First published in 1848, Frederick Grimke's book, in the words of the editor, "deserves comparison with Tocqueville's justly famous work, Democracy in America, and is in certain ways superior. It is the single best book written by an American in the nineteenth century on the meaning of our political way of life." A second edition of Grimke's work was published in 1856, and a third edition appeared posthumously in 1871, but since then this classic in American thought has been almost completely lost to sight.

Grimke was born in South Carolina in 1791, and later moved...

Frederick Grimke is the last person anyone - including scholars who have recounted the careers of his two sisters Sarah and Angelina in the nineteenth century feminist movement - would have suspected of having a sympathetic interest in women's rights. An intellectual with quietly held opinions on secession and slavery reflecting his antebellum southern heritage, who spent the last two decades of his life pursuing interests in political theory, he was famous among fellow townsmen for his aversion to female company. But his affection for his sisters and his admiration for what they had...