The Grimke Sisters Part 19

It is scarcely necessary to say that few schools have ever been established upon such a basis of conscientiousness and love, and with such adaptability in its conductors as that at Eagleswood; few have ever held before the pupils so high a moral standard, or urged them on to such n.o.ble purposes in life. Children entered there spoiled by indulgence, selfish, uncontrolled, sometimes vicious. Their teachers studied them carefully; confidence was gained, weaknesses sounded, elevation measured. Very slowly often, and with infinite patience and perseverance, but successfully in nearly every case, these children were redeemed. The idle became industrious, the selfish considerate, the disobedient and wayward repentant and gentle. Sometimes the fruits of all this labor and forbearance did not show themselves immediately, and in a few instances the seed sown did not ripen until the boy or girl had left school and mingled with the world. Then the contrast between the common, every-day aims they encountered, and the teachings of their Eagleswood mentors, was forced upon them. Forgotten lessons of truth and honesty and purity were remembered, and the wavering resolve was stayed and strengthened; worldly expediency gave way before the magnanimous purpose, cringing subserviency before independent manliness. The letters of affection, grat.i.tude, and appreciation of what had been done to make true men and women of them, which were received by the Welds, in many cases, years after they had parted from the writers, were treasured as their most precious souvenirs, and quite reconciled them to the trials through which such results were reached.

A short time before leaving Belleville, Mrs. Weld and Sarah adopted the Bloomer costume on account of its convenience, and the greater freedom it permitted in taking long rambles, but neither of them ever admired it or urged its adoption on others. Mrs. Weld, it is true, wrote a long and eloquent letter to the Dress Reform Convention which met in Syracuse in the summer of 1857, but it was not to advocate the Bloomer, but to show the need of some dress more suitable than the fashionable one, for work and exercise. She also urged that as woman was no longer in her minority, no longer "man's pretty idol before whom he bowed in chivalric gallantry," or "his petted slave whom he coaxed and gulled with sugar-plum privileges, whilst robbing her of intrinsic rights," but was emerging into her majority and claiming her rights as a human being, and waking up to a higher destiny: as she was beginning to answer the call to a life of useful exertion and honorable independence, it was time that she dressed herself in accordance with the change. "I regard the Bloomer costume," she says, "as only an approach to that true womanly attire which will in due time be inaugurated. We must experiment before we find a dress altogether suitable.... Man has long enough borne the burden of supporting the women of the civilized world. When woman's temple of liberty is finished--when freedom for the world is achieved--when she has educated herself into useful and lucrative occupations, then may she fitly expend upon her person _her own earnings_, not man's. Such women will have an indefeasible right to dress elegantly if they wish, but they will discard c.u.mbersomeness and a useless and absurd circ.u.mference and length."

Sarah says, in a letter to a friend, that the Bloomer dress violated her taste, and was so opposed to her sense of modesty that she could hardly endure it. During the residence at Eagleswood, both sisters discarded it altogether.

The John Brown tragedy was of course deeply felt by Sarah and Angelina, and the bitter and desperate feelings which inspired it fully sympathized with. Angelina was made quite ill by it, while Sarah felt her soul bowed with reverence for the deluded but grand old man.

"O Sarah!" she writes to Sarah Dougla.s.s, "what a glorious spectacle is now before us. The Jerome of Prague of our country, the John Huss of the United States, now stands ready, as they were, to seal his testimony with his life's blood. Last night I went in spirit to the martyr. It was my privilege to enter into sympathy with him; to go down, according to my measure, into the depths where he has travailed, and feel his past exercises, his present sublime position."

As mentioned a few pages back, two of John Brown's men, who died with him at Harper's Ferry, were brought to Eagleswood and there quietly interred. The pro-slavery people of Perth Amboy threatened to dig up the bodies, but the men and boys of Eagleswood showed such a brave front, and guarded the graves so faithfully, that the threat could not be accomplished.

The breaking out of the war found the Welds in deep family sorrow, watching anxiously by the sick bed of a dear son, with scarcely a hope of his recovery. Of Sarah's absolute devotion, of her ceaseless care by day, and her tireless watching by night, during the many long and weary months through which that precious life flickered, it is needless to speak. She took the delicate mother's place beside that bed of suffering, and, strong in her faith and hope, gave strength and hope to the heart-stricken parents, sustaining them when they were ready to sink beneath the avalanche of their woe. And when at last, though life was spared, it was evident that the invalid must remain an invalid for a long time, perhaps forever, Sarah's sublime courage stood steadfast. There was no sign of faltering. With a resignation almost cheerful, she took up her fresh burden, and, intent only on cheering her dear patient and comforting the sorrow of her sister and brother, she forgot her seventy-one years and every grief of the past.

