Daughters of one of the first families of South Carolina, brought up to wealth and luxury and the service of slaves, Sarah and Angelina had become convinced that slavery was wrong, and Angelina had entered into correspondence with Garrison. In 1836 she was invited by the American Anti-Slavery Society to come and give talks against slavery, to women only. She declined the offered salary, but came and brought her sister. They spoke in New York and New Jersey, and then came to New England. It had been the intention that they should speak to women in church sewing circles and at parlor meetings, but no parlor would hold all the women who wanted to hear. Anti-slavery ministers offered the use of their session rooms. It was thought a great scandal that women should speak in so sacred a place. The interest grew. One or two men began to slip into the rear seats. At first they were turned out. Later they refused to go. Although brought up as High Church Episcopalians, the sisters had become Quakers, and did not think it wrong for a woman to speak when men were present. Before long they were lecturing to mixed audiences, largely made up of men. Then the storm broke, — a storm of tremendous violence.
The texts that were always quoted against the women were the words of St. Paul, "Let your women keep silence in the churches, for it is not permitted unto them to speak", and "I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence."
The opposition to the women who spoke against slavery was due in part to the belief that their action was contrary to Scripture, in part to the usual dislike for any innovation, in part to the anger of men against any encroachment upon their exclusive privileges, and in part to the belief that the textile industries of New England could not be carried on without the slave-grown cotton of the South. The economic objection was not the least powerful.
Even while the sisters spoke only to women, their meetings had been ridiculed in the proslavery press, which included almost all the Northern newspapers. With the issuing of the Pastoral Letter, the opposition became fiercer; but they continued to lecture to audiences that overflowed the largest halls. Angelina was beautiful, and had a calm, simple and magnetic eloquence. Wendell Phillips said, "She swept all the chords of the human heart with a power that has never been surpassed, and rarely equalled." Sarah, though an able writer, was not so good a speaker; but both sisters had the great advantage that they could tell of the facts of slavery from actual experience.
If the wrath that they aroused was great at the North, it was still greater in the South. Angelina wrote "An Appeal to Southern Women against Slavery." Many copies were mailed to South Carolina. Most of them were publicly burned by postmasters. When she wished to make a visit to her mother and sisters, the Mayor of Charleston sent her word that the police had orders to prevent her from landing or from communicating with any person while the steamer was in port; and that, if she succeeded in coming ashore, she would be put in prison. Friends warned her that she would almost certainly become the object of mob violence.
Shortly before the issuing of the Pastoral Letter, Sarah had begun to publish in the New England Spectator a series of articles on "The Province of Woman." She had long had the woman question very much at heart. She grieved for the sufferings not only of the slaves, but of white women and children under the unjust laws; and she had felt strongly on the subject of equal educational opportunities for women ever since, in her girlhood, her father, Judge Grimke, had refused to let her study Latin with her brother, although he declared that, if she were a boy, she would make the ablest jurist in the country.
Sarah's letters in the Spectator made a commotion and greatly intensified the opposition. Garrison and Phillips backed the women to the utmost; but most of the abolitionists did not yet believe in the general doctrine of equal rights for women, and, of those who did, many thought it a mistake to mix up the antislavery cause, which was intensely unpopular, with the question of woman's rights, which was more unpopular still. Angelina wrote:
"We have given great offence on account of our womanhood, which seems to be as objectionable as our abolitionism. The whole land seems aroused to discussion on the province of woman, and I am glad of it. We are willing to bear the brunt of the storm, if we can only be the means of making a breach in the wall of public opinion, which lies right in the way of woman's true dignity, honor and usefulness. Sister Sarah does preach up woman's rights most nobly and fearlessly; and we find that many of our New England sisters are prepared to receive these strange doctrines, feeling, as they do, that our whole sex needs emancipation from the thralldom of public opinion."
In reply to further remonstrances, she wrote:
"I am still glad of sister's letters, and believe they are doing great good. Some noble-minded women cheer her on, the brethren notwithstanding. I tell them that this is a part of the great doctrine of Human Rights, and can no more be separated from emancipation than the light from the heat of the sun; the rights of the slave and of woman blend like the colors of the rainbow. However, I rarely introduce this topic into my addresses, except to urge my sisters up to duty I am very glad to hear that Lucretia Mott addressed the Moral Reform Society, and am earnest in the hope that we are only pioneers, going before a host of worthy women who will come up to the help of the Lord against the mighty."
The protests were so many and so earnest, even from men who themselves believed thoroughly in equal rights, that Sarah finally discontinued her articles in the Spectator. They were published in pamphlet form, however, and widely circulated.
A committee of the Massachusetts Legislature was appointed in 1838 to consider the petitions that were pouring in on the subject of slavery. Hearings were held, and Angelina was among the speakers. It was the first time that a woman's voice had been heard in the Boston State House.
In the same year, she married Theodore D. Weld, a noble and valiant abolitionist. The wedding took place in Philadelphia. Three days later Angelina made what was destined to be her last public speech.
Having had great difficulty in securing halls, the Pennsylvania abolitionists and other friends of free speech had formed an association and built a beautiful hall at a cost of forty thousand dollars, to be open for free discussion on all subjects not immoral. Most of the stockholders were mechanics or working men, and many were women. Pennsylvania Hall was opened on the week of Angelina's marriage. The first three days of the dedicatory exercises included addresses on slavery, temperance, the Indians, the right of free discussion and kindred topics. On the fourth day, speeches were to be made against slavery by prominent women. The mob rose — egged on secretly, it was said, by gentlemen of property and standing — and surrounded the hall with howls and uproar. Angelina spoke for an hour, standing calm and beautiful, while the yells and execrations increased without, and missile after missile crashed through the broken windows; and the crowded audience hung upon her words. The next night the hall was burned down, without any serious effort by the city authorities to save it.
An injury received soon after her marriage incapacitated Angelina permanently for public speaking, and her sister had already been obliged to give it up, owing to the failure of her voice.
Abby Kelley made her first public speech at the meeting where Angelina Grimke Weld made her last. Of all the pioneer women, she suffered the most persecution. She was a Quaker school-teacher, fair, comely, and of the noblest character. Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1811, she studied and taught, by turns, like Lucy Stone, till she had gained the highest education then obtainable by a woman in New England. She became so deeply interested in the antislavery cause that she gave to the Anti-Slavery Society all her accumulated earnings, and her small inheritance from her father's estate, and even sold her most expensive garments in order to contribute their price. She finally resigned her position as teacher of the Quaker school in Lynn, Massachusetts, and devoted herself wholly to anti-slavery work. Again and again, some friend gave her a gold watch; but the gold watches always went straight into the antislavery treasury. Lucy Stone said, "She could no more have helped it than if her children had needed bread." Her path was made very hard.
She held several well-attended meetings at Washington, Connecticut,