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From the Editor
WHAT HARRIET BEECHER STOWE MEANS TO ME
I came to read Uncle Tom’s Cabin not as a scholar or critic, but as an ordinary reader who had found great inspiration in classic American literature. I had recently lost my mother in a car accident and was struggling with my mother’s legacy to me, which boiled down to strong, unlimited love.
Like most people who hadn’t read the book, I came to it with the popular cliché of Uncle Tom on my mind: the weak, timid slave anxious to do his master’s will. What I found instead was a profound spiritual hero. “Mrs. Stowe is not so old-fashioned as we may think,” wrote Alfred Kazin in 1981.”She may be even ahead of us.” When he talks about her being ahead of us, I’m reminded of the last chapter of the book,”Concluding Remarks,” where Mrs. Stowe comes out and, as it were, takes a seat on a couch on stage. Speaking of herself, she says, “The writer has given only a faint shadow, a dim picture, of the anguish and despair that are at this moment, riving thousands, shattering thousands of families, and driving a helpless and sensitive race to frenzy and despair.” This is as true today about detained immigrants on the Mexican border as it was for black slaves when she wrote it.
Mrs. Stowe is standing now and her voice is growing louder. “And you, mothers of America,—you, who have learned, by the cradles of your own children, to love and feel for all mankind,—by the sacred love you bear your child; by your joy in his beautiful, spotless infancy, by the motherly pity and tenderness with which you guide his growing years; by the anxieties of his education; by the prayers you breathe for his soul’s eternal good;—I beseech you, pity the mother who has all your affections, and not one legal right to protect, guide, or educate the child of her bosom!”
Now she is shouting: …there is one thing every individual can do,—they can see to it that they feel right. An atmosphere of sympathetic influence encircles every human being; and the man or woman who feels strongly, healthily, and justly on the great interests of humanity, is a constant benefactor to the human race.”
By now Mrs. Stowe has balled her fists and is shaking them in our face: “…not surer is the eternal law by which the millstone sinks in the ocean, than that stronger law by which injustice and cruelty shall bring on nations the wrath of Almighty God!”
Max H. Peters
Publisher and Editor
Header photo by Skip Broom, HP Broom Housewright, Inc.