The silent conflict in the soul of this tender, conscientious woman during those days of prostration was known only to her God.  The question of prejudice had no place in it,—­that had long and long ago been cast to the winds.  It was the fair name of a loved brother that was at stake, and which must be sustained or blighted by her action.  “Ask me not,” she once wrote to a young person, “if it is expedient to do what you propose:  ask yourself if it is right.”  This question now came to her in a shape it had never assumed before, and it was hard to answer.  But it was no surprise to her family when she came forth from that chamber of suffering and announced her decision.  She would acknowledge those nephews.  She would not deepen the brand of shame that had been set upon their brows:  hers, rather, the privilege to efface it.  Her brother had wronged these, his children; his sisters must right them.  No doubt of the duty lingered in her mind.  Those youths were her own flesh and blood, and, though the whole world should scoff, she would not deny them.

Her decision was accepted by her husband and sister without a murmur of dissent.  If either had any doubts of its wisdom, they were never uttered; and, as was always the case with them, having once decided in their own minds a question of duty, they acted upon it in no half-way spirit, and with no stinted measures.  In the long letter which Angelina wrote to Francis and Archibald Grimke, and which Theodore Weld and Sarah Grimke fully indorsed, there appeared no trace of doubt or indecision.  The general tone was just such in which she might have addressed newly-found legitimate nephews.  After telling them that if she had not suspected their relationship to herself, she should probably not have written them, she questions them on various points, showing her desire to be useful to them, and adds, “I want to talk to you face to face, and am thinking seriously of going on to your Commencement in June.”  A few lines further on she says:—­

“I will not dwell on the past:  let all that go.  It cannot be altered.  Our work is in the present, and duty calls upon us now so to use the past as to convert its curse into a blessing.  I am glad you have taken the name of Grimke.  It was once one of the noblest names of Carolina.  You, my young friends, now bear this once honored name.  I charge you most solemnly, by your upright conduct and your life-long devotion to the eternal principles of justice and humanity and religion, to lift this name out of the dust where it now lies, and set it once more among the princes of our land.”