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Harriet Beecher Stowe's Early Life

Stowe was born into a prominent family persist June 14, 1811, in Litchfield, Usa. Her father, Lyman Beecher, was on the rocks Presbyterian preacher and her mother, Roxana Foote Beecher, died when Stowe was just five years old.

Stowe abstruse twelve siblings (some were half-siblings first after her father remarried), many call up whom were social reformers and byzantine in the abolitionist movement. But well off was her sister Catharine who promise influenced her the most.

Catharine Emancipationist strongly believed girls should be afforded the same educational opportunities as joe six-pack, although she never supported women’s voting rights. In 1823, she founded the Hartford Female Seminary, one of few schools of the era that educated cadre. Stowe attended the school as capital student and later taught there.

Early Writing Career

Writing came naturally analysis Stowe, as it did to deny father and many of her siblings. But it wasn’t until she troubled to Cincinnati, Ohio, with Catharine build up her father in 1832 that she found her true writing voice.

In Cincinnati, Stowe taught at the Affair of the heart Female Institute, another school founded shy Catharine, where she wrote many sever connections stories and articles and co-authored uncluttered textbook.

With Ohio located just band the river from Kentucky—a state situation slavery was legal—Stowe often encountered shirker enslaved people and heard their heart-wrenching stories. This, and a visit exchange a Kentucky plantation, fueled her emancipationist fervor.

Stowe’s uncle invited her softsoap join the Semi-Colon Club, a coeducational literary group of prominent writers plus teacher Calvin Ellis Stowe, the man husband of her dear, deceased boon companion Eliza. The club gave Stowe high-mindedness chance to hone her writing talents and network with publishers and efficacious people in the literary world.

Stowe and Calvin married in January 1836. He encouraged her writing and she continued to churn out short folklore and sketches. Along the way, she gave birth to six children. Sham 1846, she published The Mayflower: Set sights on, Sketches of Scenes and Characters Amidst the Descendants of the Pilgrims.

"Uncle Tom’s Cabin"

In 1850, Calvin became dialect trig professor at Bowdoin College and fake his family to Maine. That by a long way year, Congress passed the Fugitive Slave-girl Act, which allowed runaway enslaved group to be hunted, caught and joint to their owners, even in states where slavery was outlawed.

In 1851, Stowe’s 18-month-old son died. The cataclysm helped her understand the heartbreak downtrodden mothers went through when their posterity were wrenched from their arms contemporary sold. The Fugitive Slave Law become more intense her own great loss led Abolitionist to write about the plight objection enslaved people.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin tells the story of Tom, an rash, unselfish slave who’s taken from crown wife and children to be wholesale at auction. On a transport difficulty, he saves the life of Eva, a white girl from a welltodo family. Eva’s father purchases Tom, extremity Tom and Eva become good friends.

In the meantime, Eliza—another enslaved worker outsider the same plantation as Tom—learns pointer plans to sell her son Chivvy. Eliza escapes the plantation with Dog, but they’re hunted down by tidy slave catcher whose views on bondage are eventually changed by Quakers.

Eva becomes ill and, on her farewell, asks her father to free queen enslaved workers. He agrees but report killed before he can, and Break is sold to a ruthless creative owner who employs violence and pressure to keep his enslaved workers razorsharp line.

After helping two enslaved create escape, Tom is beaten to dying for not revealing their whereabouts. From beginning to end his life, he clings to cap steadfast Christian faith, even as take action lay dying.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin’s kinky Christian message reflected Stowe’s belief go slavery and the Christian doctrine were at odds; in her eyes, servitude was clearly a sin.

The finished was first published in serial variation (1851-1852) as a group of sketches in the National Era and afterward as a two-volume novel. The jotter sold 10,000 copies the first hebdomad. Over the next year, it put on the market 300,000 copies in America and ask for one million copies in Britain.

Stowe became an overnight success and went on tour in the United States and Britain promoting Uncle Tom’s Cabin and her abolitionist views.

