No one really knows if Abraham Lincoln upon meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe said, ‘So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war!’ It’s apocryphal, anecdotal, and part of the Stowe family lore.
It or something similar probably did occur, and indeed, the little woman was integral in the makings of a war that pitted brother against brother and tore the nation apart. And regardless of its veracity or accuracy, Mrs. Stowe has her place in history and was truly a woman of influence.
Born in Litchfield, Connecticut on June 14, 1811, Harriet was the seventh of 13 children born to an outspoken Calvinist preacher named Lyman Beecher. Her mother, Roxana, noted by most as deeply religious, died when Harriet was five.
Harriet’s family was abolitionist to the core. Her brother, Henry Ward Beecher was legendary in the abolitionist cause.
Harriet was educated at the Hartford Female Seminary, operated by her sister, Catherine. There she received an education generally reserved for men in that era; it was traditional and focused on the classics, languages, and mathematics. Most women learned to dance, paint china, and embroider.
At the age of 21, she moved to Cincinnati to join her father, then president of Lane Theological Seminary. She joined the Semi-Colon Club where she met Caroline Hentz, Salmon Chase, Emily Blackwell, and others.
Cincinnati was a boom town peopled with immigrants, free blacks, and runaway slaves. The stories the slaves told influenced Harriet.
She met Calvin Ellis Stowe, a professor at the seminary, at the club. They were married on January 6, 1836. They were equally avid abolitionists and Stowe supported the Underground Railroad and the couple housed runaway slaves from time to time.
They had seven children
When Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850 prohibiting assistance to fugitives and strengthening sanctions in free states, the Stowes were living in Maine. While there, they lost an infant son, Samuel, and Harriet had a vision of a dying slave while at a communion service and was inspired to write his story. The story ended UP in the antislavery journal National Era as the first installment of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
It’s original title was The Man That Was A Thing but was soon changed to Life Among the Lowly. Weekly installments were published from June of 1851 through April of 1852.
She was paid $400.
Published in book form as Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852 by John P. Jewett as two volumes, the book sold an unprecedented 300,000 copies in the first year. The book cost 37 and ½ cents at the book stand.
Her goal was to educate northerners of the realistic horrors of slavery and to make people in the south more empathetic towards their slaves.
The book captured the nation’s attention, showed that slavery touched all of society and not just the south, and added to the debate around abolition.
It also aroused opposition in the South and was a cultural phenomenon. In the first year after it was published, over three hundred baby girls in Boston alone were name Eva after one of its main characters. Southern writers countered with “anti-Tom” novels and stories which portrayed southern society and slavery in a more positive light. None matched Stowe’s sales numbers.
After the start of the Civil War, Stowe did travel to DC, and she did meet the President. On November 25, 1862 according to Stowe’s daughter Hattie, they had “…a very droll time …at the White House I assure you…I will only say not that it was all very funny and we were ready to explode with laughter all the while.”
What was said wasn’t recorded, but her son reported that the President greeted her by saying, “…so you’re the little woman who started this great war.”
Stowe would write to her husband that, “I had a real funny interview with the President.”
In 1866, Stowe moved to Florida where she held property in Duval County. She would state that she had not received “…even an incivility from any native Floridian…”
Harriet wasn’t just about slavery and abolition. She was a woman’s rights activist as well, and campaigned for expanded rights for married women. She wrote, “…the 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 earned a fortune through her talents, he is the sole master of it, and she cannot draw a penny…”
In the 1870s she was integral in the founding of the Hartford Art School which would become the University of Hartford.
Upon the loss of her husband in 1886, Harriet’s health declined rapidly, and the great author at the age of 77 was afflicted with dementia.
The onset of dementia brought her back to pen and paper where she began to write Uncle Tom’s Cabin over again. In her mind, she was writing the original composition, and for hours daily she would inscribe passages of the book almost exactly word for word.
It was unconscious and from memory, and to her diseased mind it was all brand new.
Mark Twain, her neighbor wrote, “Her mind had decayed, and she was a pathetic figure. She wandered about all the daylong in the care of a muscular Irish woman. Among the colonists of our neighborhood the doors always stood open in pleasant weather. Mrs. Stowe entered them at her own free will, and as she was always softly slippered and generally full of animal spirits, she was able to deal in surprises, and she liked to do it. She would slip up behind a person who was deep in dreams and musings and fetch a war whoop that would jump that person out of his clothes. And she had other moods. Sometimes we would hear gentle music in the drawing-room and would find her there at the piano singing ancient and melancholy songs with infinitely touching effect.”
Modern science tells us that the great writer was suffering from Alzheimer’s.
Stowe died on July 1, 1896 at the age of 85.
Her book lives on, has never been out of print, and continues to sell today.
If you have not read it, you should.
Harriet Beecher Stowe was truly a woman of influence whether Lincoln said so or not.