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Harriet Beecher Stowe

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Harriet Beecher Stowe
Stowe circa 1852
Stowe circa 1852
BornHarriet Elisabeth Beecher
(1811-06-14)June 14, 1811
Litchfield, Connecticut, United States
DiedJuly 1, 1896(1896-07-01) (aged 85)
Hartford, Connecticut, United States
Pen nameChristopher Crowfield
SpouseCalvin Ellis Stowe
ChildrenEliza Taylor, Harriet Beecher, Henry Ellis, Frederick William, Georgiana May, Samuel Charles, and Charles Edward
Signature

Harriet Beecher Stowe (/stoʊ/; June 14, 1811 – July 1, 1896) was an American abolitionist and author. Her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) was a depiction of life for African Americans under slavery; it reached millions as a novel and play, and became influential in the United States and United Kingdom. It energized anti-slavery forces in the American North, while provoking widespread anger in the South. She wrote more than 20 books, including novels, three travel memoirs, and collections of articles and letters. She was influential both for her writings and her public stands on social issues of the day.

Life and work

Harriet Elisabeth Beecher was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, on June 14, 1811.[1] She was the seventh of 13 children,[2] born to outspoken religious leader Lyman Beecher and Roxana (Foote), a deeply religious woman who died when Stowe was only five years old. Her notable siblings included a sister, Catharine Beecher, who was an educator and author, as well brothers who became ministers: including Henry Ward Beecher, who became a famous abolitionist, Charles Beecher, and Edward Beecher.[3]

Harriet enrolled in the seminary (girls' school) run by her sister Catharine, where she received a traditionally "male" education in the classics, including study of languages and mathematics. Among her classmates there was Sarah P. Willis, who later wrote under the pseudonym Fanny Fern.[4] At the age of 21, she moved to Cincinnati, Ohio to join her father, who had become the president of Lane Theological Seminary. There, she also joined the Semi-Colon Club, a literary salon and social club whose members included the Beecher sisters, Caroline Lee Hentz, Salmon P. Chase, Emily Blackwell, and others.[5]

It was in that group that she met Calvin Ellis Stowe, a widower and professor at the seminary. The two married on January 6, 1836.[6] He was an ardent critic of slavery, and the Stowes supported the Underground Railroad, temporarily housing several fugitive slaves in their home. They had seven children together, including twin daughters.

Uncle Tom's Cabin and Civil War

Portrait of Stowe by Alanson Fisher, 1853 (National Portrait Gallery)

In 1850, Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Law, prohibiting assistance to fugitives. At the time, Stowe had moved with her family into a home near the campus of Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, where her husband was now teaching. Stowe had a vision during a communion service at the college, a vision of a dying slave, and she determined to bring that vision to life. Cite error: A <ref> tag is missing the closing </ref> (see the help page). Shortly after, In June 1851, when she was 40, the first installment of her Uncle Tom's Cabin was published in the National Era. She originally used the subtitle "The Man That Was A Thing", but it was soon changed to "Life Among the Lowly".[1] Installments were published weekly from June 5, 1851, to April 1, 1852.[7] For the newspaper serialization of her novel, Stowe was paid only $400.[8] Uncle Tom's Cabin was published in book form on March 20, 1852, by John P. Jewett with an initial print run of 5,000 copies.[9] Each of its two volumes included three illustrations and a title-page designed by Hammatt Billings.[10] In less than a year, the book sold an unprecedented three hundred thousand copies.[11] By December, as sales began to wane, Jewett issued an inexpensive edition at 37 1/2 cents each to further inspire sales.[12]

Portrait of Harriet Beecher Stowe by Francis Holl, 1853

The book's emotional portrayal of the impact of slavery captured the nation's attention. It added to the debate about abolition and slavery, and aroused opposition in the South. Within a year, 300 babies were named "Eva" in Boston alone and a play based on the book opened in New York in November of that year.[13]

After the start of the Civil War, Stowe traveled to Washington, D.C. and there met President Abraham Lincoln on November 25, 1862.[14] Stowe's daughter Hattie reported, "It was a very droll time that we had at the White house I assure you... I will only say now that it was all very funny—and we were ready to explode with laughter all the while."[15] What exactly Lincoln said is a minor mystery. Her son later reported that Lincoln greeted her by saying, "so you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war."[16] Her own accounts are vague, including the letter reporting the meeting to her husband: "I had a real funny interview with the President."[15]

Later years

In the years following the Civil War, Stowe campaigned for the expansion of married women's rights, arguing in 1869 that:[17]

[T]he position of a married woman ... is, in many respects, precisely similar to that of the negro slave. She can make no contract and hold no property; whatever she inherits or earns becomes at that moment the property of her husband.... Though he acquired a fortune through her, or though she earn a fortune through her talents, he is the sole master of it, and she cannot draw a penny....[I]n the English common law a married woman is nothing at all. She passes out of legal existence.

