Conspicuous among them were Sarah and Angelina Grimke, born in Charleston, South Carolina, of a slaveholding family noted for learning, refinement, and culture.

Sarah was born in the same year as James G.
Birney, 1792; Angelina was thirteen years younger.

Angelina was the typical crusader: her sympathies from the first were with the slave.
As a child she collected and concealed oil and other simple remedies so that she might steal out by night and alleviate the sufferings of slaves who had been cruelly whipped or abused.

At the age of fourteen she refused to be confirmed in the Episcopal Church because the ceremony involved giving sanction to words which seemed to her untrue.

Two years later her mother offered her a present of a slave girl for a servant and companion.