While Gratz did not see herself as a political
or public person, she held strong opinions about slavery
and sectionalism and used her influence to assert them.
Her siblings, nieces, and nephews were scattered
throughout the North and the South and Gratz tried to
maintain contact and provide moral counsel to all of
them. She regularly admonished her brother Benjamin's
second wife, Ann, that “one
of the curses of slavery is the entire dependence the
poor mistress is reduced to.” When the Civil
War broke out in 1861, Gratz was disturbed that members
of her family would be on opposing sides. As she wrote
to Ann, “I have been
reading some loving letters from some so near to me in
blood and affections whose arms are perhaps now raised
against those hearts at which they have fed.”
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