This gift she refused to accept, for in her view the servant had a right to be free, and, as for her own needs, Angelina felt quite capable of waiting upon herself.
Of her own free will she joined the Presbyterian Church and labored earnestly with the officers of the church to induce them to espouse the cause of the slave.

When she failed to secure cooperation, she decided that the church was not Christian and she therefore withdrew her membership.

Her sister Sarah had gone North in 1821 and had become a member of the Society of Friends in Philadelphia.

In Charleston, South Carolina, there was a Friends' meeting-house where two old Quakers still met at the appointed time and sat for an hour in solemn silence.
Angelina donned the Quaker garb, joined this meeting, and for an entire year was the third of the silent worshipers.

This quiet testimony, however, did not wholly satisfy her energetic nature, and when, in 1830, she heard of the imprisonment of Garrison in Baltimore, she was convinced that effective labors against slavery could not be carried on in the South.