HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

(1811-1896)

BY GEORGE S. MERRIAM

BARRIET BEECHER STOWE shared the general conditions of inheritance and nurture which bred the strongest group of

thinkers and authors that America has produced. It was the peculiarity of early New England to combine an intense interest in the supreme questions of human destiny, regarded as the basis of the personal life, with the closest application to industrial and practical affairs. Calvinism stimulated thought on religious problems; and austere conditions of soil and climate enforced on the sturdy English stock the practice of industry, thrift, and shrewdness. For two centuries the narrowness of the dogmatic creed, and the awfulness of its sanctions, checked any free or original exploit of the intellect. Then came in a great enlargement of conditions, and a fresh stimulus. With the birth of the nation, brains and hands began to stretch out from their provincial cradle toward continental expansion. The rise of national questions; the impulse from Europe, stirred to its foundation by the French Revolution, and giving birth to new literatures; the outburst of the protest against Calvinism, which had been secretly growing for generations; a new ardor in the churches for missions and reforms; an advance in material comfort which widened opportunity and did not yet enervate,- those were among the influences which enriched and mellowed the soil in which hardy shoots had been growing, and out of which now flowered a brilliant little company of thinkers, poets, and story-tellers.

Mrs. Stowe was the daughter of Lyman Beecher, the foremost orthodox minister of his time; a man of sturdy, aggressive, exuberant nature, the father of a notable family of sons and daughters. His biography is one of the richest portraitures of New England life in the first half of the century. It shows how the sensitive and thoughtful child grew up in an atmosphere of theological discussion, which stimulated the mind and by turns satisfied and distressed the heart, while her observation and sense of humor found rich material. She was largely endowed with imagination, with sensibility, with the mystic's temper. She became the wife of a theological professor with scanty means; and the tenderness of motherly experience was mixed with the pressing cares of the household. By a removal to

the West she gained knowledge of more various society and institutions, and then came back to the quiet of a Maine village, to ponder in her heart all she had seen and heard and felt..

The interest of the North in the slave system of the South was especially due to a little company of strenuous agitators, who were instant in season and out of season in denouncing slavery as the sum of all villainies. The violence of tone which generally characterized the Abolitionists, and their readiness to denounce all men and all institutions that did not fully agree with them, limited the influence due to their purity and heroism. The conservatism of commerce, the timidity of politicians, above all, the remoteness of the whole matter from the personal knowledge of the Northern people, long restrained the mass of the community from any very wide or active interest in the subject. Mrs. Stowe's sympathy had been profoundly touched by the tales of wrong and suffering that had come to her ears from escaped slaves while she lived in Cincinnati. She had pondered the whole question of slavery,— with a woman's heart, a poet's imagination, and a mind schooled by company with masculine and logical thinkers. Then the political interests of the whole country were focused upon the slavery question, by the great Congressional debate on the Compromise measures in 1850. Conspicuous in that legislation was the Fugitive Slave Act, making elaborate provision for the rendition of fugitive slaves from their Northern refuge. This law, and the scenes incident to its enforcement, brought the reality of slavery home to the Northern people closer than ever before, while it also implicated them more directly in the support of the system. But inertia and timidity still held back the mass of politicians, churches, and the general community, from effective action or energetic protest. Then this woman in her busy home in the quiet village, shedding tears at midnight over the sorrows of slave wives and mothers, found her imagination possessed by the scenes of a slave's story. It was transferred to paper almost automatically. Then other scenes linked themselves together,― scenes of pathos, of humor, of racy conversation, of dramatic action, of anguish, and of rapture. The whole story was born and grew, an inspiration, a creation, mysterious and beautiful as the growth of a human life. It was given to the public, and it took captive the heart of America and of the world. Its literary success, measured by an enumeration of editions, translations, copies sold, was vast almost beyond comparison. But it won a mightier success; for probably beyond any other single influence, it planted in the men and women of the North a deep and passionate hostility to human slavery. The whole course of events moved together: the political forces were marshaled on the question whether slavery should be extended or restricted; new parties rose; and finally the two principles of the maintenance of the Union and the abolition of

slavery - were established at the cost of a terrible war. It would hardly be a figure of speech to say that the Northern army in that war or the force which made the heart of that army-had been nurtured in boyhood and youth on 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' and carried the book in their hearts.

The book was written as a protest against an institution; and now that the institution is gone the book remains with a deep permanent interest. It is an intensely human story. The temporary and local color is but the incident of a portrayal of human joys and sorrows, sufferings and victories, which appealed to readers in far-away lands, and can hardly fail to appeal in far-away years.

One of the most admirable and effective qualities of Uncle Tom's Cabin' is its wholly generous and sympathetic spirit toward the master class. The condemnation is all for the system, and for the opportunities and incitements it affords to the baser elements which exist in mankind at large. The master and mistress supply some of the most charming characters of the book, as the noble Mrs. Shelby and the fascinating St. Clare.

The key-note of the book is humanity. Its sub-title is 'Life among the Lowly.' It is in close accord with the great philanthropic movement of the age. Further, it is deeply religious. Its appeal is not to creed or authority, but to the spirit of Christ. It is the Christian faith that brings master and slave together: it is the figure of the Crucified One that to poor Tom's darkest hour brings a peace and strength in which he can calmly face torture and death. It was largely to this religious quality that the book owed its effectiveness. It rebuked that Pharisaic Christianity which had justified slavery with Biblical precedent, or had passed by the slave on the other side, while absorbed in ecclesiastical trifles; while its essential piety won multitudes of churchmen who had resented the fierce assaults of the Abolitionists on the churches and the prevalent forms of Christianity.

'Uncle Tom's Cabin' went on its way and did its work; and Mrs. Stowe, raised to sudden fame and to easier circumstances, but no whit spoiled or unsteadied, produced as her next serious work another antislavery novel, 'Dred.' It was less an inspiration than its predecessor, and more a deliberate construction; and was judged to be inferior in power. Yet it was a very strong book, both in human interest and in effective attack upon the slave system. In logical sequence to the simple story of the earlier book, it went on to portray the treatment of slavery on its own ground by the church, the law, and the would-be reformer. It showed how its essential evils were supported by statute and by judicial interpretation. It pictured. the ways of the clerical politician. It depicted the attempt of a high-minded slaveholder to elevate his servants and purify the system, and his defeat by mob violence and by statute law. These