The Complete History of Women's Suffrage – All 6 Volumes in One Edition (Illustrated Edition). Elizabeth Cady Stanton
earnest appeal, and all the arguments by which their opponents had been fairly vanquished; could the new-born dignity they realized in the conscious possession of rights and liberties once unknown, confident that full equality could not be long deferred; could all this have been pre-visioned by the actors in those scenes, they would have felt themselves fully compensated for the persecution and ridicule they had endured. And thus the great work of life goes on; the toils of one generation are the joys of the next. We have reaped what other hands have planted; let us then in turn sow bountifully for those who shall follow us, that our children may enter into a broader inheritance than any legal parchment can bequeath.
ANGELINA GRIMKÉ.
Reminiscences by E. C. S.
My first introduction to Mrs. Weld was two years after her marriage, when she and her husband had retired from the stormy scenes of the anti-slavery conflict, and in their own home found a harbor of rest, for quiet though useful occupation. In company with my husband and Charles Stuart, a Scotch Abolitionist, we took one of those long closely-covered stages peculiar to New Jersey, for a twelve miles drive to Belleville, where at the door of an old Dutch-built stone house, Theodore Weld and the famous daughters of South Carolina gave us a welcome. There was nothing attractive at first sight in those plain, frail women, except their rich voices, fluent language, and Angelina's fine dark eyes. The house with its wide hall, spacious apartments, deep windows, and small panes of glass was severely destitute of all tasteful, womanly touches, and though neat and orderly, had a cheerless atmosphere. Neither was there one touch of the artistic in the arrangement of the ladies' hair and dresses. They were just then in the Graham dispensation, and the peculiar table arrangements, with no tray to mark the charmed circle whence the usual beverages were dispensed, the cold dishes without a whiff of heat, or steam, gave one a feeling of strangeness; all those delightful associations gathering round a covered dish and hot beefsteak, the tea-pot and china cups and saucers, were missing. A cool evening in the month of May, after a long drive had left us in a condition peculiarly susceptible to the attractions of something hot and stimulating; but they came not. There was no catering in this household to the weaknesses of those who were not yet weaned from the flesh-pots of Egypt. The sharp edge of our appetite somewhat dulled with the simple fare, we were thrown on our own resources, and memories of tea and coffee for stimulus.
After our repast, the high discourse was slightly interrupted by the appearance of the infant, Charles Stuart Weld, and his formal presentation to the distinguished gentleman after whom he was named. And when Mr. Weld told us how near the boy, in the initiative steps of his existence, came to being sacrificed to a theory, the old stone walls rang with bursts of laughter.74 But the chilling environments of these noble people were modified by the sincere hospitality with which we were received. My husband and Mr. Weld had been classmates in Lane Seminary, and were among the students who left that institution when the discussion of the slavery question was forbidden by the President, Dr. Lyman Beecher. They talked with zest of those early days until a late hour. As Charles Stuart and the two sisters were also good conversationalists, I listened with pleasure and profit, and during the three days under that roof obtained much general knowledge of anti-slavery and church history; volumes of information were condensed in those familiar talks, of lasting benefit to me, who then knew so little of reforms.
How changed was the atmosphere of that home to me next day. True, there were still no pictures on the walls, but the beautiful boy in his bath, the sunlight on his golden hair, with some new grace or trick each day, surpassed what any brush could trace. No statues graced the corners; but the well-built Northern hero of many slavery battles, bound with the silken cords of love and friendship to those brave women from the South, together sacrificing wealth and fame and ease for a great principle, formed a group worthy the genius of a Rogers to portray.
It has been my good fortune to meet these noble friends occasionally in the course of our busy lives, sometimes under their roof, sometimes under mine, and as, day by day, the nobility, the transparency, the unselfishness of their characters have grown upon me, the memories of the old stone house and its care-worn inmates, have stood transfigured before me, with almost a celestial radiance. In grouping the main facts of this eventful life, and analyzing the impelling motives that made Angelina Grimké the heroic woman she was, I can not serve her memory better than in giving the beautiful tributes of loving friends at the close of her life.
Angelina, the youngest daughter of Judge Grimké, of the Supreme Court of South Carolina, was born in Charleston, S. C., February 20, 1805. From her earliest years, her sympathies were with the cruelly treated race around her; and when a child, she had her little bottle of oil, and other simple medicaments, with which in the darkness she would steal out of the house to some wretched creature who had been terribly whipped, and do what she could to assuage his sufferings. At the age of fourteen, she was asked by the rector of the Episcopal church to which her family belonged, to be confirmed—a form, she was told, which all her companions went through as a matter of course. But she insisted on knowing the meaning of this form, and, on reading it in the Prayer-Book, she said she could not promise what was there required. "But it is only a form," she was told. "If with my feelings and views as they now are, I should go through that form, it would be a lie. I can not do it." This single-hearted truthfulness, without regard to personal consequences to herself, was the key to all her conduct.
Some years afterward, under the influence of an eloquent Presbyterian preacher, her religious sensibilities were awakened. Her eyes were opened to a new world. Through deeper and more vital spiritual experiences, she entered into a new life, which took entire possession of all her faculties. She joined the Presbyterian church, and carried into it the fervor and strength of a regenerated nature. She became a teacher in its Sunday-school, and after a lapse of fifty years, there came a letter from one of her first Sunday-school scholars, living in Georgia, to express thanks for the benefits which her instructions had been to her. Angelina soon endeavored to impress upon the officers of the church a sense of what they should do for the slaves, but her pleadings for them found no response. "Could it then," said she, "be a Church of Christ?"
There was in Charleston at that time a Friends' Meeting-house, where there were only two worshipers, and they agreed with her in regard to slavery. For a year she worshiped there in silence. No word was spoken. The two aged men, and this young, accomplished, attractive woman, sat there under a canopy of divine silence, sanctified and blessed to her. At length she felt that her mission there was ended. Her elder sister, Sarah, had united with the Friends in Philadelphia; and she joined her in 1830, giving up in agony of heart all the dear ties that bound her to her home. But even in the Friends' Meeting-house, her eye was quick to see negro seats where women of the despised race were still publicly humiliated. She and her sister seated themselves with them. The Friends were grieved by their conduct, and called them to account. The sisters replied: "While you put this badge of degradation on our sisters, we feel that it is our duty to share it with them."
In 1883, they attached themselves to the American Anti-Slavery Society, and lent their powerful aid to the work which it was doing. There was no more effective or eloquent speaker in the cause than Angelina Grimké. She had not thought at first of speaking in public; but wherever she was, among friends and neighbors, she sought relief to her burdened spirit by testifying to the cruel and fatal influences of slavery. A few women at first came together to meet her and her sister Sarah. The numbers and the interest increased till she became widely known. She and her sister talked to them about slavery in their own parlors. Soon no parlors could hold the throngs that gathered to hear her. The small vestry of a church was given to her, then a large vestry. But this was too small, and the body of the church was opened to the crowd which had been attracted by her. There, on a platform beneath the pulpit, for the first time she stood and spoke at what might be called a public meeting, though she spoke only to women. In the spring of 1837, the sisters went through a similar experience in Boston, speaking to women only. She went to Lynn to address the women, and there men crowded in with their wives and daughters. That was the beginning of women's speaking to promiscuous assemblies in Massachusetts.
"Hers was the eloquence of a broken heart. As she gave way to the deep yearnings of affection for the mother that bore her, still a slaveholder,