"I try," she writes, "to accept this, the most grinding and bitter dispensation of my checkered life, as what it must be, educational and disciplinary, working towards a better preparation for a higher life."

Chiefly on account of this son and the quiet which was necessary for him, Mr. and Mrs. Weld gave up their position at Eagleswood, to the deep regret of all who knew them and had children to educate. They settled themselves temporarily in a pleasant house in Perth Amboy.

Here, between nursing their sick, and working for the soldiers, they watched the progress of events which they had long foreseen were inevitable.

Sarah speaks of the war as a retribution. "Hitherto," she says, "we have never been a republic, but one of the blackest tyrannies that ever disgraced the earth."

She calls attention to the fact that the South, by starting out with a definite and declared purpose, added much to its strength. "In great revolutions," she says, "confusion in popular ideas is fatal. The South avoided this. She set up one idea as paramount; she seized a great principle and uttered it. She shouted the talismanic words, 'Oppression and Liberty,' and said, 'Let us achieve our purpose or die!' The ma.s.ses, blinded by falsehood, caught the spirit of the leaders, and verily believe they are struggling for freedom. We have never enunciated any great truth as the cause of our uprising. We have no great idea to rally around, and know not what we are fighting for."

Later she expresses herself very strongly concerning the selfishness of the politicians, North and South.

"It is true there are some," she writes, "who are waging this war to make our Declaration of Independence a fact; there is a glorious band who are fighting for human rights, but the government, with Lincoln at its head, has not a heart-throb for the slave. I want the South to do her own work of emanc.i.p.ation. She would do it only from dire necessity, but the North will do it from no higher motive, and the South will feel less exasperation if she does it herself."

In another letter in 1862, she writes:--

"The negro has generously come forward, in spite of his multiplied wrongs, and offered to help to defend the country against those who are trying to fasten the chains on the white as well as the black. We have impiously denied him the right of citizenship, and have virtually said, 'Stand back; I am holier than thou.' I pray that victory may not crown our arms until the negro stands in his acknowledged manhood side by side in this conflict with the white man, until we have the n.o.bility to say that this war is a war of abolition, and that no concession on the part of the South shall save slavery from destruction. Whatever Lincoln and his Cabinet are carrying on the war to accomplish, G.o.d's design is to deliver from bondage his innocent people."

About this time Mrs. Weld published one of the most powerful things she ever wrote, "A Declaration of War on Slavery." She and Sarah also drew up a pet.i.tion to the government for the entire abolition of slavery, and took it around themselves for signatures. Very few refused to sign it; and they were proposing to canva.s.s, by means of agents, the entire North, when the Emanc.i.p.ation 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 circ.u.mstances 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 inst.i.tution, and say they hope never to be guilty of disbelieving the Bible, and thus rendering themselves amenable to the wrath of G.o.d. I am glad," she adds, "to have this lesson of honest blindness. It shows me that thousands like themselves are worshipping a false G.o.d 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, however, the Welds had moved to Hyde Park, near Boston, and were delightfully located, owning their house, and surrounded by kind and congenial neighbors. But much as they all needed entire rest, and well as they had earned it, they could not afford to be idle. Sarah became housekeeper and general manager, while Mr. and Mrs. Weld accepted positions, in Dr. Dio Lewis's famous school at Lexington. They were obliged to leave home every Monday and return on Friday.

The Charleston sisters refused for some time to accept the invitation given them; but so delicately and affectionately was it urged, that, goaded by necessity, they finally consented. They made their preparations to leave Charleston; but in the midst of them, the older sister, Mary, who had been very feeble for some time, was taken suddenly ill, and died. Eliza, then, a most sad and desolate woman, as we may well suppose, made the voyage to New York alone. There Sarah met her, and accompanied her to Hyde Park, where she was received with every consideration affection could devise. She seems to have soon made up her mind to make the best of her altered circ.u.mstances, and thus show her grat.i.tude to those who had so readily overlooked her past abuse of them. Sarah writes of her in 1866:--

"My sister Eliza is well and so cheerful. She is a sunbeam in the family, but the failure of the Confederacy and the triumph of the 'Yankees' is hard to bear,--the wrong having crushed the right."

