After a few affectionate inquiries, she says: "I have just finished my 'Appeal to Southern Women.' It has furnished work for two weeks. How much I wish I could have thee here, if it were only for three or four hours, that we might read it over together before I send it to Elizur Wright. I read it to Margaret, and she says it carries its own evidence with it; still, I should value thy judgment very much if I could have it, but a private opportunity offers to-morrow, and I think I had better send it. It must go just as I sent my letter to W.L.G., with fervent prayers that the Lord would do just as he pleased with it. I believe He directed and helped me to write it, and now I feel as if I had nothing to do but to send it to the Anti-Slavery Society, submitting it entirely to their judgment.... I cannot be too thankful for the change thou expressest in thy feelings with regard to the Anti-Slavery Society, and feel no desire at all to blame thee for former opposition, believing, as I do, that it was permitted in order to drive me closer to my Saviour, and into a deeper examination of the ground upon which I was standing. I am indeed thankful for it; how could I be otherwise, when it was so evident thou hadst my good at heart and really did for the best? And it did not hurt me at all. It did not alienate me from the blessed cause, for I think the same suffering that would drive us back from a bad cause makes us cling to and love a good one more ardently. O sister, I feel as if I could give up not only friends, but life itself, for the slave, if it is called for. I feel as if I could go anywhere to save him, even down to the South if I am called there. The conviction deepens and strengthens, as retirement affords fuller opportunity for calm reflection, that the cause of emancipation is a cause worth suffering for, yea, dying for, if need be. With regard to the proposed mission in New York, I can see nothing about it, and never did any poor creature feel more unfit to do anything than I do to undertake it. But what duty presses me into, I cannot press myself out of.... I sometimes feel frightened to think of how long I was standing idle in the market-place, and cannot help attributing it in a great measure to the doctrine of nothingness so constantly preached up in our Society. It is the most paralyzing, zeal-quenching doctrine that ever was preached in the Church, and I believe has produced its legitimate fruit of nothingness in reducing us to nothing, when we ought to have been a light in the Christian Church.... Farewell, dearest, perhaps we shall soon meet."
The Appeal was sent to New York, and this was what Mr. Wright wrote to the author in acknowledging its receipt:—
"I have just finished reading your Appeal, and not with a dry eye. I do not feel the slightest doubt that the committee will publish it. Oh that it could be rained down into every parlor in our land. I know it will carry the Christian women of the South if it can be read, and my soul blesses that dear and glorious Saviour who has helped you to write it."
When it was read some days after to the gentlemen of the committee, they found in it such an intimate knowledge of the workings of the whole slave system, such righteous denunciation of it, and such a warm interest in the cause of emancipation, that they decided to publish it at once and scatter it through the country, especially through the South. It made a pamphlet of thirty-six pages. The Quarterly Anti-Slavery Magazine for October, 1836, thus mentions it:—
"This eloquent pamphlet is from the pen of a sister of the late Thomas S. Grimké, of Charleston, S.C. We need hardly say more of it than that it is written with that peculiar felicity and unction which characterized the works of her lamented brother. Among anti-slavery writings there are two classes—one especially adapted to make new converts, the other to strengthen the old. We cannot exclude Miss Grimké's Appeal from either class. It belongs pre-eminently to the former. The converts that will be made by it, we have no doubt, will be not only numerous, but thorough-going."
Mr. Wright spoke of it as a patch of blue sky breaking through the storm-cloud of public indignation which had gathered so black over the handful of anti-slavery workers.
This praise was not exaggerated. The pamphlet produced the most profound sensation wherever it was read, but, as Angelina predicted, she was made to suffer for having written it. Friends upbraided and denounced her, Catherine Morris even predicting that she would be disowned, and intimating pretty plainly that she would not dissent from such punishment; and Angelina even began to doubt her own judgment, and to question if she ought not to have continued to live a useless life in Philadelphia, rather than to have so displeased her best friends. But her convictions of duty were too strong to allow her to remain long in this depressed, semi-repentant state. In a letter to a friend she expresses herself as almost wondering at her own weakness; and of Catherine Morris she says: "Her disapproval, more than anything else, shook my resolution. Nevertheless, I told her, with many tears, that I felt it a religious duty to labor in this cause, and that I must do it even against the advice and wishes of my friends. I think if I ever had a clear, calm view of the path of duty in all my life, I have had it since I came here, in reference to slavery. But I assure thee that I expect nothing less than that my labors in this blessed cause will result in my being disowned by Friends, but none of these things will move me. I must confess I value my right very little in a Society which is frowning on all the moral reformations of the day, and almost enslaving its members by unchristian and unreasonable restrictions, with regard to uniting with others in these works of faith and labors of love. I do not believe it would cost me one pang to be disowned for doing my duty to the slave."
But her condemnation reached beyond the Quaker Society—even to her native city, where her Appeal produced a sensation she had little expected. Mr. Weld's account of its reception there is thus given:—
"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 Grimké was intending to visit her mother and sisters, and pass the winter with them. Thereupon the mayor called upon Mrs. Grimké 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 Grimké'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.