Angelina's greatest fame was between 1835, when William Lloyd Garrison published a letter of hers in his anti-slavery newspaper The Liberator, and May 1838, when she gave a speech to abolitionists with a hostile, noisy, stone-throwing crowd outside Pennsylvania Hall.

Drawing her views from natural rights theory (as set forth in the Declaration of Independence), the United States Constitution, Christian beliefs in the Bible, and her own childhood memories of the cruel slavery and racism in the South, Grimké proclaimed the injustice of denying freedom to any man or woman.

Her father was an Anglican lawyer, planter, politician, and judge, a Revolutionary War veteran, and a distinguished member of Charleston society.

Her father believed women should be subordinate to men and provided education to only his male children, but the boys shared their studies with their sisters.

[3] Both Mary and John Grimké were strong advocates of the traditional, upper-class, Southern values that permeated their rank of Charleston society.

In her biography The Grimké Sisters from South Carolina, historian Gerda Lerner writes: "It never occurred to [Angelina] that she should abide by the superior judgment of her male relatives or that anyone might consider her inferior, simply for being a girl.

"[4]: 67  More so than her elder sister (and later, fellow abolitionist) Sarah, Angelina seemed to be naturally inquisitive and outspoken, a trait which often offended her traditional family and friends.

A proponent of biblical study and interfaith education, she taught a Sabbath school class and also provided religious services to her family's slaves—a practice her mother originally frowned upon, but later participated in.

Grimké and McDowell were both very opposed to the institution of slavery, on the grounds that it was a morally deficient system that violated Christian law and human rights.

By this time the church had come to terms with slavery, finding biblical justification and urging good Christian slaveholders to exercise paternalism and improve the treatment of their slaves.

Thus, at the time, Grimké was unaware of (and therefore uninfluenced by) events such as the Webster–Hayne debates and the Maysville Road veto, as well as controversial public figures such as Frances Wright.

She briefly considered attending the Hartford Female Seminary, an institution founded and run by her future adversary Catharine Beecher,[5] but she remained in Philadelphia for the time being.

She began to read more abolitionist literature, including the periodicals The Emancipator and William Lloyd Garrison's The Liberator (in which she would later be published).

Garrison was so impressed with Grimké's letter, which he called "soul-thrilling,"[1]: 55  that he published it in the next issue of The Liberator, praising her for her passion, expressive writing style, and noble ideas.

The letter, reprinted in the New York Evangelist and elsewhere,[6]: 114  gave Angelina great standing among many abolitionists, but its publication offended and stirred controversy within the Orthodox Quaker meeting, which openly condemned such radical activism, especially by a woman.

The letter was later reprinted in the New York Evangelist and other abolitionist papers; it was also included in a pamphlet with Garrison's Appeal to the Citizens of Boston.

In response, a state convention of Massachusetts' Congregational ministers, meeting at the end of June, issued a pastoral letter condemning public work by women and urging local churches to close their doors to the Grimkés' presentations.

[9] Sarah Grimké wrote Letters on the Province of Woman, addressed to Mary S. Parker,[10] which appeared first in the Liberator before being published in book form.

Abolitionist Robert F. Wallcut stated that "Angelina Grimké's serene, commanding eloquence enchained attention, disarmed prejudice and carried her hearers with her.

Those voices without tell us that the spirit of slavery is here, and has been roused to wrath by our abolition speeches and conventions: for surely liberty would not foam and tear herself with rage, because her friends are multiplied daily, and meetings are held in quick succession to set forth her virtues and extend her peaceful kingdom.

Two of Grimké's most notable works were her essay "An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South" and her series of letters to Catharine Beecher.

Angelina's Appeal was widely distributed by the American Anti-Slavery Society, and was received with great acclaim by radical abolitionists.

It is my solemn conviction, that, until this principle of equality is recognized and embodied in practice, the Church can do nothing effectual for the permanent reformation of the world.

"[16] Grimké directly responds to Beecher's traditionalist argument on the place of women in all spheres of human activity: "I believe it is the woman's right to have a voice in all the laws and regulations by which she is to be governed, whether in Church or State: and that the present arrangements of society, on these points, are a violation of human rights, a rank usurpation of power, a violent seizure and confiscation of what is sacredly and inalienably hers.

[17] Although Weld was said to have been supportive of Angelina's desire to remain politically active after their marriage, she eventually retreated to a life of domesticity due to failing health.

Sarah lived with the couple in New Jersey, and the sisters continued to correspond and visit with their friends in the abolitionist and emerging women's rights movements.

In the years after the Civil War, they raised funds to pay for the graduate education of their two mixed-race nephews, the sons of their brother Henry W. Grimké (1801–1852) and an enslaved woman he owned.

[19] The Grimké sisters and Theodore Dwight Weld are featured prominently in the juvenile fiction book The Forge and the Forest (1975) by Betty Underwood.

[22][23] The Grimké sisters appear as main characters in Ain Gordon's 2013 play If She Stood, commissioned by the Painted Bride Art Center in Philadelphia.

[25] "The Grimké Sisters at Work on Theodore Dwight Weld’s American Slavery As It Is (1838)" is a poem by Melissa Range, published in the September 30, 2019, issue of The Nation.