Harriet Beecher Stowe

Harriet and Calvin Stowe

“So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that started this big war.” (quote attributed to President Abraham Lincoln upon meeting Harriet in December,1862)

   Perhaps Harriet ‘s book did start the Civil War in America, or perhaps it was other factors, but whatever the real cause she was most certainly part of it. Her book, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” brought the tragedy of slavery home to the American public in a personal way, as she wove her tale into the very fabric of American life. If there were thousands of people who were completely unaware that slavery existed, they certainly knew about it after the book was published. And the book came about when one of Harriet’s sisters-in-law( Mrs. Edward Beecher) wrote to her saying, “Now Hattie, 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.”* Shortly afterward Hattie was sitting in church and felt the pain of slavery and saw her characters come alive in her mind. She rushed home to paper and pencil. And that was the start of one of the most famous and influential books ever written in America.

   Born in 1811 to Lyman and Roxana Foote Beecher, Harriet was educated, along with brother Henry, at Miss Pierce’s School in Litchfield. The two were very close and remained so until the end of Henry’s life. After moving with the family to Cincinnati, where Lyman became President of the Lane Seminary, Harriet became friendly with Eliza Tyler Stowe, the first wife of Professor Calvin Ellis Stowe (1802-1886) whom Harriet would marry in 1836 after Eliza’s premature death in 1834. Together they would have 7 children and Harriet was kept busy with her family and taking care of her neurasthenic husband. Calvin often had visions and at times saw dead people in his room.

Hartford, CT home of Harriet Beecher Stowe

   “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” came out on March 20, 1852, and has been in constant publication since that time. Harriet and Calvin visited England, where she met John Ruskin, who was said to have taken a personal interest in her. Harriet eventually resided in Hartford, Connecticut at Nook Farm, (the present-day Harriet Beecher Stowe Center) in a little group of homes, including that of Mark Twain. Her half-sister Isabella, lived close to her. As she aged, Harriet would play practical jokes on her neighbors, often slipping into Twain’s house and scaring him. Possibly dementia was already setting in.

   They were both ardent abolitionists and their lives are studied in schools in America and elsewhere as examples of early freedom lovers. An example of Harriet’s work ethic is found in one of her quotes:
“Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.”

* Saints, Sinners and Beechers,” by Lyman Beecher Stowe, Harriet’s grandson.

Editor’s Note:

    Ten years ago I read Anya Laurence’s book Love Divine: The Life of Henry Ward Beecher and enjoyed it immensely. A few years later, I read Debbie Applegate’s The Most Famous Man in America:The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher, which won the Pulitzer Prize. When Anya started writing for CTOldHouse.com I told her I had learned more in an essential sense from her 145-page book than from Applegate’s longer opus.  I told Anya that Applegate’s book was a lumbering 18-wheeler stuffed with facts,while Love Divine was a Jaguar XJ6, a sharp classic speeding up the historic road into American myth and folklore.

Love Divine: the life of Henry Ward Beecher is now available in paperback in a new printing.

$20 check or money order to
Anya Laurence
1650 Norfolk St.
Windsor ONN9E1H5
Canada
at_al@cogeco.ca
519-250-3440