Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 1.djvu/416

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394
History of Woman Suffrage.

creature who had been terribly whipped, and do what she could to assuage his sufferings. At the age of fourteen, she was asked by the rector of the Episcopal church to which her family belonged, to be confirmed — a form, she was told, which all her companions went through as a matter of course. But she insisted on knowing the meaning of this form, and, on reading it in the Prayer-Book, she said she could not promise what was there required. "But it is only a form," she was told. "If with my feelings and views as they now are, I should go through that form, it would be a lie. I can not do it." This single-hearted truthfulness, without regard to personal consequences to herself, was the key to all her conduct.

Some years afterward, under the influence of an eloquent Presbyterian preacher, her religious sensibilities were awakened. Her eyes were opened to a new world. Through deeper and more vital spiritual experiences, she entered into a new life, which took entire possession of all her faculties. She joined the Presbyterian church, and carried into it the fervor and strength of a regenerated nature. She became a teacher in its Sunday-school, and after a lapse of fifty years, there came a letter from one of her first Sunday-school scholars, living in Georgia, to express thanks for the benefits which her instructions had been to her. Angelina soon endeavored to impress upon the officers of the church a sense of what they should do for the slaves, but her pleadings for them found no response. Could it then," said she, "be a Church of Christ?"

There was in Charleston at that time a Friends' Meeting-house, where there were only two worshipers, and they agreed with her in regard to slavery. For a year she worshiped there in silence. No word was spoken. The two aged men, and this young, accomplished, attractive woman, sat there under a canopy of divine silence, sanctified and blessed to her. At length she felt that her mission there was ended. Her elder sister, Sarah, had united with the Friends in Philadelphia; and she joined her in 1830, giving up in agony of heart all the dear ties that bound her to her home. But even in the Friends' Meeting-house, her eye was quick to see negro seats where women of the despised race were still publicly humiliated. She and her sister seated themselves with them. The Friends were grieved by their conduct, and called them to account. The sisters replied: "While you put this badge of degradation on our sisters, we feel that it is our duty to share it with them."

In 1833, they attached themselves to the American Anti-Slavery Society, and lent their powerful aid to the work which it was doing. There was no more effective or eloquent speaker in the cause than