“My sister went last evening to hear George Thompson.  She is deeply interested in this subject, and was much pleased with his discourse.  Do not the colored people believe that the Colonization Society may prove a blessing to Africa, that it may be the means of liberating some slaves, and that, by sending a portion of them there, they may introduce civilization and Christianity into this benighted region?  That the Colonization Society can ever be the means of breaking the yoke in America appears to me utterly impossible, but when I look at poor heathen Africa, I cannot but believe its efforts will be a blessing to her.”

In the next letter, written in April, she descants on the universal prejudice against color,—­“a prejudice,” she says, “which will in days to come excite as much astonishment as the facts now do that Christians—­some of them I verily believe, sincere lovers of God—­put to death nineteen persons and one dog for the crime of witchcraft.”

And yet, singularly enough, she does not, at this time, notice the inconsistency of a separate seat for colored people in all the churches.  In the Quaker meeting this was especially humiliating, as it was placed either directly under the stairs, or off in a corner, was called the “negro seat,” and was regularly guarded to prevent either colored people from passing beyond it, or white people from making a mistake and occupying it.  Two years later, Sarah and Angelina both denounced it; but before that, though they may have privately deplored it, they seem to have accepted it as a necessary conformity to the existing feeling against the blacks.

The decision of Friends’ Society concerning discussion Sarah Grimke seems to have accepted, for, as we have said, there is no expression of her views on emancipation in letters or diary.  But Angelina felt that her obligations to humanity were greater than her obligations to the Society of Friends; and as she listened to the eloquent speeches of George Thompson and others, her life-long interest in the slave was stimulated, and it aroused in her a desire to work for him in some way, to do something that would practically help his cause.

On one of several loose leaves of a diary which Angelina kept at this time, we find the following under date, “5th Mo. 12th, 1835:  Five months have elapsed since I wrote in this diary, since which time I have become deeply interested in the subject of abolition.  I had long regarded this cause as utterly hopeless, but since I have examined anti-slavery principles, I find them so full of the power of truth, that I am confident not many years will roll by before the horrible traffic in human beings will be destroyed in this land of Gospel privileges.  My soul has measurably stood in the stead of the poor slave, and my earnest prayers have been poured out that the Lord would be pleased to permit me to be instrumental of good to these degraded, oppressed, and suffering fellow-creatures.  Truly, I often feel ready to go to prison or to death in this cause of justice, mercy, and love; and I do fully believe if I am called to return to Carolina, it will not be long before I shall suffer persecution of some kind or other.”