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...