“When it (the Appeal) came out, a large number of copies were sent by mail to South Carolina.  Most of them were publicly burned by postmasters.  Not long after this, the city authorities of Charleston learned that Miss Grimke was intending to visit her mother and sisters, and pass the winter with them.  Thereupon the mayor called upon Mrs. Grimke and desired her to inform her daughter that the police had been instructed to prevent her landing while the steamer remained in port, and to see to it that she should not communicate, by letter or otherwise, with any persons in the city; and, further, that if she should elude their vigilance and go on shore, she would be arrested and imprisoned until the return of the vessel.  Her Charleston friends at once conveyed to her the message of the mayor, and added that the people of Charleston were so incensed against her, that if she should go there despite the mayor’s threat of pains and penalties, she could not escape personal violence at the hands of the mob.  She replied to the letter that her going would probably compromise her family; not only distress them, but put them in peril, which she had neither heart nor right to do; but for that fact, she would certainly exercise her constitutional right as an American citizen, and go to Charleston to visit her relatives, and if for that, the authorities should inflict upon her pains and penalties, she would willingly bear them, assured that such an outrage would help to reveal to the free States the fact that slavery defies and tramples alike upon constitutions and laws, and thus outlaws itself.”

These brave words said no more than they meant, for Angelina Grimke’s moral heroism would have borne her to the front of the fiercest battle ever fought for human rights; and she would have counted it little to lay down her life if that could help on the victory.  She touched as yet only the surf of the breakers into which she was soon to be swept, but her clear eye would not have quailed, or her cheek have blanched, if even then all their cruelty could have been revealed to her.

CHAPTER XII.

We have seen, a few pages back, that Angelina expressed her thankfulness at Sarah’s change of views with respect to the anti-slavery cause.  Again we must regret the destruction of Sarah’s letters, which would have shown us by what chains of reasoning her mind at last reached entire sympathy with Angelina’s.  We can only infer that her progress was rapid after the public rebuke which caused her to turn her back on Philadelphia, and that her sister’s brave and isolated position, appealing strongly to her affection, urged her to make a closer examination of the subject of abolitionism than she had yet done.  The result we know; her entire conversion in a few weeks to Angelina’s views.  And from that time she travelled close by her sister’s side in this as well as in other questions of reform, drawing her inspiration from Angelina’s clearer intuitions and calmer judgment, and frankly and affectionately acknowledging her right of leadership.