This sister was tenderly cared for until arrangements were made for her return to Charleston with Mrs. Frost. There she died in 1867. This was only one of the many minor cases of retribution brought about by the Nemesis of the civil war. Sarah mentions another. The sale of lands for government taxes at Beaufort, S.C., was made from the verandah of the Edmond Rhett House, where, more than ten years before, the rebellion was concocted by the very men whose estates then (1866) were pa.s.sing under the hammer. And the chairman of the tax committee was Dr. Wm. H. Brisbane, who, twenty-five years before, was driven from the State because he would liberate his slaves.

Quietly settled in what she felt was a permanent home, and with, no cares outside of her family, Sarah found time not only to read, but to indulge her taste for scribbling, as she called it. She sent, from time to time, articles to the New York _Tribune_, the _Independent_, the _Woman's Journal_, and other papers, all marked by remarkable freshness as well as vigor. She also translated from the French several stories ill.u.s.trative of various social reforms, and in 1867, being then seventy-five years old, she made a somewhat abridged translation of Lamartine's poetical biography of Joan of Arc. This was Sarah's most finished literary work, and aroused in her great enthusiasm. "Sometimes," she writes, "it seems to infuse into my soul a mite of that divinity which filled hers. Joan of Arc stands pre-eminent in my mind above all other mortals save the Christ."

When the book was finished, Sarah was most anxious to get it published, "in order," she writes, "to revive the memory in this country of the extraordinary woman who was an embodiment of faith, courage, fort.i.tude, and love rarely equalled and never excelled."

But she had many more pressing demands on her income at that time, and had nearly given up the project, when a gentleman from Lynn called to see her, to whom she read a few pages of the narrative. He was so much pleased with it that he undertook to have it published. It was brought out in a few weeks by Adams & Co., of Boston, in a prettily bound volume of one hundred and six pages, and had, I believe, a large sale.

Several long and many short notices of it appeared in papers all over the country, all highly complimentary to the venerable translator.

These notices surprised Sarah as much as they delighted her, and she expressed herself as deeply thankful that she had translated the work.

A letter from Sarah Grimke to Jane Smith, written in 1850, contains the following paragraph: "We have just heard of the death of our brother Henry, a planter and a kind master. His slaves will feel his loss deeply. They haunt me day and night. Sleeplessness is my portion, thinking what will become of them. Oh, the horrors of slavery!"

When she penned those lines, Sarah little imagined how great a mockery was the t.i.tle, "kind master," she gave her brother. She little suspected that three of those slaves whose uncertain destiny haunted her pillow were that brother's own children, and that he died leaving the shackles on them--slaves to his heir, their white brother, though he _did_ stipulate that they and their mother should never be sold.

Well might Sarah exclaim: "Oh, the horrors of slavery!" but in deepest humiliation and anguish of spirit would the words have been uttered had she known the truth. Montague Grimke inherited his brothers with the rest of the human chattels. He knew they were his brothers, and he never thought of freeing them. They were his to use and to abuse,--to treat them kindly if it suited his mood; to whip them if he fancied; to sell them if he should happen to need money,--and they could not raise voice or hand to prevent it. There was no law to which they could appeal, no refuge they could seek from the very worst with which their brother might threaten them. Was ever any creature--brute or human--in the wide world so defenceless as the plantation slave! The forlorn case of these Grimke boys was that of thousands of others born as they were, and inheriting the intelligence and spirit of independence of their white parent.

I have little s.p.a.ce to give to their pitiful story. Many have doubtless heard it. The younger brother, John, was, at least as a child, more fortunate. When Charleston was at last occupied by the Union army, the two oldest, Francis and Archibald, attracted the attention of some members of the Sanitary Commission by their intelligence and good behavior, and were by them sent to Ma.s.sachusetts, where some temporary work was found for them. Two vacancies happening to occur in Lincoln University, Oxford, Pennsylvania, they were recommended to fill them. Thither they went in 1866, and, eager and determined to profit by their advantages, they studied so well during the winter months, and worked so diligently to help themselves in the summer, that, in spite of the drawbacks of their past life, they rose to honorable positions in the University, and won the regard of all connected with it. Some time in February, 1868, Mrs. Weld read in the _Anti-Slavery Standard_ a notice of a meeting of a literary society at Lincoln University, at which an address was delivered by one of the students, named Francis Grimke.

She was surprised, and as she had never before heard of the university, she made some inquiries about it, and was much interested in what she learned of its object and character. She knew that the name of Grimke was confined to the Charleston family, and naturally came to the conclusion, at first, that this student who had attracted her attention was an ex-slave of one of her brothers, and had, as was frequently done, adopted his master's name. But the circ.u.mstance worried her. She could not drive it from her mind. She knew so well that blackest page of slavery on which was written the wrongs of its women, that, dreadful as was the suspicion, it slowly grew upon her that the blood of the Grimkes, the proud descendants of the Huguenots, flowed in the veins of this poor colored student. The agitation into which further reflection on the subject threw her came very near making her ill and finally decided her to learn the truth if possible.

