Read about renowned author and abolitionist, Harriet Beecher Stowe, who used the pen to fight against slavery. Examine how her work “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” affected the slavery debate. Understand how her childhood, education and personal experiences led to her awakening to the injustice against African Americans. Start reading today.
Born in Connecticut in 1811, Harriet Beecher Stowe was an abolitionist, author, and playwright. Slavery was a major industry in the American South, and Stowe worked with the Underground Railroad to help escaped slaves head north towards freedom. The publication of her book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a scathing anti-slavery novel, fanned the flames that started the Civil War. The book’s emotional portrayal of the impact of slavery captured the nation’s attention. A best-seller in its time, Uncle Tom’s Cabin sealed Harriet Beecher Stowe’s reputations as one of the most influential anti-slavery voices in US history.
The author of Hawthorne in Concord “brings [Stowe] to life in all her glory, in a book at once so dramatic and so subtle that it rivals the best fiction” (Debby Applegate, author of The Most Famous Man in America). Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin forced an ambivalent North to confront the atrocities of slavery, yet it was just one of many accomplishments of the Beechers, the most eminent American family of the nineteenth century. Historian Philip McFarland follows the Beecher clan to the boomtown of Cincinnati, where Harriet’s glimpses of slavery across the Kentucky border moved her to pen Uncle Tom’s Cabin. We meet Harriet’s loves: her father Lyman, her husband Calvin, and her brother Henry, the most famous preacher of his time. As McFarland leads us through Harriet’s ever-changing world, he traces the arc of her literary career from her hard-scrabble beginnings to her ascendancy as the most renowned author of her day. Through the portrait of a defining American family, Loves of Harriet Beecher Stowe opens into an unforgettable rendering of mid-nineteenth century America in the midst of unprecedented social and demographic explosions. To this day, Uncle Tom’s Cabin reverberates as a crucial document in Western culture. “Often dismissed even by her admirers as a pious faculty wife who just happened to write the book of the century, Harriet Beecher Stowe emerges in Philip McFarland’s biography in all her complexity and genius.” —Charles Calhoun, author of Longfellow: A Rediscovered Life and The Gilded Age
"Up to this year I have always felt that I had no particular call to meddle with this subject....But I feel now that the time is come when even a woman or a child who can speak a word for freedom and humanity is bound to speak." Thus did Harriet Beecher Stowe announce her decision to begin work on what would become one of the most influential novels ever written. The subject she had hesitated to "meddle with" was slavery, and the novel, of course, was Uncle Tom's Cabin. Still debated today for its portrayal of African Americans and its unresolved place in the literary canon, Stowe's best-known work was first published in weekly installments from June 5, 1851 to April 1, 1852. It caused such a stir in both the North and South, and even in Great Britain, that when Stowe met President Lincoln in 1862 he is said to have greeted her with the words, "So you are the little woman who wrote the book that created this great war!" In this landmark book, the first full-scale biography of Harriet Beecher Stowe in over fifty years, Joan D. Hedrick tells the absorbing story of this gifted, complex, and contradictory woman. Hedrick takes readers into the multilayered world of nineteenth century morals and mores, exploring the influence of then-popular ideas of "true womanhood" on Stowe's upbringing as a member of the outspoken Beecher clan, and her eventful life as a writer and shaper of public opinion who was also a mother of seven. It offers a lively record of the flourishing parlor societies that launched and sustained Stowe throughout the 44 years of her career, and the harsh physical realities that governed so many women's lives. The epidemics, high infant mortality, and often disastrous medical practices of the day are portrayed in moving detail, against the backdrop of western expansion, and the great social upheaval accompanying the abolitionist movement and the entry of women into public life. Here are Stowe's public triumphs, both before and after the Civil War, and the private tragedies that included the death of her adored eighteen month old son, the drowning of another son, and the alcohol and morphine addictions of two of her other children. The daughter, sister, and wife of prominent ministers, Stowe channeled her anguish and her ambition into a socially acceptable anger on behalf of others, transforming her private experience into powerful narratives that moved a nation. Magisterial in its breadth and rich in detail, this definitive portrait explores the full measure of Harriet Beecher Stowe's life, and her contribution to American literature. Perceptive and engaging, it illuminates the career of a major writer during the transition of literature from an amateur pastime to a profession, and offers a fascinating look at the pains, pleasures, and accomplishments of women's lives in the last century.
Josiah Henson (June 15, 1789 - May 5, 1883) was an author, abolitionist, and minister. Born into slavery in Charles County, Maryland, he escaped to Upper Canada (now Ontario) in 1830, and founded a settlement and laborer's school for other fugitive slaves at Dawn, near Dresden in Kent County. Henson's autobiography, The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, as Narrated by Himself (1849), is widely believed to have inspired the character of the fugitive slave, George Harris, in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852).
Father Henson's Story of His Own Life is an autobiographical account of the life of Josiah Henson, an African American man who was born into slavery in Maryland in the late 18th century. Henson's story is a testament to the resilience and strength of the human spirit in the face of adversity. Despite being subjected to the cruelty of slavery, Henson was able to escape and establish himself as a respected member of the free black community in Canada. The book chronicles Henson's life from his early years as a slave on a plantation to his eventual escape to freedom. Along the way, Henson describes the various hardships he faced, including the separation from his family, the brutal treatment of his fellow slaves, and the constant threat of violence from his white masters. Despite these challenges, Henson was able to maintain his faith and his determination to be free.Henson's story is also a valuable historical document that sheds light on the realities of slavery in the United States. Through his vivid descriptions of plantation life, Henson gives readers a glimpse into the brutal and dehumanizing nature of the institution. He also provides insight into the various strategies that slaves used to resist their oppressors, including acts of rebellion and escape.Overall, Father Henson's Story of His Own Life is a powerful and inspiring account of one man's journey from slavery to freedom. It is a testament to the resilience and strength of the human spirit, and a valuable historical document that sheds light on the realities of slavery in the United States.This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.
The most comprehensive state project of its kind, the Dictionary provides information on some 4,000 notable North Carolinians whose accomplishments and occasional misdeeds span four centuries. Much of the bibliographic information found in the six volumes has been compiled for the first time. All of the persons included are deceased. They are native North Carolinians, no matter where they made the contributions for which they are noted, or non-natives whose contributions were made in North Carolina.
