His mandate, which called for harmony with, rather than domestication of, nature, and for a reliance on individual integrity, rather than on materialistic institutions, is echoed in many of the great American philosophical and literary works of his time and ours, and has given an impetus to modern political and social activism.Larzer Ziff's introduction to this collection of fifteen of Emerson's most significant writings provides the important backdrop to the society in which Emerson lived during his formative years.

    The style of the essay is very personal in nature, and uses simple language and firm assertions to convey her ideas. The essay is extraordinarily unique because it is the only written appeal made by a Southern woman to other Southern women regarding the abolition of slavery. Grimke's Appeal was widely distributed by the American Anti-Slavery Society, and was received with great acclaim by radical abolitionists. However, it was also received with great criticism by her former Quaker community, and was publicly burned in South Carolina. Angelina Emily Grimke Weld (1805-1879) was an American politician, lawyer, abolitionist and suffragist. Grimke was born in Charleston, South Carolina, to John Faucheraud Grimke, an aristocratic Episcopalian judge who owned slaves. She was very close to her sister Sarah Moore Grimke. In 1835, Angelina wrote an antislavery letter to Abolitionist leader William Lloyd Garrison, who published it in The Liberator. When her anti-slavery An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South was published in 1836, it was publicly burned in South Carolina, and she and her sister were threatened with arrest if they ever returned to their native state. At this point, Grimke and Sarah began to speak out against slavery in public. They were among the first women in the United States to break out of their designated private spheres; this made them somewhat of a curiosity. Grimke was invited to speak at the Massachusetts State Legislature in 1837, and testified February 1838, becoming the first woman in the United States to address a legislative body. In 1838, the Grimke sisters gave a series of well-attended lectures in Boston.

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