could
move, and her heart could prompt, she was busy in the service of
humanity, — with her might and beyond her strength, in con
stant nameless deeds of kindness to those in need in our own
neighborhood, and far to the South deeds which were wise and
beautiful, — help to the poor, sympathy with the suffering, conso
lation to the dying.
Her appeals were frequent in our local paper, her impulse was
in all our lives. At this threshold there stood but a day since a
barrel, not of luxuries brought in for Christmas, but one of a long
line of them, filled with useful garments, collected and prepared
according to her system, to go to the far South, to carry not
outward comfort only, but sympathy and encouragement to those
for whom her heart beat warmly, even in her last sickness, and to
whom, being dead, she yet speaks in help and love. . . . She
has fought the good fight of right and love ; she has finished her
course of duty ; she has kept the faith of friendship and sacrifice.
. . . We will more truly live because she has lived among us.
Let us live the life of the righteous, and let her hope and peace
be ours. . . .
At the conclusion of Mr. Williams' remarks, the follow
ing hymn, written for the occasion by Edwin Morton, Esq.,
of Boston, was sung by the choir : —
O thou, whose truth we dimly seek,
And murmur while no voice we hear,
And e'en with angels fain would speak,
When to our blindness nought is clear, —
That murmuring blindness, Lord, forgive I •
Behold in her thy truth revealed ;
Thine angel lent with. us to live,
E'en while to heaven we vain appealed.

Funeral Services. 75
Thy voice was hers, her lips thy truth,
Beneath whose fearless accents quailed,
In placid age or burning youth,
All shapes of wrong which right assailed.
Those accents fade, the angel flies I
We list, we look, and silence broods ;
But the bright vision never dies,
And cheers for aye our solitude.
Immediately after the singing, came the following

REMARKS OF WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON.
As a prelude to the brief but imperfect tribute which I wish
to pay to the memory of the venerated and saintly woman whose
mortal remains are waiting for their interment, and as expressing
the sentiments which she cherished in regard to our earthly
dissolution, — the source of so much gloom and irrational dread,
— I will read the following passage from Dr. Young's "-Night
Thoughts": —
" Our dying friends are pioneers to smooth
Our rugged path to death ; to break those bars
Of terror and abhorrence Nature throws
'Cross our obstructed way : and thus to make
Welcome, as safe, our port from every storm.
Dream we that lustre of the moral world
Goes out in smoke, and rottenness the close?
Why was he wise to know, and warm to praise,
And strenuous to transcribe, in human life,
The mind Almighty ? Could it be that fate,
Just when the lineaments began to shine,
And dawn the deity, should snatch the draught,
With night eternal blot it out?
Shall we this moment gaze on God in man,

76 Sarah Moore Grim/cc*.
The next lose man forever in the dust?
Life makes the soul depondent on the dust :
Death gives her wings to mount above the spheres.
Through chinks, styled organs, dim life peeps at light,
Death bursts tho involving cloud, and all is day I
All eye, all ear, the disembodied power.
Death has feigned evils Nature shall not feel ;
Life's ills substantial wisdom cannot shun.
Death has no dread but what frail life imparts ;
Nor Life true joy but what kind Death improves.
No bliss has Life to boast, till Death can give
Far greater ; Life's a debtor to the grave, —
Dark lattice letting in eternal day.
. . . Death is the crown of life :
Were death denied, poor man would live in vain ;
Were death denied, to live would not be life ;
Were death denied, e'en fools would wish to die.
Death wounds to cure. We fall, we rise, we reign I
Spring from our fetters, fasten in the skies,
Where blooming Eden withers in our sight.
Death gives us more than was in Eden lost :
This King of Terrors is the Prince of Peace."

