The Blog of Awesome Women/ HARRIET BEECHER STOWE: CIVIL WARRIOR
February 04

The Blog of Awesome Women/ HARRIET BEECHER STOWE: CIVIL WARRIOR

Most schoolchildren are taught that Harriet Beecher
Stowe was an extremely creative young woman who,
almost accidentally, wrote a book that tore America
apart. In this insidiously watered down and sugarcoated
version of history we were spoon-fed as children, the
most important aspects of Stowe’s story are completely
omitted. The truth is, and let us please let it be known far
and wide, Harriet’s opus, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, was written
with precisely the intent to publicize the cruelty of slavery
and give it a human name and face so people could relate,
sympathize, and, most importantly, ACT!

In 1850, the Fugitive Slave Acts passed Congress. It was
this event that moved Harriet to write Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
She couldn’t abide the inhumanity of slaves being hunted
down and forcibly returned to their former owners
after struggling so hard for the freedom that was their
birthright. Horror stories of the torture of runaway slaves
galvanized the sensitive Harriet to action, and she wrote
the book with the full intention of sending out a cry
against the whipping, maiming, and hanging of slaves.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin or Life Among the Lonely was first
run as a series of installments in the National Era, an
abolitionist newspaper. Upon publication in book form in
1852, Stowe’s work was very well received. Harriet had
expected her novel to be a nonevent outside the circle
of abolitionists, but she was very surprised. The entire
printing of 5,000 sold out in two days, and the book sold
three million copies around the world before the Civil
War! Harriet had outstripped her wildest dreams and had
truly fired the shot that started what was to become the
War Between the States. She also received critical acclaim
from such literary luminaries as MacCauley, Longfellow,
and Leo Tolstoy, who declared Uncle Tom’s Cabin the
“highest moral art.” Abraham Lincoln himself called
Harriet “the little lady who made this big war.”Harriet’s strategy was to show the extremes of slavery,

culminating in the savage beating of the gentle old slave,
Tom. The world was captivated by Stowe’s dramatic
story. Reviled in the south, Stowe met all her pro-slavery
detractors with dignity, even going so far as to publish a
critical Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and wrote a second novel
about the plight of slaves in Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal
Swamp. Harriet Beecher Stowe is a shining example of
courage and conviction; her life is proof of how passion
and purpose can change the world.

“I won’t be any properer than I have
a mind to be.”
— Harriet Beecher Stowe

 

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