“Night. Sometimes I think that the children of Israel could not have looked towards the land of Canaan with keener longing than I do to the North.  I do not expect to go there and be exempt from trial, far from it; and yet it looks like a promised land, a pleasant land, because it is a land of freedom; and it seems to me that I would rather bear much deeper spiritual exercises than, day after day, and month after month, to endure the conutless evils which incessantly flow from slavery.  ’Oh, to grace how great a debtor for my sentiments on this subject.  Surely I may measurably adopt the language of Paul, when with holy triumph he exclaimed:  ‘By the grace of God I am what I am.’”

A few weeks later, we read:  “If I could believe that I contributed to dear mother’s happiness, surely duty, yea, inclination, would lead me to continue here; but I do not.  Yesterday morning I read her some papers on slavery, which had just come by the L.C. (vessel).  It was greatly against her will, but it seemed to me I must do it, and that this was the last effort which would be required of me.  She was really angry, but I did not feel condemned.”

“Night. Have sought a season of retirement, in order to ponder all these things in my heart, for I feel greatly burdened, and think I must open this subject to dear mother to-morrow, perhaps.  I earnestly desire to do the Lord’s will.”

“12th.  This morning I read parts of dear sister’s letters to mother, on the subject of my going to the North.  She did not oppose, though she regretted it.  My mind is in a calm, almost an indifferent, state about it, simply acquiescing in what I believe to be the divine will concerning me.”

Had we all of Sarah’s letters written to Angelina, we should doubtless see that she fully sympathized with her in her anti-slavery sentiments; but Sarah’s diary shows her thoughts to have been almost wholly absorbed by her disappointed hopes, and her trials in the ministry.  As positive evidences of her continued interest in slavery, we have only the fact that, in 1829, Angelina mentions, in her diary, receiving anti-slavery documents from her sister, and the statements of friends that she retained her interest in the subject which had, in her earlier years, caused her so much sorrow.

It is astonishing how ignorant of passing events, even of importance, a person may remain who is shut up as Sarah Grimke was, in an organization hedged in by restrictions which would prevent her from gaining such knowledge.  She mingled in no society outside of her church; her time was so fully occupied with her various charitable and religious duties, that she frequently laments the necessity of neglecting reading and writing, which, she says, “I love so well.”

When a few friends met together, their conversation was chiefly of religious or benevolent matters, and it is probable that Sarah even read no newspaper but the Friends’ Journal.