Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe _

other's Success as a Minister.-Letters from Hartford and Boston.-Arrives in Brunswick.-History of the Slavery Agitation.-Practical Working of the Fugitive Slave Law.-Mrs. Edward Beecher's Letter

th the subject of the biography, is able to sympathize with him in all his thoughts and experiences, and the other is not. The life of Henry Martyn would be tedious and unintelligible to a mind like that of a Richelieu or a Mazarin. They never experienced or saw or heard anything like it, and would be quite at a loss where to place such a man in their mental categories. It is not strange, therefore, that of all biography in the world that of Jesus Christ should be least understood. It is an exception to all the world has ever seen. 'The world knew Him not.' There is, to be sure

e innumerable demands of a large family of growing children; a devoted Christian seeking with strong crying and tears a kingdom not of this world,-is this the popular conception of the author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin"? Nevertheless it is the reality. When, amid the burning ruins of a besieged city, a mother's voice is heard uttering a cry of anguish over a child killed in her arms by a bursting shell,

xation and hindrance in his work, Professor Stowe became convinced that it

vexatious series of lawsuits, ecclesiastical and civil, and raised from the depths of poverty to comparative affluence, and I feel at liberty now to leave. During the three months of June, July, and August last, more than nine thousand persons died of cholera within three miles of my house, and

1,000 a year, and I must, out of it, hire my own house, at an expense of $75 to $100 a year. Here the trustees offer me $1,500 a year if I will stay, and a good house besides, which would make the whole salary equivalent to $1,800; and to-day I have had another offer from New York city of $2,3

sor Stowe from the fact that it was the college from which he graduat

ollins, a member of Bowdoin Street Church in Boston, and named in her

s determined that Mrs. Stowe, with three of the children, should start for the East in April, and having established

at her brother Henry's, at Brooklyn, April 29, 1850, show u

able passage, and crossed the slides at five o'clock in the morning, amid exclamations of unbounded delight from all the children, to whom the mountain scenery was a new and amazing thing. We reached Hollidaysburg

. Henry's people are more than ever in love with him, and have raised his salary to $3,300, and given him a beautiful horse and carriage worth $600. . . . My health is already improved by the journey, and I was able to walk a good deal between the locks on the canal. As to furniture, I think that we may safely afford an outlay of $150, and that will purc

rom Boston, where she is staying wi

onday, and have since then been busily engaged

g everything, will have been seventy-six dollars. . . . And now, lastly, my dear husband, you have never been wanting . . . in kindness, consideration, and j

ush my way through hurrying crowds, looking out for trunks, and bargaining with hackmen, has

trying period, that Mrs. Stowe wrote that little tract dear to

have my trunk yet to pack, as I go on board the Bath steamer this evening. I beg you to look up Brunswick on the map; it is about half a day's ride in the cars from Boston. I expect to reach there by the way of Bath by to-morrow fo

able just now to bear anything, my dear husband, therefore trust all to me; I nev

straits will not forsake me now. I know Him well; He is my Father, and though I may be a blind and erring child, He will help me for all that. My trust through all errors and sins is in Him. He who helped poor timid Jacob through all his fears an

mptly from Boston, and that we shall be in our own house by next week. Mrs. Upham[6] has done everything for me, giving up time and strength and taking charge of my affairs in a way without which we could not have got along at all in a strange place and in my presen

ally described by Mrs. Stowe in a letter written to her

I haven't been so naughty-it's all a mistake-yes, written I must have-and written I have, too-in the night-watches as I lay on my bed-such beautiful letters-

I have remembered anything. From the time that I left Cincinnati with my children to come forth to a country that I knew not of almost to the present time, it has seemed as if I could scarcely breathe, I was so pressed with care. My head dizzy with the whirl of railroads and steamboats; then ten days' sojourn

this lounge, and what shall

the coarse cott

re isn't any more soap

Where shal

to the store a

the cistern. Before you go down, Mrs. Stowe, just

a box has come for Mrs. Stowe, and it's coming up

d; what shall he do? The black thread is all used up, and what shall I do about putting gimp on the back of that

ill of lading; the man wants to know what he shall do with the good

door. Hadn't we better get a little

Boardman's for som

an inch too wide for the f

e the screws of the

n these bills for freight.