She addressed a note to Mr. Francis Grimke. The answer she received confirmed her worst fears. He and his brothers were her nephews. Her nerves already unstrung by the dread of this cruel blow, Angelina fainted when it came, and was completely prostrated for several days.

Her husband and sister refrained from disturbing her by a question or a suggestion. Physically stronger than she, they felt the superiority of her spiritual strength, and uncertain, on this most momentous occasion, of their own convictions of duty, they looked to her for the initiative.

The silent conflict in the soul of this tender, conscientious woman during those days of prostration was known only to her G.o.d. The question of prejudice had no place in it,--that had long and long ago been cast to the winds. It was the fair name of a loved brother that was at stake, and which must be sustained or blighted by her action.

"Ask me not," she once wrote to a young person, "if it is expedient to do what you propose: ask yourself if it is _right_." This question now came to her in a shape it had never a.s.sumed before, and it was hard to answer. But it was no surprise to her family when she came forth from that chamber of suffering and announced her decision. She would acknowledge those nephews. She would not deepen the brand of shame that had been set upon their brows: hers, rather, the privilege to efface it. Her brother had wronged these, his children; his sisters must right them. No doubt of the duty lingered in her mind. Those youths were her own flesh and blood, and, though the whole world should scoff, she would not deny them.

Her decision was accepted by her husband and sister without a murmur of dissent. If either had any doubts of its wisdom, they were never uttered; and, as was always the case with them, having once decided in their own minds a question of duty, they acted upon it in no half-way spirit, and with no stinted measures. In the long letter which Angelina wrote to Francis and Archibald Grimke, and which Theodore Weld and Sarah Grimke fully indorsed, there appeared no trace of doubt or indecision. The general tone was just such in which she might have addressed newly-found legitimate nephews. After telling them that if she had not suspected their relationship to herself, she should probably not have written them, she questions them on various points, showing her desire to be useful to them, and adds, "I want to talk to you face to face, and am thinking seriously of going on to your Commencement in June." A few lines further on she says:--

"I will not dwell on the past: let all that go. It cannot be altered.

Our work is in the present, and duty calls upon us now so to use the past as to convert its curse into a blessing. I am glad you have taken the name of Grimke. It was once one of the n.o.blest names of Carolina.

You, my young friends, now bear this _once_ honored name. I charge you most solemnly, by your upright conduct and your life-long devotion to the eternal principles of justice and humanity and religion, to lift this name out of the dust where it now lies, and set it once more among the princes of our land."

Other letters pa.s.sed between them until the youths had told all their history, so painful in its details that Angelina, after glancing at it, put it aside, and for months had not the courage to read it. When June came, though far from well, she summoned up strength and resolution to do as she had proposed in the spring. Accompanied by her oldest son, she attended the Lincoln University Commencement, and made the personal acquaintance of Francis and Archibald Grimke. She found them good-looking, intelligent, and gentlemanly young men; and she took them by the hand, and, to president and professors, acknowledged their claim upon her. She also invited them to visit her at her home, a.s.suring them of a kind reception from every member of her family. She remained a week at Lincoln University, going over with these young men all the details of their treatment by their brother Montague, and of the treatment of the slaves in all the Grimke families. These details brought back freshly to her mind the horrors which had haunted her life in Charleston, and she lived them all over again, even in her dreams. She had been miserably weak and worn for some time before going to Lincoln; and the mental distress she now went through affected her nervous system to such an extent that there is no doubt her life was shortened by it.

The hearty concurrence of every member of the family in the course resolved on towards the nephews shows how united they were in moral sentiment as well as in affection. There was not the slightest hesitancy exhibited. The point touching her brother's shame thrust in the background by the conviction of a higher duty, Mrs. Weld allowed it to trouble her no more, but, with her husband and sister, expressed a feeling of exultation in acknowledging the relationship of the youths, as a testimony and protest against the wickedness of that hate which had always trampled down the people of color because they were as G.o.d made them.

