Christian, writer, mother these three attributes belonged to Harriet Beecher Stowe. When the Fugitive Slave Act became law, these attributes combined in such a way that they compelled Stowe to write one of the most powerful books in American history.
Christian: Harriet came from a profoundly religious family. Her father was the well-known Reverend Lyman Beecher. Harriet’s religious background was Congregational. For Congregationalists and the Stowe family in particular, the conversion experience must be followed by a life of public service. When Stowe was thirteen, she gave her life to Christ during one of her father’s sermons.
Her brother Henry Ward Beecher also became a minister and would encourage members of his congregation to purchase slaves and free them. Her brother was also known for his ‘Beecher’s Bibles.’ His congregation sent rifles to antislavery sympathizers in Kansas by hiding them in boxes that were meant to carry Bibles. Stowe married Calvin Stowe, a theology professor.
Writer: Stowe was a precocious child. At age six, Stowe began borrowing books from her father’s library. She was particularly fond of history books. By age eight, Stowe entered Litchfield Academy where the average age for admission was twelve. Despite her young age, Stowe quickly became the top student in her class. As a result, she was selected to write an essay for graduation. Stowe had entered the world of writing.
Throughout her entire life, Harriet would seek time for writing. After the Academy, she enrolled in the Hartford Female Seminary that her sisters Catharine and Mary started in 1823. Soon Stowe was not only a student but also a teacher. Her sister Catharine strongly believed that Harriet should focus on teaching but Harriet’s passion was the written word. She would write late into the night by the flickering light of a candle or lantern, a practice that followed her for the rest of her life.
After marriage, Stowe would supplement the family’s meager income by writing. Eventually, her writing brought in enough money so that she could hire a woman to watch the children and clean the house while she wrote.
Mother: Stowe lost her infant son Charley to cholera in 1849. The grief of the loss and her inability to do anything for a small suffering child haunted Stowe for the rest of her life. A short time after the death of Charley, the Fugitive Slave Act was passed through the Compromise of 1850. The Compromise was intended to hold the Union together.
Stowe disagreed with the idea that the Union was more important than people. The death of Charley convinced her that in some small way, she understood how a slave mother felt when her child was taken from her arms and separated from her forever.
When Stowe began writing Uncle Tom’s Cabin, she accessed her memories of all the stories that she had heard from slaves and all the stories she heard about slavery. She also accessed her own pain over the loss of Charley and made the separation of mother and child through slavery one of the central themes in the book.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin: In 1850, Stowe’s Christian conviction in the dignity of all human’s, her pain as a bereft mother, and her gift as a writer merged in the novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Stowe had written letters and argued passionately with other’s who believed that the Fugitive Slave Act was acceptable but she wanted to do more. The decision to write the novel came when Stowe received an encouraging letter from her sister-in-law who wrote: "Harriet, if I could use a pen as you can, I would write something that would make this whole nation feel what an accursed thing slavery is."
Stowe now knew what she had to do. Inspiration came a short-time later. While sitting in church, she had a vision of the death of a slave at the hands of other slaves and yet that slave forgave his oppressors. She developed it into a short sketch and after Calvin read it, he told her that she had the end of her story and all she needed to do is tell everything preceding that ending.
By 1851, the first installment of Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a serial was being published in newspaper The National Era. By 1854, the first edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published shortly before the last serial installment was published and within a week the book (a two volume set) had sold 10,000 copies within a year it had sold 300,000 copies making it unprecedented success.
While the novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin doesn’t appeal to everyone and certainly offends many, its success is a testimony to one woman’s willingness to live what she believed.
To learn more about Uncle Tom’s Cabin, read Stowe’s-Eliza and Uncle Tom.
Sources
Haugen, Brenda. Harriet Beecher Stowe: Author and Advocate. Compass Point Books, 2005.
