ABSTRACT

Of all the reform campaigns in which women participated during the first half of the nineteenth century, none engaged them more intensely, involved them in more controversy, or had a more profound effect on national life than the crusade to abolish slavery. We can appreciate how important women were to abolitionism— and how important abolitionism was to many of them—if we look at the life of Angelina Emily Grimké. Born in 1805 to a socially prominent family in Charleston, South Carolina, Grimké became convinced even as a girl that slaveholding was a sin, and in 1829 she left home forever, settling in Philadelphia with her older sister Sarah, who shared her abolitionist views.