On Angelina's return journey, Sarah, ever anxious about her, met her at Newark and accompanied her home. A few weeks later, writing to Sarah Dougla.s.s an account of the Grimke boys, she says:--

"They are very promising young men. We all feel deeply interested in them, and I hope to be able to get together money enough to pay the college expenses of the younger. I would rejoice to meet these entirely myself, but, not having the means, I intend to try and collect it somehow. Angelina has not yet recovered from the effects of her journey and the excitement of seeing and talking to those boys, the president, etc. When I met her she was so exhausted and excited that I felt very anxious, and when I found her brain and sight were so disordered that she could not see distinctly, even striking her head several times severely, and that she could not read, I was indeed alarmed. But, notwithstanding all she had suffered, she has not for a moment regretted that she went. She feels that a sacred duty has been performed, and rejoices that she had strength for it."

A few weeks later, she writes: "Nina is about and always busy, often working when she seems ready to drop, sustained by her nervous energy and irresistible will. She has kept up wonderfully under our last painful trial, and has borne it so beautifully that I am afraid she is getting too good to live."

I have no right to say that Angelina Weld suffered martyrdom in every fibre of her proud, sensitive nature during all the first months at least of this trial; but I cannot but believe it. She never spoke of her own feelings to any one but her husband; but Sarah writes to Sarah Dougla.s.s in August, 1869:--

"My cheerful spirit has been sorely tested for some months. Nina has been sick all summer, is a mere skeleton and looks ten or fifteen years older than she did before that fatal visit to Lincoln University. I do not think that she will ever be the same woman she was before and sometimes I feel sure her toilsome journey on this earth must be near its close. The tears will come whenever I think of it."

But not so! the sisters were to work hand in hand a few years longer; the younger, in her patient suffering, leaning with filial love on the stronger arm of the older, both now gray-haired and beginning to feel the infirmities of age, but still devoted to each other and united in sympathy with every good and progressive movement. The duty, as they conceived it, to their colored nephews was as generously as conscientiously performed. They received them into the family, treated them in every respect as relatives, and exerted themselves to aid them in finishing their education. Francis studied for the ministry, and is now pastor of the 15th Street Presbyterian Church of Washington city.

Archibald, through Sarah's exertions and self-denial, took the law course at Harvard, graduated, and has since practised law successfully in Boston. Both are respected by the communities in which they reside.

John, the younger brother, remained in the South with his mother.

Mrs. Weld and Sarah still took a warm, and, as far as it was possible, an active interest in the woman suffrage movement; and when, in February, 1870, after an eloquent lecture from Lucy Stone, a number of the most intelligent and respectable women of Hyde Park determined to try the experiment of voting at the approaching town election, Mrs.

Weld and Sarah Grimke united cordially with them. A few days before the election, a large caucus was held, made up of about equal numbers of men and women, among them many of the best and leading people of the place. A ticket for the different offices was made up, voted for, and elected. At this caucus Theodore Weld made one of his old-time stirring speeches, encouraging the women to a.s.sert themselves, and persist in demanding their political rights.

The 7th of March, the day of the election, a terrific snowstorm prevailed, but did not prevent the women from a.s.sembling in the hotel near the place of voting, where each one was presented, on the part of their gentlemen friends, with a beautiful bouquet of flowers. At the proper time, a number of these gentlemen came over to the hotel and escorted the ladies to the polls, where a convenient place for them to vote had been arranged. There was a great crowd inside the hall, eager to see the joke of women voting, and many were ready to jeer and hiss.

But when, through the door, the women filed, led by Sarah Grimke and Angelina Weld, the laugh was checked, the intended jeer unuttered, and deafening applause was given instead. The crowd fell back respectfully, nearly every man removing his hat and remaining uncovered while the women pa.s.sed freely down the hall, deposited their votes, and departed.

Of course these votes were not counted. There was no expectation that they would be (though the ticket was elected), but the women had given a practical proof of their earnestness, and though one man said, in consequence of this movement, he would sell his house two thousand dollars cheaper than he would have done before, and another declared he would give his away if the thing was done again, and still another wished he might _die_ if the women were going to vote, the women themselves were satisfied with their first step, and more than ever determined to march courageously on until the citadel of man's prejudices was conquered.

The following summer, Sarah Grimke, believing that much good might be accomplished by the circulation of John Stuart Mill's "Subjection of Women," made herself an agent for the sale of the book, and traversed hill and dale, walking miles daily to accomplish her purpose. She thus succeeded in placing more than one hundred and fifty copies in the hands of the women of Hyde Park and the vicinity, in spite of the ignorance, narrowness, heartlessness, and slavery which, she says, she had ample opportunity to deplore. The profits of her sales were given to the _Woman's Journal_.

Under date of May 25, 1871, she writes:--