Feeling confined in her role, Sarah developed a connection to her family's slaves to an extent that unsettled her parents. From the time she was 12 years old, Sarah spent her Sunday afternoons teaching Bible classes to the young slaves on the plantation, an experience she found frustrating. While she desperately wanted to teach them to read the Scripture for themselves, and they had a longing for such learning, her parents prohibited this, as teaching slaves to read was illegal. Her parents also said that literacy would only make the slaves unhappy and rebellious, making them unfit for manual labor. Teaching slaves to read had been prohibited since 1740 in South Carolina.