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students attending the medical college, who were all active in the riot. The crowds of women and colored people who had attended the Convention intensified the exasperation of the mob. Black men and white women walking side by side in and out of the hall, was too much for the foreign plebeian and the Southern patrician.
As it was announced that on the evening of the third day some ladies were to speak, a howling mob surrounded the building. In the midst of the tumult Mr. Garrison introduced Maria Chapman,[1] of Boston, who rose, and waving her hand to the audience to become quiet, tried in a few eloquent and appropriate remarks to bespeak a hearing for Angelina E. Grimké, the gifted orator from South Carolina, who, having lived in the midst of slavery all her life, could faithfully describe its cruelties and abominations. But the indescribable uproar outside, cries of fire, and yells of defiance, were a constant interruption, and stones thrown against the windows a warning of coming danger. But through it all this brave Southern woman stood unmoved, except by the intense earnestness of her own great theme.
ANGELINA GRIMKÉ'S ADDRESS.
Do you ask, "What has the North to do with slavery?" Hear it, hear it! Those voices without tell us that the spirit of slavery is here, and has been roused to wrath by our Conventions; for surely liberty would not foam and tear herself with rage, because her friends are multiplied daily, and meetings are held in quick succession to set forth her virtues and extend her peaceful kingdom. This opposition shows that slavery has done its deadliest work in the hearts of our citizens. Do you ask, then, "What has the North to do?" I answer, cast out first the spirit of slavery from your own hearts, and then lend your aid to convert the South. Each one present has a work to do, be his or her situation what it may, however limited their means or insignificant their supposed influence." The great men of this country will not do this work; the Church will never do it. A desire to please the world, to keep the favor of all parties and of all conditions, makes them dumb on this and every other unpopular subject.
As a Southerner, I feel that it is my duty to stand up here to-night and bear testimony against slavery. I have seen it! I have seen it! I know it has horrors that can never be described. I was brought up under its wing. I witnessed for many years its demoralizing influences and its destructiveness to human happiness. I have never seen a happy slave. I have seen him dance in his chains, it is true, but he was not happy. There is a wide difference between happiness and mirth. Man can not enjoy happiness while his manhood is destroyed. Slaves, however, may be, and sometimes are mirthful. When hope is extinguished, they say,
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- ↑ She was the positive power of so much anti-slavery work, that James Russell Lowell spoke of her as "the coiled-up mainspring of the movement."
