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 convers