Mr. Garrison then spoke, in substance, as follows : —
I had intended to methodize my thoughts for this occasion,
but have been prevented from doing so, and must therefore speak
impromptu, as the heart may dictate.
How many of my beloved friends and tried co-workers in the
anti-slavery cause have received their translation to the spirit
land ! Last Sunday I attended the obsequies of one branded
and held as a chattel slave from his birth, yet made in the divine
image, — who, many years ago, asserted his God-given right to
be free, by a successful escape to the North, where he remained
till after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850, when,
knowing that there was no longer any Bafety for him on our soil,
he took refuge under the British flag, and remained in exile until

Funeral Services. 77
the jubilee trump was blown, — in every situation leading an
upright life, exhibiting a manly spirit, and commanding the
respect of all who knew him. Yesterday I stood by tho coffin
of one widely known for his early, long-continued, uncompro
mising, and eloquent advocacy of the rights of his oppressed
race, in the person of Charles Lenox Remond, — the first colored
lecturer to enter the anti-slavery field, and never leaving it until
the victory had been won.
To-day I am here to pay the last offices of respect and love
to one whose rare virtues and beneficent labors entitle her to a
conspicuous place among the worthiest of her sex. In view of
such a life as hers, consecrated to the relief of suffering humanity
in its manifold needs, embracing all goodness, animated by the
broadest catholicity of spirit, and adorned with every excellent
attribute, any attempt at panegyric here seems to be as needless
as it must be inadequate. " To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To add a perfume to the violet,
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess."
I have attended many funerals, but never one at which there
has been less cause for sorrow and condolence than the present.
Here there is nothing to depress or deplore, nothing premature
or startling, nothing to be supplemented or finished. It is the
consummation of a long life, well rounded with charitable deeds,
active sympathies, serviceable toils, loving ministrations, grand
testimonies, and nobly self-sacrificing endeavors. For one, I feel
this occasion to be one of exultation rather than of sorrow. These
beautiful flowers, so rich in their mingled perfumes ; this cheer
ing light of day, which, fitly unexcluded, gives such brightness
to these rooms, — symbolize both the faith and character of our
departed friend. In her daily walk and conversation, she exerted
the finest influences, and was as fresh in spirit and as interested
in every new phase of philanthropy, reform, and progress as
though she were but twenty, instead of eighty, years of age.

78 Sarah Moore Grimke",
With two great historical movements, sho and her beloved and
now bereaved Bister, Angelina, will always be conspicuously iden
tified ; namely, that for the abolition of chattel slavery and the
movement for the elevation and enfranchisement of woman.
Though born of slave-holding parents in Charleston, S.C., and
surrounded from childhood with all the depraving influences of
the slave-system, they needed no conversion to or knowledge of
abolitionism, but from the beginning instinctively recoiled 'from
the terrible iniquity ; and, subsequently receiving certain slaves as
an inheritance, they immediately set them free, to the disgust
and displeasure of relatives and alienated friends.
Leaving their native State for a residence in Philadelphia, they
became " Friends " by a change in their religious views, and
members of that society. In the summer of 1837, they visited
Massachusetts, and were moved to address in public such of their
sex as could be induced to hear them concerning the evils and
horrors of Southern slavery. On coming to Boston, they were
warmly greeted by the Boston Female Anti-slavery Society,
which gave them letters of recommendation to other similar so
cieties throughout New England, asking that every facility be
given them for the prosecution of their labors in the cause of
emancipation, eulogizing "their noble sacrifices and published
works," and saying one thing we cannot omit to mention, which
marks them as eminently qualified for the promulgation of anti-
slavery principles, — the elevated and. Christian point of view
from which they beheld the condition of woman, her duties and
her consequent rights. Under such circumstances, allied to one
of the highest families of South Carolina, having broken the fet
ters of those slaves bequeathed to them, and testifying as eye-wit
nesses of tho wrongs and sufferings of those in bondage, what
was their reception in this State ? They had to encounter ridi
cule and opprobrium wherever they appeared ; the pulpit and the
press discountenanced them ; and, as a crushing and final effort
to make them hold their peaoe, the General Association of Evan
gelical Clergymen in Massachusetts promptly met at Brookfield,