In the 1870s, Stowe's brother Henry Ward Beecher was accused of adultery, and became the subject of a national scandal. Stowe, unable to bear the public attacks on her brother, fled to Florida but asked family members to send her newspaper reports.[18] Through the affair, however, she remained loyal to her brother and believed he was innocent.[19]

Mrs. Stowe was among the founders of the Hartford Art School, which later became part of the University of Hartford.

Following Calvin Stowe's death in 1886, Harriet's own health started to decline rapidly. By 1888 the Washington Post reported that as a result of dementia she started "writing Uncle Tom's Cabin over again. She imagined that she was engaged in the original composition, and for several hours every day she industriously used pen and paper, inscribing long passages of the book almost exactly word for word. This was done unconsciously from memory, the authoress imagining that she composed the matter as she went along. To her diseased mind the story was brand new and she frequently exhausted herself with labor which she regarded as freshly created."[20] Modern researchers now speculate that at the end of her life Harriet was suffering from Alzheimer's disease.[21]

Harriet Beecher Stowe died on July 1, 1896, at age eighty-five in Hartford, Connecticut. She is buried in the historic cemetery at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts.[22]

Legacy

Harriet Beecher Stowe House in Cincinnati, Ohio
Bust by Brenda Putnam at Hall of Fame for Great Americans

Landmarks

Multiple landmarks are dedicated to the memory of Harriet Beecher Stowe, and are located in several states including Ohio, Florida, Maine and Connecticut. The locations of these landmarks represent various periods of her life such as her father's house where she grew up, and where she wrote her most famous work.

The Harriet Beecher Stowe House in Cincinnati, Ohio is the former home of her father Lyman Beecher on the former campus of the Lane Seminary. Her father was a preacher who was greatly affected by the pro-slavery Cincinnati Riots of 1836. Harriet Beecher Stowe lived here until her marriage. It is open to the public and operated as a historical and cultural site, focusing on Harriet Beecher Stowe, the Lane Seminary and the Underground Railroad. The site also presents African-American history.[23]

In the 1870s and 1880s, Stowe and her family wintered in Mandarin, Florida, now a neighborhood of modern consolidated Jacksonville, on the St. Johns River. Stowe wrote Palmetto Leaves while living in Mandarin, arguably an eloquent piece of promotional literature directed at Florida's potential Northern investors at the time.[24] The book was published in 1873 and describes Northeast Florida and its residents. In 1870, Stowe created an integrated school in Mandarin for children and adults. This predated the national movement toward integration by more than a half century. The marker commemorating the Stowe family is located across the street from the former site of their cottage. It is on the property of the Community Club, at the site of a church where Stowe's husband once served as a minister. The Church of our Saviour is an Episcopal Church founded in 1880 by a group of people who had gathered for Bible readings with Professor Calvin E. Stowe and his famous wife. The house was constructed in 1883 which contained the Stowe Memorial stained glass window, created by Louis Comfort Tiffany.[25]

The Harriet Beecher Stowe House in Brunswick, Maine is where Stowe lived when she wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin. Her husband was teaching theology at nearby Bowdoin College, and she regularly invited students from the college and friends to read and discuss the chapters before publication. Future Civil War general, and later Governor, Joshua Chamberlain was then a student at the college and later described the setting. “On these occasions,” Chamberlain noted, “a chosen circle of friends, mostly young, were favored with the freedom of her house, the rallying point being, however, the reading before publication, of the successive chapters of her Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and the frank discussion of them.” In 2001 Bowdoin College purchased the house, together with a newer attached building, and was able to raise the substantial funds necessary to restore the house. It is not open to the public.

The Harriet Beecher Stowe House in Hartford, Connecticut is the house where Stowe lived for the last 23 years of her life. It was next door to the house of fellow author Mark Twain. In this 5,000 sq ft (460 m2) cottage-style house, there are many of Beecher Stowe's original items and items from the time period. In the research library, which is open to the public, there are numerous letters and documents from the Beecher family. The house is open to the public and offers house tours on the half hour.

