“Catherine’s arguments are the most insidious things I ever read, and I feel it my duty to answer them; only, I know not how to find language strong enough to express my indignation at the view she takes of woman’s character and duty.”

The answer was given in a number of sharp, terse, letters, sent to the Liberator from various places where the sisters stopped while lecturing.  A few passages will convey some idea of the spirit and style of these letters, thirteen in number.  In the latter part of the second letter she says:—­

“Dost thou ask what I mean by emancipation?  I will explain myself in a few words.

“1st.  It is to reject with indignation the wild and guilty phantasy that man can hold property in man.

“2d.  To pay the laborer his hire, for he is worthy of it.

“3d.  No longer to deny him the right of marriage, but to let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband, as saith the apostle.

“4th.  To let parents have their own children, for they are the gift of the Lord to them, and no one else has any right to them.

“5th.  No longer to withhold the advantages of education, and the privilege of reading the Bible.

“6th.  To put the slave under the protection of equitable laws.

“Now why should not all this be done immediately?  Which of these things is to be done next year, and which the year after? and so on. Our immediate emancipation means doing justice and loving mercy to-day, and this is what we call upon every slave-holder to do....

“I have seen too much of slavery to be a gradualist.  I dare not, in view of such a system, tell the slave-holder that he is ’physically unable to emancipate his slaves.’[6] I say he is able to let the oppressed go free, and that such heaven-daring atrocities ought to cease now, henceforth, and forever.  Oh, my very soul is grieved to find a Northern woman ‘thus sewing pillows under all arm-holes,’ framing and fitting soft excuses for the slave-holder’s conscience, whilst with the same pen she is professing to regard slavery as a sin.  ‘An open enemy is better than such a secret friend.’

“Hoping that thou mayst soon be emancipated from such inconsistency, I remain until then,

“Thine out of the bonds of Christian abolitionism.

“A.E.  GRIMKE.”

  [6] The plea made by many of the apologists was that, as the laws of
  some of the States forbade emancipation, the masters were physically
  unable to free their slaves.

The last letter, which Angelina says she wrote in sadness and read to her sister in tears, ends thus:—­