Becoming America - An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, 2018a

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
4.18 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
(1811–1886)
Harriet Beecher Stowe was born into
a severe Calvinist household in Litcheld,
Connecticut. From there, she moved
to Hartford to live with her older sister
Catherine, the founder of the Hartford
Female Seminary. After completing
her education at the Seminary, Harriet
became one of its teachers until 1832,
when she moved to Cincinnati, Ohio,
where her father Lyman Beecher
(1775–1863) was made president of the
Lane Theological Seminary. He later
lost a number of students who left the
seminary to protest Lyman’s conservative
position on Abolition, as evidenced in
his supporting the colonization of free
black slaves in Africa. Stowe’s brother
Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887)
began his inuential preaching career
Image 4.16 | Harriet Beecher Stowe
in Cincinnati, supporting women’s Photographer | Unknown
Source | Wikimedia Commons
surage and condemning slavery. Stowe
License | Public Domain
began her writing career, in this border
state, where she experienced rst-hand the rising tensions over the slavery issue.
In 1836, Stowe married Calvin Stowe (1802–1886), one of the professors at
Lane Theological Seminary, and bore eight children. Stowe sold stories to augment
their income. The Mayower, a collection of these stories, was published 1843.
She also opposed slavery in “Immediate Emancipation—A Sketch” published in
1845. The same year as the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, she and her
husband moved to Maine, where Calvin Stowe taught at Bowdoin College.
There, at the prompting of a vision from God, Stowe wrote the book that made
her famous, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. It ran from 1851 to 1852 as a serial in The National
Era, an Abolitionist newspaper. When Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published in book
form in 1852, it sold over 300,000 copies. It eventually sold in the millions, was
performed as a stage drama, and was translated into several languages. Stowe
became a celebrated gure in America and Europe. The impact this book had on
American history was summed up by Abraham Lincoln who, upon rst meeting
Stowe, said, “So this is the little lady who made this big war.” Stowe had hoped to
convert true Christian hearts towards a voluntary aversion of slavery through her
sympathetic depiction of the suering and cruelties slaves endured.
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