The soul of Angelina Grimké, and that of her sister Sarah, were in vital sympathy with all attempts to reform these great wrongs; but the one which then had pre-eminence above all was human slavery. All of us who are advanced in years can recall with what almost overwhelming effect the appeals of our beloved and lamented Garrison first came to our minds. The conscience of the community was slumbering over this sin: his utterances stung it to frenzy. In the midst of it, and in the heartiest response to his appeals, came the gentle, calm voices of Sarah and Angelina Grimké, enforcing those appeals by facts of their own observation and experience. I have said that their nature was full of tenderness and compassion; but, in addition to this, Angelina, especially, possessed a rare gift of eloquence, a calm power of persuasion, a magnetic influence over those that listened to her, which carried conviction to hearts that nothing before had reached." "I shall never forget the wonderful manifestation of this power during six successive evenings in what was then called the Odeon, at the corner of Franklin and Federal Streets. It was the old Boston Theater, which had been converted into a music hall, the four galleries rising above the auditorium all crowded with a silent audience, carried away with the calm, simple eloquence which narrated what she and her sister had seen from their earliest days. And yet this Odeon scene, the audience so quiet and intensely absorbed, occurred at the most enflamed period of the anti-slavery contest. The effective agent in this phenomenon was Angelina's serene, commanding eloquence, a wonderful gift, which enchained attention, disarmed prejudice, and carried her hearers with her."
Wendell Phillips said:
Friends, this life carries us back to the first chapter of that great movement with which the name of Angelina Grimké is associated—when our cities roared with riot, when William Lloyd Garrison was dragged through the streets, when Dresser was mobbed in Nashville, and Mackintosh burned in St. Louis. At that time, the hatred toward Abolitionists was so bitter and merciless that the friends of Lovejoy left his grave a long time unmarked; and at last ventured to put, with his name, on his tombstone, only this piteous entreaty: Jam parce sepulto, "Spare him now in his grave." We were but a handful then, and our words beat against the stony public as powerless as if against the north wind. We got no sympathy from most Northern men: their consciences were seared as with a hot iron. At this time, a young girl came from the proudest State in the slave-holding section. She come to lay on the altar of this despised cause, this seemingly hopeless crusade, both family and friends, the best social position, a high place in the church, genius, and many gifts. No man at this day can know the gratitude we felt for this help from such an unexpected source. After this came James G. Birney from the South, and many able and influential men and women joined us. At last John Brown laid his life, the crowning sacrifice, on the altar of the cause. But no man who remembers 1837 and its lowering clouds will deny that there was hardly any contribution to the anti-slavery movement greater or more impressive than the crusade of these Grimké sisters from South Carolina through the New England States.
Gifted with rare eloquence, she swept the chords of the human heart with a power that has never been surpassed, and rarely equaled. I well remember, evening after evening, listening to eloquence such as never then had been heard from a woman. Her own hard experience, the long, lonely, intellectual and moral struggle from which she came out conqueror, had ripened her power, and her wondrous faculty of laying bare her own heart to reach the hearts of others, shone forth till she carried us all captive. She was the first woman to whom the halls of the Massachusetts Legislature were opened. My friend, James C. Alvord, was the courageous chairman who broke that door open for the anti-slavery women. It gave Miss Grimké the opportunity to speak to the best culture and character of Massachusetts; and the profound impression then made on a class not often in our meetings was never wholly lost. It was not only the testimony of one most competent to speak, but it was the profound religious experience of one who had broken out of the charmed circle, and whose intense earnestness melted all opposition. The converts she made needed no after-training. It was when you saw she was opening some secret record of her own experience, that the painful silence and breathless interest told the deep effect and lasting impression her words were making on minds, that afterward never rested in their work.
In 1840, '41, this anti-slavery movement was broken in halves by the woman question. The people believed in the silence of women. But, when the Grimkés went through New England, such was the overpowering influence with which they swept the churches that men did not remember this dogma till after they had gone. When they left, and the spell weakened, some woke to the idea that it was wrong for a woman to speak to a public assembly. The wakening of old prejudice to its combat with new convictions was a fearful storm. But she bore it, when it broke at last, with the intrepidity with which she surmounted every obstacle. By the instinctive keenness of her conscience, she only needed to see truth to recognize it, as the flower turns to the sun. God had touched that soul so that it needed no special circumstance, no word of warning or instruction from those about her; for she was ever self-poised.
When I think of her, there comes to me the picture of the spotless dove in the tempest, as she battles with the storm, seeking for some place to rest her foot. She reminds me of innocence personified in Spencer's poem. In her girlhood, alone, heart-led, she comforts the slave in his quarters; mentally struggling with the problems his position wakes her to. Alone, not confused, but seeking something to lean on, she grasps the Church, which proves a broken reed. No whit disheartened, she turns from one sect to another, trying each by the infallible touchstone of that clear, childlike conscience. The two old lonely Quakers in their innocence rest her foot awhile. But the eager soul must work, not rest in testimony. Coming North, at last, she makes her own religion,—one of sacrifice and toil. Breaking away from, rising above all forms, the dove floats at last in the blue sky where no clouds reach.
And thus exiled from her native city, she goes forth with her sister to seek the spot where she can most effectually strike at the institution. Were I to single out the moral and intellectual trait which most won me, it was her serene indifference to the judgment of those about her. Self-poised, she seemed morally sufficient to herself. Her instincts were all so clear and right she could trust their lesson. But a clear, wide, patient submission to all suggestion and influence preceded opinion, and her public addresses were remarkable for the fullness and clearness of the arguments they urged. She herself felt truths, but patiently argued them to others.
The testimony she gave touching slavery was, as she termed it, "the wail of a broken-hearted child." It was known to a few that the pictures she drew were of her own fireside. That loving heart! how stern a sense of duty must have wrung it before she was willing to open that record! But with sublime fidelity, with entire self-sacrifice, she gave all she could to the great argument that was to wake a nation to duty. Listen to the fearful indictment she records against the system. And this was not slavery in its most brutal, repulsive form. It was slavery hid in luxury, when refinement seemed to temper some of its worst elements. But, with keen sense of right, even a child of a dozen years saw through the veil, saw the system in its inherent vileness, saw the real curse of slavery in the hardened heart of the slave-holder.
A few years of active life, extensive and most influential labor, many sheaves and a rich harvest, God's blessing on her service, then illness barring her from the platform. How serenely she took up the cross! So specially endowed; men bowing low so readily to the power and magic of her words; she could not but have seen the grand possibilities that were opening before her. How peacefully she accepted the bond, and set herself to training others for the work against which her own door was shut! East, West, North, and South, come up to give testimony that these later years bore ample fruit. How many souls have cause to thank that enforced silence! I have listened to such testimonies, spoken sometimes in tears, on the shores of the Great Lakes and beyond the Mississippi."
From the following facts and anecdotes told by her husband, we see that Angelina united with the highest moral heroism, the physical courage and coolness in the hour of danger that but few men can boast. Theodore D. Weld, in his published sketch, says:
Though high physical courage is also fairly inferrable from her anti-slavery career, yet only those most with her in life's practical affairs can