s great needle. I can't make it go throu

manage, in case I am left a widow; knows we shall get in debt and never get out; wonders at my courage; thinks I am very sanguine; warns me to be

t and mine, to take my hogsheads to pieces, carry them down in staves, and set them up again, which the worthy man actually accomplished one fair summer forenoon, to the great astonishment of "us Yankees." When my man came to put up the pump, he stared very hard to see my hogsheads thus translated and standing as innocent and quiet as could be in the cellar, and then I told him, in a very mild, quiet way, that I got 'em taken to pieces and put together-just as if I had been always in the habit of doing such things. Professor Smith came down and looked very hard at them and then said, "Well, nothing can beat a willful woman." Then followed divers negotiations with a very clever, but (with reverence) somewhat lazy gentleman of jobs, who occupieth a carpenter's shop opposite to mine. This same John Titcomb, my very good friend, is a character peculiar to Yankeedom. He is part owner and landlord of the house I rent, and connected by birth with al

anifold, he was always on hand. But my sink was no fancy job, and I believe nothing but a very particular friendship would have moved him to undertake it. So this same sink lin

e millennium, and thus brought the conversation by little and little round to my sink! . . . because, till the sink was done, the pump could not be put up, and we couldn't have any rain-water. Some

tcomb! abou

ut going down street this after

ough to get it done as soon as pos

to have a dry time now, so that you could not catc

g which I had had divers communings with Deacon Dunning of the Baptist church. Also during this time good Mrs. Mitchell and myself made two sofas, or lo

eally glad for an excuse to lie in bed, for I was full tired, I can assure you. Well, I

ing Scott's historic novels in their order. To-night I finish the "Abbot;" shall begin "Kenilworth" next week; yet I am constantly pursued and haunted by the idea that I don't do anything. Since I began this note I have been called off at least a dozen times; once for the fish-man, to buy a codfish; once to see a man who had b

ver going to stop, and in truth it looks like

alive with preparations; every one collecting their l

etting tired; my neck and back

way of acknowledgment, I'm sure I don't know; I felt just as if I had, till I awoke, and behold! I had not. But, my dear, i

ad hours my thoughts have often turned to George; I have thought with encouragement of his blessed state, and hoped that I should soon be there too. I have many warm and kind friends here, and have been treated with great attention

and tell him when he gets to be

tely yours

ation as well as in the quiet household that we have f

slavery forever. No stronger utterances against this national sin are to be found anywhere than in the letters and published writings of Jefferson, Washington, Hamilton, and Patrick Henry. "Jefferson encountered difficult

a public act; and as the prospects of a general emancipation grew more and more

f slavery, said: "A serious view of this subject gives a gloomy prospect to future times." Slavery was thought by the founders of our Republic to be a dying ins

ishing, and its inhabitants emigrating, for want of some object to engage their attention and employ their industry." The

red. This was the year that the British set the slaves free in their West Indian dependencies. This act caused great uneasiness among the slaveholders of the South. The National Anti-Slavery Society met in Philadelphia and pronounced slavery a national sin, which could be atoned for only by immediate emancipation. Such men as Garrison and Lundy began a work of agitation that was soon to set the whole nation in a ferment. From this time on slavery became the central problem of American history, and the line of cleavage in American politics. The invasion of Florida when it was yet the territory of a nation at peace with the United States, and its subsequent purchase from Spain, the annexation of Texas and the war with Mexico, were the direct results of the policy of the pro-slavery party to increase its influence and its terr

e abolitionists of the North were filled with indignation, which found its most fitting expression in Whittier'

with her children and her modest hopes for the future,

ongress,-a law which not only gave the slaveholder of the South the right to seek out and bring back into slavery any colored person whom he claimed as a slave, but commanded the people of the free States to assist in this revolting business. The most frequen

laimed to have the cradle of liberty, opened her doors to the slave-hunters. The sorrow and anguish caused thereby no pen could describe. Families were broken up. Some hid in garrets and cellars. Some fled to the wharves and embarked in ships and sailed for Europe. Others went to Canada. One poor fellow who was doing good business as a crockery merchant, and

thought. Not much myself, but I know one who can. So I wrote several letters to your mother, telling her of various heart-rending events caused by the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law. I remember distinctly saying in one of them, 'Now, Hattie, if I could use a pen as you can, I would

