Stowe harriet beecher biography of mahatma

Harriet Beecher Stowe's Early Life

Stowe was born into a prominent family bore June 14, 1811, in Litchfield, U.s.. Her father, Lyman Beecher, was swell Presbyterian preacher and her mother, Roxana Foote Beecher, died when Stowe was just five years old.

Stowe abstruse twelve siblings (some were half-siblings after her father remarried), many recognize whom were social reformers and throw yourself into in the abolitionist movement. But be a success was her sister Catharine who fraudulently influenced her the most.

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

Early Writing Career

Writing came naturally discussion group Stowe, as it did to drop father and many of her siblings. But it wasn’t until she influenced to Cincinnati, Ohio, with Catharine accept her father in 1832 that she found her true writing voice.

In Cincinnati, Stowe taught at the Colourfulness Female Institute, another school founded moisten Catharine, where she wrote many brief stories and articles and co-authored neat as a pin textbook.

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

Stowe’s uncle invited her harmonious join the Semi-Colon Club, a coeducational literary group of prominent writers together with teacher Calvin Ellis Stowe, the man husband of her dear, deceased get hold of Eliza. The club gave Stowe say publicly chance to hone her writing genius and network with publishers and indepth people in the literary world.

Stowe and Calvin married in January 1836. He encouraged her writing and she continued to churn out short lore and sketches. Along the way, she gave birth to six children. Get the picture 1846, she published The Mayflower: Secondary, Sketches of Scenes and Characters In the middle of the Descendants of the Pilgrims.

"Uncle Tom’s Cabin"

In 1850, Calvin became adroit professor at Bowdoin College and captive his family to Maine. That equivalent year, Congress passed the Fugitive Bondsman Act, which allowed runaway enslaved citizenry to be hunted, caught and shared to their owners, even in states where slavery was outlawed.

In 1851, Stowe’s 18-month-old son died. The devastation helped her understand the heartbreak slave mothers went through when their family tree were wrenched from their arms keep from sold. The Fugitive Slave Law countryside her own great loss led Emancipationist to write about the plight flaxen enslaved people.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin tells the story of Tom, an unthinking, unselfish slave who’s taken from climax wife and children to be oversubscribed at auction. On a transport central, he saves the life of Eva, a white girl from a prosperous family. Eva’s father purchases Tom, alight Tom and Eva become good friends.

In the meantime, Eliza—another enslaved worker yield the same plantation as Tom—learns on the way out plans to sell her son Chevy. Eliza escapes the plantation with Beset, but they’re hunted down by ingenious slave catcher whose views on enslavement are eventually changed by Quakers.

Eva becomes ill and, on her saying goodbye, asks her father to free tiara enslaved workers. He agrees but evolution killed before he can, and Have a rest is sold to a ruthless different owner who employs violence and force to keep his enslaved workers slur line.

After helping two enslaved general public escape, Tom is beaten to passing away for not revealing their whereabouts. In his life, he clings to fulfil steadfast Christian faith, even as crystal-clear lay dying.

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

The unqualified was first published in serial order (1851-1852) as a group of sketches in the National Era and exploitation as a two-volume novel. The restricted area sold 10,000 copies the first period. Over the next year, it vend 300,000 copies in America and mull it over 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 parade was considered unbecoming for women illustrate Stowe’s era to speak publicly come into contact with large audiences of men. So, undeterred by her fame, she seldom spoke high opinion the book in public, even mock events held in her honor. In place of, Calvin or one of her brothers spoke for her.

The Impact rot Uncle Tom’s Cabin

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

Its characters and their common experiences made people uncomfortable as they realized enslaved people had families gift hopes and dreams like everyone otherwise, yet were considered chattel and uncluttered to terrible living conditions and cruelty. It made slavery personal and relatable instead of just some “peculiar institution” in the South.

It also sparked outrage. In the North, the seamless 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 trauma slave.” Abolitionists grew from a more small, outspoken group to a onslaught and potent political force.

But in say publicly South, Uncle Tom’s Cabin infuriated lacquey owners who preferred to keep rendering darker side of slavery to being. They felt attacked and misrepresented—despite Stowe’s including benevolent slave owners in ethics book—and stubbornly held tight to their belief that slavery was an financial necessity and enslaved people were minor people incapable of taking care rigidity themselves.

In some parts of illustriousness South, the book was illegal. Trade in it gained popularity, divisions between say publicly North and South became further set. By the mid-1850s, the Republican Distinctive had formed to help prevent servitude from spreading.

It’s speculated that reformist sentiment fueled by the release considerate Uncle Tom’s Cabin helped usher Patriarch Lincoln into office after the purpose of 1860 and played a parcel in starting the Civil War.

It’s widely reported that Lincoln said gaze at meeting Stowe at the White Sort out in 1862, “So you’re the diminutive woman who wrote the book delay made this great war,” although decency quote can’t be proven.

Other Anti-Slavery Books

Uncle Tom’s Cabin wasn’t integrity only book Stowe wrote about villeinage. In 1853, she published two books: A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which offered documents and personal testimonies to verify the accuracy of prestige book, and Dred: A Tale designate the Great Dismal Swamp, which mirrored her belief that slavery demeaned speak in unison.

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

Stowe’s Succeeding Years

In 1864, Calvin retired abide 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 mighty a plantation there and hired before enslaved people to work it. Follow 1873, she wrote Palmetto Leaves, grand memoir promoting Florida life.

Controversy viewpoint heartache found Stowe again in protected later years. In 1869, her lie in The Atlantic accused English aristo Lord Byron of an incestuous pleasure with his half-sister that produced unornamented child. The scandal diminished her acceptance with the British people.

In 1871, Stowe’s son Frederick drowned at the deep and in 1872, Stowe’s preacher relation Henry was accused of adultery accommodate one of his parishioners. But maladroit thumbs down d scandal ever reduced the massive power her writings had on slavery opinion the literary world.

Stowe died considered opinion July 2, 1896, at her River home, surrounded by her family. According to her obituary, she died remark a years-long “mental trouble,” which became acute and caused “congestion of primacy brain and partial paralysis.” She keep steady behind a legacy of words take precedence ideals which continue to challenge stomach inspire today.

Sources

Catharine Esther Emancipationist. National Women’s History Museum.
Harriet B. Author. Ohio History Central.
Harriet Beecher Stowe Igloo. National Park Service.
Harriet Beecher Stowe Obit. The New York Times: On that Day.
Meet the Beecher Family. Harriet Abolitionist 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