Funeral Services. 79
and issued a "Pastoral Lottor," written by tho Rov. Nchcmiah
Adams of Boston, in tho oourso of which they said : " Wo invito
your attention to the dangers which at present seom to threaten
the female character with wide-spread and permanent injury.
When woman assumes the place and tone of man as a public re
former, our care and protection of her seem unnecessary; we
put ourselves in self-defence against her ; she yields the power
which God has given her for protection, and her character be
comes unnatural. . . . We cannot therefore but regret the mis
taken conduct of those who encourage females to bear an obtru
sive and ostentatious part in measures of reform, and countenance
any of the sex who so far forget themselves as to itinerate in the
character of public lecturers and teachers." On reading this
ecclesiastical missive, our honored Quaker, John G. Whittier,
wrote one of his finest effusions : —
" So this all, — the utmost reach
Of priestly power the mind to fetter !
When laymen think and women preach
A war of words ! a " Pastoral Letter I " ' '

But ye who scorn the thrilling tale
Of Carolina's high-souled daughters,
(Which echoes here the mournful wail
Of sorrow from Edisto's waters,
Close while ye may the public ear, —
With malice vex, with slander wound them :
The pure and good shall throng to hear,
And tried and manly hearts surround them.
Oh, ever may the Power which led
Their way to such a fiery trial,
And strengthened womanhood to tread
The wine-press of such self-denial,
Be round them in an evil land,
With wisdom and with strength from Heaven,
With Miriam's voice and Judith's hand,
And Deborah's song of triumph given I "

fcO Sarah Moore Grimke".
Faithful to their great mission, and undaunted by this and
every other attempt to prevent their being heard, these devoted
women continued to publicly address all who chose to hear them,
whether of their own box exclusively or in promiscuous assembly ;
and, by their earnost and pathetic appeals, thousands of converts
were made to the anti-slavery cause. Not only did they accom
plish much toward the liberation of the millions of their own sex
held in chattel servitude, but they were instrumental in giving a
mighty impetus to that sublime movement for the enfranchise
ment of woman which challenges the attention of the civilized
world. Mr. Garrison concluded his remarks by an appreciative
reference to the deep concern and benevolent activity man
ifested by the departed saint, in constantly making or so
liciting articles of clothing for the destitute freedmen, and
obtaining all possible aid to succor them till they should be
able to provide for themselves. "In this blessed work,
though so advanced in years, she knew no weariness. She
lived only to do good, neither seeking nor desiring to be
known, ever unselfish, unobtrusive, compassionate, and lov
ing, dwelling in God, and God in her." He tenderly alluded
to the bereavement of Mr. and Mrs. Weld, as long one in
spirit, purpose, and labors with the deceased, blending their
aspirations together, and united by ties incomparably finer
and closer than any growing out of mere blood relationship.
At the close of Mr. Garrison's remarks, tender tributes to
the loving, self-sacrificing spirit, and to the heroic, saintly
character of the deceased, were rendered by Mrs. Lucy
Stone and Theodore D. Weld. Would that we could in
clude in this the admirable tribute of Mrs. Stone ; but her
words were not reported. A writer in the Norfolk County
Gazette justly characterized them as " a most eloquent and
touching tribute to the memory of Miss Grimk&"

Funeral Services. 81
The following is an extract of a letter from Mr. Wendell
Phillips, who, just as he was starting for the funeral, was
summoned away by imperative duties, of which, he says,
" postponement was impossible " : —
I should havo been glad to come and testify my loving admi
ration of the fidelity, courage, long-enduring patience, far-sighted
wisdom, and consistent life, whose words and example, beginning
forty years ago, are hearing such rich fruit to-day. I can never
forget the impulse our cause got, when those two sisters doubled
¦our hold on New England in 1837 and 1838, and made a name,
already illustrious in South Carolina by groat services, equally
historical in Massachusetts, in the two grandest movements of
our day. How marvellously have they been permitted to see the
success of their devotedness and appeals !
With heartiest sympathy yours,
Wendell Phillips.

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