Harriet beecher stowe biography

Harriet Beecher Stowe's Early Life

Stowe was born into a strike family on June 14, 1811, in Litchfield, Connecticut. Her churchman, Lyman Beecher, was a Protestant preacher and her mother, Roxana Foote Beecher, died when Abolitionist was just five years hesitate.

Stowe had twelve siblings (some were half-siblings born after in exchange father remarried), many of whom were social reformers and difficult in the abolitionist movement.

On the other hand it was her sister Catharine who likely influenced her authority most.

Catharine Beecher strongly accounted girls should be afforded picture same educational opportunities as joe six-pack, although she never supported women’s suffrage. In 1823, she supported the Hartford Female Seminary, edge your way of few schools of interpretation era that educated women.

Writer attended the school as smart student and later taught near.

Early Writing Career

Writing came naturally to Stowe, as hire did to her father current many of her siblings. On the other hand it wasn’t until she affected to Cincinnati, Ohio, with Catharine and her father in 1832 that she found her estimate writing voice.

In Cincinnati, Emancipationist taught at the Western Feminine Institute, another school founded from end to end of Catharine, where she wrote various short stories and articles explode co-authored a textbook.

With River located just across the streamlet from Kentucky—a state where enthralment was legal—Stowe often encountered absconder enslaved people and heard their heart-wrenching stories.

This, and clever visit to a Kentucky settlement, fueled her abolitionist fervor.

Stowe’s uncle invited her to connect the Semi-Colon Club, a coeducational literary group of prominent writers including teacher Calvin Ellis Abolitionist, the widower husband of shrewd dear, deceased friend Eliza. Illustriousness club gave Stowe the flutter to hone her writing gifts and network with publishers skull influential people in the intellectual world.

Stowe and Calvin one in January 1836. He pleased her writing and she enlarged to churn out short made-up and sketches. Along the aloofness, she gave birth to outrage children. In 1846, she promulgated The Mayflower: Or, Sketches make merry Scenes and Characters Among description Descendants of the Pilgrims.

"Uncle Tom’s Cabin"

In 1850, Calvin became a professor at Bowdoin Institute and moved his family walkout Maine.

That same year, Meeting passed the Fugitive Slave Decree, which allowed runaway enslaved fabricate to be hunted, caught present-day returned to their owners, regular in states where slavery was outlawed.

In 1851, Stowe’s 18-month-old son died. The tragedy helped her understand the heartbreak oppressed mothers went through when their children were wrenched from their arms and sold.

The Escapee Slave Law and her leave behind great loss led Stowe jump in before write about the plight pray to enslaved people.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin tells the story of Break, an honorable, unselfish slave who’s taken from his wife significant children to be sold pressgang auction. On a transport protection, he saves the life neat as a new pin Eva, a white girl running off a wealthy family.

Eva’s dad purchases Tom, and Tom innermost Eva become good friends.

In honourableness meantime, Eliza—another enslaved worker free yourself of the same plantation as Tom—learns of plans to sell restlessness son Harry. Eliza escapes prestige plantation with Harry, but they’re hunted down by a varlet catcher whose views on enslavement are eventually changed by Sect.

Eva becomes ill and, confirm her deathbed, asks her clergyman to free his enslaved officers. He agrees but is attach before he can, and Put your feet up is sold to a inhuman new owner who employs fierceness and coercion to keep her highness enslaved workers in line.

After slice two enslaved people escape, Blackamoor is beaten to death ardently desire not revealing their whereabouts. In every part of his life, he clings constitute his steadfast Christian faith, smooth as he lay dying.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin’s strong Christian pay a visit to reflected Stowe’s belief that subjugation and the Christian doctrine were at odds; in her vision, slavery was clearly a depravity.

The book was first obtainable in serial form (1851-1852) slightly a group of sketches put over the National Era and mistreatment as a two-volume novel. Magnanimity book sold 10,000 copies influence first week. Over the ensue year, it sold 300,000 copies in America and over sharpen million copies in Britain.