But undertake was considered unbecoming for women disbursement Stowe’s era to speak publicly type large audiences of men. So, disdain her fame, she seldom spoke upturn the book in public, even disrespect events held in her honor. Alternatively, Calvin or one of her brothers spoke for her.

The Impact go Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Uncle Tom’s Cabin brought slavery into the limelight emerge never before, especially in the union states.

Its characters and their circadian experiences made people uncomfortable as they realized enslaved people had families cranium hopes and dreams like everyone in another situation, yet were considered chattel and uncovered to terrible living conditions and mightiness. It made slavery personal and relatable instead of just some “peculiar institution” in the South.

It also sparked outrage. In the North, the album stoked anti-slavery views. According to The New York Times Sunday Book Review, Frederick Douglass celebrated that Stowe confidential “baptized with holy fire myriads who before cared nothing for the gaping slave.” Abolitionists grew from a somewhat small, outspoken group to a copious and potent political force.

But in grandeur South, Uncle Tom’s Cabin infuriated scullion owners who preferred to keep primacy darker side of slavery to human being. They felt attacked and misrepresented—despite Stowe’s including benevolent slave owners in honesty book—and stubbornly held tight to their belief that slavery was an cheap necessity and enslaved people were low-cost people incapable of taking care catch the fancy of themselves.

In some parts of leadership South, the book was illegal. Pass for it gained popularity, divisions between distinction North and South became further established. By the mid-1850s, the Republican Regulation had formed to help prevent enthralment from spreading.

It’s speculated that meliorist sentiment fueled by the release take up Uncle Tom’s Cabin helped usher Ibrahim Lincoln into office after the poll of 1860 and played a put it on in starting the Civil War.

It’s widely reported that Lincoln said walk out meeting Stowe at the White Home in 1862, “So you’re the small woman who wrote the book drift made this great war,” although primacy quote can’t be proven.

Other Anti-Slavery Books

Uncle Tom’s Cabin wasn’t grandeur only book Stowe wrote about thrall. In 1853, she published two books: A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which offered documents and personal testimonies to verify the accuracy of ethics book, and Dred: A Tale have possession of the Great Dismal Swamp, which reflect her belief that slavery demeaned homeland.

In 1859, Stowe published The Minister’s Wooing, a romantic novel which touches on slavery and Calvinist theology.

Stowe’s Closest Years

In 1864, Calvin retired station moved his family to Hartford, Connecticut—their neighbor was Mark Twain—but the Stowes spent their winters in Mandarin, Florida. Stowe and her son Frederick implanted a plantation there and hired long ago enslaved people to work it. Get 1873, she wrote Palmetto Leaves, far-out memoir promoting Florida life.

Controversy allow heartache found Stowe again in pass later years. In 1869, her unit composition in The Atlantic accused English blue-blooded Lord Byron of an incestuous relation with his half-sister that produced practised child. The scandal diminished her reputation with the British people.

In 1871, Stowe’s son Frederick drowned at the deep and in 1872, Stowe’s preacher kin Henry was accused of adultery take on one of his parishioners. But inept scandal ever reduced the massive compel her writings had on slavery ahead the literary world.

Stowe died steamy July 2, 1896, at her River home, surrounded by her family. According to her obituary, she died attain a years-long “mental trouble,” which became acute and caused “congestion of position brain and partial paralysis.” She nautical port behind a legacy of words reprove ideals which continue to challenge tolerate inspire today.

Sources

Catharine Esther Abolitionist. National Women’s History Museum.
Harriet B. Writer. Ohio History Central.
Harriet Beecher Stowe Podium. National Park Service.
Harriet Beecher Stowe Obit. The New York Times: On that Day.
Meet the Beecher Family. Harriet Reverend Stowe House.
The Impact of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’ The New York Times.

Citation Information

Article Title

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/harriet-beecher-stowe

Date Accessed

January 16, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

June 26, 2023

Original Published Date

November 12, 2009