Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 1.djvu/420

398 on every side. But hers was a courage greater than theirs, She not only faced death at the hands of stealthy assassins and howling mobs in her loyalty to truth, duty, and humanity, but she encountered unflinchingly the awful frowns of the mighty consecrated leaders of society, the scoffs and sneers of the multitude, the outstretched finger of scorn, and the whispered mockery of pity, standing up for the lowest of the low. Nurtured in the very bosom of slavery, by her own observation and thought, of one thing she became certain, that it was a false, cruel, accursed relation between human beings. And to this conviction, from the very budding of her womanhood, she was true."

"Well do I remember," said one, "when, after the American Anti-Slavery Society, founded in 1833, had battled for a year or twu with the combined forces of the mob, the press, and the commercial, political, and ecclesiastical authorities, and it was said in the highest quarters that we had only exasperated the slaveholders, and made all the North sympathize with them, when the storm of public indignation, gathering over the whole heavens, was black upon us, and we were comparatively only a handful, there appeared in the Anti-Slavery office in New York this mild, modest, soft-speaking woman, then in the prime of her beauty, delicate as the lily-of-the-valley. She placed in my hands a roll of manuscript, beautifully written. It was her 'Appeal to the Christian Women of the South.' It was like a patch of blue sky breaking through that storm cloud." The manuscript was passed round among the members of our Executive Committee, and read with wet eyes. The Society printed it in a pamphlet of thirty-six pages, and circulated it widely. It made its author a forced exile from her native State, but it touched hearts that had been proof against everything else. I remember that the Quarterly Anti-Slavery Magazine for October, 1836, said of it something to this effect:

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 specially adapted to make new converts, the other to strengthen the old. We can not exclude Miss Grimké's Appeal from either class. It belongs preeminently to the former. The converts that will be made by it, we have no doubt, will be not only numerous, but thorough-going.

"Many of us remember," said another, "with what awakening power such God-inspired souls have roused us from the apathy of our lives.