“After endeavoring to show that woman has no moral right to exercise the right of petition for the dumb and stricken slave; no business to join, in any way, in the excitement which anti-slavery principles are producing in our country; no business to join abolition societies, etc., thou professest to tell our sisters what they are to do in order to bring the system of slavery to an end.  And now, my dear friend, what does all thou hast said in many pages amount to?  Why, that women are to exert their influence in private life to allay the excitement which exists on this subject, and to quench the flame of sympathy in the hearts of their fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons.  Fatal delusion!  Will Christian women heed such advice?

“Hast thou ever asked thyself what the slave would think of thy book if he could read it?  Dost thou know that, from the beginning to the end, not a word of compassion for him has fallen from thy pen?  Recall, I pray, the memory of hours which thou spent in writing it.  Was the paper once moistened by the tear of pity?  Did thy heart once swell with sympathy for thy sister in bonds?  Did it once ascend to God in broken accents for the deliverance of the captive?  Didst thou even ask thyself what the free man of color would think of it?  Is it such an exhibition of slavery and prejudice as will call down his blessing on thy head?  Hast thou thought of these things? or carest thou not for the blessings and prayers of these our suffering brethren?  Consider, I entreat, the reception given to thy book by the apologists of slavery.  What meaneth that loud acclaim with which they hail it?  Oh, listen and weep, and let thy repentings be kindled together, and speedily bring forth, I beseech thee, fruits meet for repentance, and henceforth show thyself faithful to Christ and His bleeding representative, the slave.

“I greatly fear that thy book might have been written just as well, hadst thou not had the heart of a woman.  It bespeaks a superior intellect, but paralyzed and spellbound by the sorcery of a worldly-minded expediency.  Where, oh, where in its pages are the outpourings of a soul overwhelmed with a sense of the heinous crimes of our nation, and the necessity of immediate repentance? ...  Farewell!  Perhaps on a dying bed thou mayst vainly wish that ’Miss Beecher on the Slave Question’ might perish with the mouldering hand which penned its cold and heartless pages.  But I forbear, and in deep sadness of heart, but in tender love though I thus speak, I bid thee again, farewell.  Forgive me if I have wronged thee, and pray for her who still feels like

“Thy sister in the bonds of a common sisterhood.

“A.E.  GRIMKE.”