Inventing Americas: 1800–1865 155from within. This enabled her to admit that the North did not hold a monopoly on
virtue. “Our prejudice against colored people is even more inveterate than it is in the
South,” she said of herself and her fellow Northerners. It also allowed the tactic of
irony. “If the slaves are so well satisfied with their condition,” she asked, in response
to a common pro-slavery argument, “why do they make such severe laws against
running away?” Child tried to reassure her Southern readers that, as she put it, “the
abolitionists have never ... endeavored to connect amalgamation with the subject of
abolition.” But her low-keyed, conversational tone, and her presentation of herself
as a sensible, humane reformer was just as obnoxious to Southerners bent on
strengthening the slave system as the more openly radical approaches of Walker and
Garrison were. She was ostracized by the literary establishment, too; her Juvenile
Miscellany failed for lack of subscribers; and she turned for work to the abolitionist
paper, The National Anti-Slavery Standard, published in New York City. Here, in the
Standard, she published a series of “Letters from New York” that discussed various
forms of injustice: slavery, of course, poverty, which she saw as the source of urban
crime, an oppressive prison system, and the denial of basic rights to women. The
tone of the “Letters” was a curious mixture of the literary and the political. “To my
mind the katydids will forever speak of mobs,” one letter begins, before launching
into an account of how, the first time Child ever heard “the angular note of that
handsome insect,” was on the day that she saw a racist attack an abolitionist speaker.
In her later years, after she had resigned from the Standard, Child continued to
pursue a variety of different careers as a writer and to promote several social causes.
A short story, “Slavery’s Pleasant Homes” (1843), explores miscegenation and its
brutal consequences in terms that anticipate Mark Twain and William Faulkner. Her
last novel, A Romance of the Republic (1867), returns to the theme of interracial
marriage. Her Letters from New York were published in two series, in 1843 and 1845.
Her Appeal for the Indians (1868) expressed her continuing concern for the people
who had been the subject of her first long fiction. And she sustained her commitment
to African-Americans even after the end of slavery: The Freedman’s Book (1865), for
instance, a collection of pieces by and about black people, was printed and distributed
at her expense. For Child, the cause of liberty was an all-embracing one. In particular,
she saw a seamless connection between her activism as an abolitionist and her
interest in the condition of women. Much the same could be said of many reformers
of the time, including the Grimke sisters, Angelina Grimke Weld (1805–1879) and
Sarah Moore Grimke (1792–1873). Born in South Carolina to a slaveholding family,
the sisters shocked their fellow Southerners and relatives by identifying themselves
with the abolitionist movement. It was while both were living in Philadelphia that
Angelina wrote An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South (1836). “I am going
to tell you unwelcome truths,” she told her intended Southern white women readers,
“but I mean to speak those truths in love.” Despite the evidently modest, even
apologetic beginning, the message of the Appeal was radical. Southern white women,
Angelina argued, should read about slavery, pray for the truth about slavery to be
known, and not only speak out against slavery but also act to eradicate it by freeing
their own slaves. They should free their slaves, she added, even if this were illegal,GGray_c02.indd 155ray_c 02 .indd 155 8 8/1/2011 7:54:41 AM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 54 : 41 AM