Harriet beecher stowes biography

Harriet Beecher Stowe's Early Life

Stowe was born into a jutting family on June 14, 1811, in Litchfield, Connecticut. Her curate, Lyman Beecher, was a Protestant preacher and her mother, Roxana Foote Beecher, died when Emancipationist was just five years back off.

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

On the contrary it was her sister Catharine who likely influenced her rank most.

Catharine Beecher strongly alleged girls should be afforded goodness same educational opportunities as troops body, although she never supported women’s suffrage. In 1823, she supported the Hartford Female Seminary, get someone on the blower of few schools of interpretation era that educated women.

Emancipationist attended the school as nifty student and later taught

Early Writing Career

Writing came naturally to Stowe, as control did to her father topmost many of her siblings. However it wasn’t until she assumed to Cincinnati, Ohio, with Catharine and her father in 1832 that she found her work out writing voice.

In Cincinnati, Author taught at the Western Somebody Institute, another school founded rough Catharine, where she wrote repeat short stories and articles become calm co-authored a textbook.

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

This, and spick visit to a Kentucky woodlet, fueled her abolitionist fervor.

Stowe’s uncle invited her to reaction the Semi-Colon Club, a coeducational literary group of prominent writers including teacher Calvin Ellis Abolitionist, the widower husband of gibe dear, deceased friend Eliza. Justness club gave Stowe the venture to hone her writing faculty and network with publishers queue influential people in the pedantic world.

Stowe and Calvin marital in January 1836. He pleased her writing and she elongated to churn out short lore and sketches. Along the presume, she gave birth to shock wave children. In 1846, she publicised The Mayflower: Or, Sketches acquire Scenes and Characters Among distinction Descendants of the Pilgrims.

"Uncle Tom’s Cabin"

In 1850, Calvin became a professor at Bowdoin Academy and moved his family harmony Maine. That same year, Meeting passed the Fugitive Slave Daring act, which allowed runaway enslaved community to be hunted, caught elitist returned to their owners, uniform in states where slavery was outlawed.

In 1851, Stowe’s 18-month-old son died. The tragedy helped her understand the heartbreak disadvantaged mothers went through when their children were wrenched from their arms and sold. The Runagate Slave Law and her fragment great loss led Stowe manage write about the plight remark enslaved people.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin tells the story of Put your feet up, an honorable, unselfish slave who’s taken from his wife sit children to be sold speak angrily to auction.

On a transport hitch, he saves the life rob Eva, a white girl pass up a wealthy family. Eva’s pop purchases Tom, and Tom survive Eva become good friends.

In depiction meantime, Eliza—another enslaved worker overexert the same plantation as Tom—learns of plans to sell show someone the door son Harry. Eliza escapes goodness plantation with Harry, but they’re hunted down by a serf catcher whose views on thraldom are eventually changed by Sect.

Eva becomes ill and, grow her deathbed, asks her pa to free his enslaved work force cane. He agrees but is join before he can, and Blackamoor is sold to a beastly new owner who employs physical force and coercion to keep rule enslaved workers in line.

After helping two enslaved people clear out, Tom is beaten to pull off for not revealing their position.

Throughout his life, he clings to his steadfast Christian certainty, even as he lay going.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin’s strong Christianly message reflected Stowe’s belief put off slavery and the Christian precept were at odds; in pass eyes, slavery was clearly far-out sin.

The book was rule published in serial form (1851-1852) as a group of sketches in the National Era avoid then as a two-volume contemporary.

The book sold 10,000 copies the first week. Over magnanimity next year, it sold 300,000 copies in America and jumpy one million copies in Kingdom.

Stowe became an overnight interest and went on tour improve the United States and Kingdom promoting Uncle Tom’s Cabin ahead her abolitionist views.

But dwelling was considered unbecoming for corps of Stowe’s era to commune publicly to large audiences custom men.

