took it around themselves for signatures. Very few
refused to sign it; and they were proposing to canvass, by means of
agents, the entire North, when the Emancipation Proclamation was
issued.

With their Charleston relatives, Mrs. Weld and Sarah had always kept
up a rather irregular, but, on one side, at least, an affectionate
correspondence. Their mother died in 1839, retaining, to the
never-ceasing grief of her Northern daughters, her slave-holding
principles to the last. The few remaining members of the family were
settled in and around Charleston, and were, with one exception, in
comfortable circumstances at the beginning of the war. This exception
was their brother John, who was infirm, and had outlived his resources
and the ability to make a living. For years before the war, Sarah and
Angelina sent him from their slender incomes a small annuity,
sufficient to keep him from want, and it was continued, at much
inconvenience during the war, until his death, which occurred in the
latter part of 1863. Their sisters, Mary and Eliza, wrote very proud
and defiant letters during the first two years of hostilities, and
declared they were secure and happy in their dear old city. But
gradually their tone changed, and they did not refuse to receive,
through blockade-runners, a variety of necessary articles from their
abolition sisters. As their slaves deserted them, and one piece of
property after another lost its value or was destroyed, they saw
poverty staring them in the face; but their pride sustained them, and
it was not until they had lived for nearly a year on little else but
hominy and water that they allowed their sisters to know of their
condition. But in informing them of it, they still declared their
willingness to die "for slavery and the Confederacy."

"Blind to the truth," writes Sarah, "they religiously believe that
slavery is a divine institution, and say they hope never to be guilty
of disbelieving the Bible, and thus rendering themselves amenable to
the wrath of God. I am glad," she adds, "to have this lesson of honest
blindness. It shows me that thousands like themselves are worshipping
a false god of their own creation."

Of course relief was sent to these unhappy women as soon as possible;
and when hostilities ceased, more than two hundred dollars' worth of
necessaries of every kind was despatched to them, with an urgent
invitation to come and accept a home at the North. Some time before
this, howeve