In 1833, during Stowe's time in Cincinnati, the city was afflicted with a serious cholera epidemic. To avoid illness, Stowe made a visit to Washington, Kentucky, a major community of the era just south of Maysville. She stayed with the Marshall Key family, one of whose daughters was a student at Lane Seminary. It is recorded that Mr. Key took her to see a slave auction, as they were frequently held in Maysville. Scholars believe she was strongly moved by the experience. The Marshall Key home still stands in Washington. Key was a prominent Kentuckian; his visitors also included Henry Clay and Daniel Webster.[26]

The Uncle Tom's Cabin Historic Site is part of the restored Dawn Settlement at Dresden, Ontario, which is 20 miles east of Algonac, Michigan. The community for freed slaves founded by the Rev. Josiah Henson and other abolitionists in the 1830s has been restored. There's also a museum. Henson and the Dawn Settlement provided Stowe with the inspiration for Uncle Tom's Cabin.[27]

Honors

Partial list of works

As Christopher Crowfield

  • House and Home Papers (1865)
  • Little Foxes (1866)

See also

Notes

  1. ^ a b McFarland, Philip. Loves of Harriet Beecher Stowe. New York: Grove Press, 2007: 112. ISBN 978-0-8021-4390-7
  2. ^ Hedrick, Joan (1994). Harriet Beecher Stowe: a Life. Oxford University Press. p. 6. ISBN 0-19-506639-1. Retrieved 30 Jun 2011.
  3. ^ Applegate, Debby (2006). The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher. Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-307-42400-6.
  4. ^ Warren, Joyce W. Fanny Fern: An Independent Woman. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992: 21. ISBN 0-8135-1763-X
  5. ^ Tonkovic, Nicole. Domesticity with a difference: The Nonfiction of Catharine Beecher, Sarah J. Hale, Fanny Fern, and Margaret Fuller. University Press of Mississippi, 1997: 12. ISBN 0-87805-993-8
  6. ^ McFarland, Philip. Loves of Harriet Beecher Stowe. New York: Grove Press, 2007: 21. ISBN 978-0-8021-4390-7
  7. ^ Cite error: The named reference Hedrick208 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  8. ^ Lyons, Martyn (2011). Books: A Living History. Los Angeles, CA: J. Paul Getty Museum. p. 143.
  9. ^ McFarland, Philip. Loves of Harriet Beecher Stowe. New York: Grove Press, 2007: 80–81. ISBN 978-0-8021-4390-7
  10. ^ Parfait, Claire. The Publishing History of Uncle Tom's Cabin, 1852–2002. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2007: 71–72. ISBN 978-0-7546-5514-5
  11. ^ Morgan, Jo-Ann. Uncle Tom's Cabin As Visual Culture. University of Missouri Press, 2007: 136–137. ISBN 978-0-8262-1715-8
  12. ^ Parfait, Claire. The Publishing History of Uncle Tom's Cabin, 1852–2002. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2007: 78. ISBN 978-0-7546-5514-5
  13. ^ Morgan, Jo-Ann. Uncle Tom's Cabin As Visual Culture. University of Missouri Press, 2007: 137. ISBN 978-0-8262-1715-8
  14. ^ McFarland, Philip. Loves of Harriet Beecher Stowe. New York: Grove Press, 2007: 163. ISBN 978-0-8021-4390-7
  15. ^ a b Hedrick, Joan D. Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life (1995) p 306
  16. ^ David B. Sachsman; S. Kittrell Rushing; Roy Morris (2007). Memory and Myth: The Civil War in Fiction and Film from Uncle Tom's Cabin to Cold Mountain. Purdue University Press. p. 8.
  17. ^ Homestead, Melissa J. (2005). American Women Authors and Literary Property, 1822-1869. NY: Cambridge University Press. p. 29.
  18. ^ Applegate, Debby. The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher. New York: Three Leaves Press, 2006: 444. ISBN 978-0-385-51397--5
  19. ^ McFarland, Philip. Loves of Harriet Beecher Stowe. New York: Grove Press, 2007: 270. ISBN 978-0-8021-4390-7
  20. ^ "Rewriting Uncle Tom" Retrieved 6 September 2013.
  21. ^ Hedrick, Joan D. Harriet Beecher Stowe - A Life. Oxford University Press, 1994, p. 384.
  22. ^ "Harriet Elizabeth Beecher Stowe (1811 - 1896) - Find A Grave Memorial". Findagrave.com. Retrieved 2012-07-08.
  23. ^ "Stowe House". ohiohistory.org. Retrieved 2009-07-27.
  24. ^ Thulesius, Olav. Harriet Beecher Stowe in Florida, 1867 to 1884, Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co, 2001
  25. ^ Wood, Wayne (1996). Jacksonville's Architectural Heritage. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida. p. 284. ISBN 0813009537.
  26. ^ Calvert and Klee, Towns of Mason County [KY], LCCN 86-62637, 1986, Maysville and Mason County Library, Historical, and Scientific Association.
  27. ^ ""THE DAWN SETTLEMENT" - Dresden - Ontario Provincial Plaques on". Waymarking.com. Retrieved 2012-06-14.
  28. ^ The Second Coming of Christ, Moody Press, Colportage Library #34
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