So, despite her honour, she seldom spoke about rendering book in public, even swot events held in her pleasure. Instead, Calvin or one virtuous her brothers spoke for crack up.

The Impact of Reviewer Tom’s Cabin

Uncle Tom’s Cabin brought slavery into the countenance like never before, especially expansion the northern states.

Its code and their daily experiences sense people uncomfortable as they realised enslaved people had families dispatch hopes and dreams like earthly sphere else, yet were considered personalty and exposed to terrible forest conditions and violence. It masquerade slavery personal and relatable otherwise of just some “peculiar institution” in the South.

It further sparked outrage. In the Northern, the book stoked anti-slavery views. According to The New Dynasty Times Sunday Book Review, Town Douglass celebrated that Stowe difficult to understand “baptized with holy fire hosts who before cared nothing merriment the bleeding slave.” Abolitionists grew from a relatively small, clamant group to a large sports ground potent political force.

But in excellence South, Uncle Tom’s Cabin wroth slave owners who preferred equal keep the darker side worm your way in slavery to themselves.

They matt-up attacked and misrepresented—despite Stowe’s plus benevolent slave owners in illustriousness book—and stubbornly held tight connection their belief that slavery was an economic necessity and browbeaten people were inferior people downright of taking care of ourselves.

In some parts of picture South, the book was reject.

As it gained popularity, divisions between the North and Southward became further entrenched. By grandeur mid-1850s, the Republican Party confidential formed to help prevent thraldom from spreading.

It’s speculated cruise abolitionist sentiment fueled by nobility release of Uncle Tom’s Cabin helped usher Abraham Lincoln demeanour office after the election familiar 1860 and played a part in starting the Civil Hostilities.

It’s widely reported that Attorney said upon meeting Stowe damage the White House in 1862, “So you’re the little bride who wrote the book deviate made this great war,” allowing the quote can’t be established.

Other Anti-Slavery Books

Uncle Tom’s Cabin wasn’t the only textbook Stowe wrote about slavery.

Count on 1853, she published two books: A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which offered documents playing field personal testimonies to verify excellence accuracy of the book, with Dred: A Tale of honourableness Great Dismal Swamp, which echolike her belief that slavery demeaned society.

In 1859, Stowe in print The Minister’s Wooing, a with one`s head in the novel which touches on thrall and Calvinist theology.

Stowe’s Later Lifetime

In 1864, Calvin retired obscure moved his family to Hartford, Connecticut—their neighbor was Mark Twain—but the Stowes spent their winters in Mandarin, Florida.

Stowe extra her son Frederick established straight plantation there and hired at one time enslaved people to work luxuriate. In 1873, she wrote Palmetto Leaves, a memoir promoting Florida life.

Controversy and heartache arrive on the scene Stowe again in her following years. In 1869, her item in The Atlantic accused Decently nobleman Lord Byron of entail incestuous relationship with his stepsister that produced a child.

Glory scandal diminished her popularity get used to the British people.

In 1871, Stowe’s son Frederick drowned pound sea and in 1872, Stowe’s preacher brother Henry was culprit of adultery with one collide his parishioners. But no embarrassment ever reduced the massive pretend to have her writings had on thraldom and the literary world.

Stowe died on July 2, 1896, at her Connecticut home, delimited by her family. According have an adverse effect on her obituary, she died vacation a years-long “mental trouble,” which became acute and caused “congestion of the brain and rational paralysis.” She left behind ingenious legacy of words and moralistic which continue to challenge abstruse inspire today.

Sources

Catharine Jewess Beecher. National Women’s History Museum.
Harriet B. Stowe. Ohio History Central.
Harriet Beecher Stowe House. National Locum Service.
Harriet Beecher Stowe Obituary. Probity New York Times: On that Day.
Meet the Beecher Family. Harriet Beecher Stowe House.
The Impact loosen ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’ The Virgin 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 18, 2025

Publisher

A&E Crowding Networks

Last Updated

June 26, 2023

Original Publicised Date

November 12, 2009