sembled family, and when she came to the passage, "I would write something that would make this whole nation feel what an accursed thing slavery is," Mrs. Stowe rose up from

n his admirable work, "The Slave Power," "The Fugitive Slave Law has been to the

carried out. In December, 1850, Mrs. Stowe writes: "Tell sister Katy I thank her for her letter and will answer it. As long

the slave law, and the stand taken by Bo

. . . I wish father would come on to Boston, and preach on the Fugitive Slave Law, as he once preached on the slave-trade, when I was a little g

e a 'New Year's Story,' which I have sent to the 'New York Evangelist.' I am sorry that in the hurry of getting off this piece and one for the 'Era' you were neglected." The piece for the "Era" was a

ber such a storm when I was a child in Litchfield. Father and

s to take care of themselves. Can't you find out for me how much Willie Watson has paid for the redemption of his friends, and get any items in figures of that kind that you can pick up in Cincinnati? . . . When I have a headache and feel sick, as I do to-day, there is actually not a place in the house where I can lie down and take a nap without being disturbed. Overhead is the school-room, next door is the dining-room, and the girls practice there two hours a day. If I lock my door and lie down some one is sure to be rattling the latch befor

here means were to come from, yet means have been furnished every step of the way, and in every time of need. I was just in some discouragement with regard to my writing; thinking that the editor of the 'Era' was overstocked with contributors,

ulty she could keep from weeping aloud. Immediately on returning home she took pen and paper and wrote out the vision which had been as it were blown into her mind as by the rushing of a mighty wind. Gathering her family about her she read what she had written. Her two little ones of ten and twelve ye

cle Tom's Cabin.' My heart was bursting with the anguish excited by the cruelty and injustice our nation was showing to the slave, and praying God to let me do a little and to

first chapter of the story was finished and

r, which is given entire as the best possible introduction to the

k, July

k Dougla

a series of articles that I am furnishing for the "Era" und

desire. I have before me an able paper written by a Southern planter, in which the details and modus operandi are given from his point of sight. I am anxious to have something more from another standpoint. I wish to be able to make a picture that shall be graphic and true to nature in its details. Such a person as

e at some time when less occupied to contribute something to its columns. I have noticed with regret your sentiments on two subjects-the church and African colonization, . . . with

rity has given it that degree of weight that it has the power to decide the great moral questions of the day. Whatever it unitedly and decidedly sets itself against as moral evil it can put down. In this sense the church is responsible for the sin of slavery. Dr. Barnes has beautifully and briefly expressed this on the last page of his work on slavery, when he says: "Not all the force out of the church could sustain slavery an hour if it were not sustained in it." It then appears that the church has the power to put an end to this evil and does not do it. In this sense she may be said to be pro-slavery. But the church has the same power over intemperance, an

rs on this subject. I was a child in 1820 when the Missouri question was agitated, and one of the strongest and deepest impressions on my mind was that made by my father's sermo

or of Lovejoy. As for myself and husband, we have for the last seventeen years lived on the border of a slave State, and we have never shrunk from the fugitives, and we have helped them with all we had to give. I have received the children of liberated slaves into a family school, and taught them with my own children, and it has been the influence that we found in the church and by the altar that has made us do all this. Ga

ng is against you, but Jesus Christ is for you, and He has not forgotten his church, misguided and erring though it be. I have looked all the field over with despairing eyes; I see no hope but in Him. This movement must and will bec

ectness of the position from which we started, that "Uncle Tom's Cabin" came from the heart rather than the head. It was an outburst of deep feeling, a cry in the darkness. The writer no more thought

American slave? The law almost denies his existence as a person, and regards him for the most part as less than a man-a mere thing, the property of another. The law forbids him to read or write, to hold property, to make a contract, or even to form a legal marriage. It takes from him all legal right to the wife of his bosom, the children of hi

forth those principles of the Declaration of Independence that made Jefferson, Hamilton, Washington, and Patrick Henry anti-slavery men; not i

a mere series of abstract propositions. It was, as we have already said, an appeal to the imagination through a series of pictures. People are like children, and understand pictu

t suppose you stood at that instant by the wreck, and saw the mangled dead, and heard the p

ip, and the cries of the tortured blacks ring in every househ