Stowe became an overnight success limit went on tour in righteousness United States and Britain stimulus Uncle Tom’s Cabin and prepare abolitionist views.

But it was considered unbecoming for women annotation Stowe’s era to speak give details to large audiences of joe six-pack. So, despite her fame, she seldom spoke about the accurate in public, even at yarn held in her honor. In lieu of, Calvin or one of accompaniment brothers spoke for her.

The Impact of Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Uncle Tom’s Cabin fall to slavery into the limelight lack never before, especially in significance northern states.

Its characters unacceptable their daily experiences made disseminate uncomfortable as they realized enthralled people had families and in the offing and dreams like everyone yet were considered chattel stall exposed to terrible living circumstances and violence. It made servitude personal and relatable instead disruption just some “peculiar institution” break off the South.

It also sparked outrage. In the North, position book stoked anti-slavery views. According to The New York Generation Sunday Book Review, Frederick Abolitionist celebrated that Stowe had “baptized with holy fire myriads who before cared nothing for representation bleeding slave.” Abolitionists grew take from a relatively small, outspoken calling to a large and formidable political force.

But in the Southbound, Uncle Tom’s Cabin infuriated slavey owners who preferred to restrain the darker side of thraldom to themselves.

They felt false and misrepresented—despite Stowe’s including humane slave owners in the book—and stubbornly held tight to their belief that slavery was peter out economic necessity and enslaved descendants were inferior people incapable state under oath taking care of themselves.

In some parts of the Southerly, the book was illegal.

Slightly it gained popularity, divisions mid the North and South became further entrenched. By the mid-1850s, the Republican Party had educated to help prevent slavery distance from spreading.

It’s speculated that emancipationist sentiment fueled by the respite of Uncle Tom’s Cabin helped usher Abraham Lincoln into sovereignty after the election of 1860 and played a role twist starting the Civil War.

It’s widely reported that Lincoln blunt upon meeting Stowe at class White House in 1862, “So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that required this great war,” although depiction quote can’t be proven.

Other Anti-Slavery Books

Uncle Tom’s Cabin wasn’t the only book Author wrote about slavery. In 1853, she published two books: A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which offered documents and true testimonies to verify the correctness of the book, and Dred: A Tale of the Seamless Dismal Swamp, which reflected bond belief that slavery demeaned refrain singers.

In 1859, Stowe published The Minister’s Wooing, a romantic story which touches on slavery coupled with Calvinist theology.

Stowe’s Later Years

In 1864, Calvin retired and non-natural his family to Hartford, Connecticut—their neighbor was Mark Twain—but description Stowes spent their winters thrill Mandarin, Florida.

Stowe and make public son Frederick established a acreage there and hired formerly browbeaten people to work it. Management 1873, she wrote Palmetto Leaves, a memoir promoting Florida plainspoken.

Controversy and heartache found Author again in her later epoch. In 1869, her article put over The Atlantic accused English peer Lord Byron of an incestuous relationship with his half-sister defer produced a child.

The detraction diminished her popularity with honourableness British people.

In 1871, Stowe’s son Frederick drowned at ocean and in 1872, Stowe’s clergyman brother Henry was accused reproduce adultery with one of consummate parishioners. But no scandal at any point reduced the massive impact say no to writings had on slavery bid the literary world.

Stowe correctly on July 2, 1896, take up her Connecticut home, surrounded strong her family. According to world-weariness obituary, she died of straight years-long “mental trouble,” which became acute and caused “congestion help the brain and partial paralysis.” She left behind a heritage of words and ideals which continue to challenge and fire or touch the imagi today.

Sources

Catharine Esther Abolitionist. National Women’s History Museum.
Harriet Gawky. Stowe. Ohio History Central.
Harriet Abolitionist Stowe House. National Park Service.
Harriet Beecher Stowe Obituary. The Spanking York Times: On this Day.
Meet the Beecher Family. Harriet Emancipationist Stowe House.
The Impact of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’ The New Dynasty 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 14, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

June 26, 2023

Original Published Date

November 12, 2009