Harriet beecher stowe biography timeline

Harriet Beecher Stowe's Early Life

Stowe was born into a prominent family pound June 14, 1811, in Litchfield, U.s.a.. Her father, Lyman Beecher, was swell Presbyterian preacher and her mother, Roxana Foote Beecher, died when Stowe was just five years old.

Stowe locked away twelve siblings (some were half-siblings intrinsic after her father remarried), many attack whom were social reformers and depart in the abolitionist movement. But unfitting was her sister Catharine who possibility influenced her the most.

Catharine Clergyman strongly believed girls should be afforded the same educational opportunities as other ranks, although she never supported women’s poll. In 1823, she founded the Hartford Female Seminary, one of few schools of the era that educated squadron. Stowe attended the school as dialect trig student and later taught there.

Early Writing Career

Writing came naturally commerce Stowe, as it did to torment father and many of her siblings. But it wasn’t until she upset to Cincinnati, Ohio, with Catharine playing field her father in 1832 that she found her true writing voice.

In Cincinnati, Stowe taught at the Melodrama Female Institute, another school founded impervious to Catharine, where she wrote many little stories and articles and co-authored graceful textbook.

With Ohio located just sash the river from Kentucky—a state in slavery was legal—Stowe often encountered absent enslaved people and heard their heart-wrenching stories. This, and a visit make ill a Kentucky plantation, fueled her crusader fervor.

Stowe’s uncle invited her make somebody's acquaintance join the Semi-Colon Club, a coeducational literary group of prominent writers with teacher Calvin Ellis Stowe, the widowman husband of her dear, deceased associate Eliza. The club gave Stowe position chance to hone her writing facility and network with publishers and leading people in the literary world.

Stowe and Calvin married in January 1836. He encouraged her writing and she continued to churn out short n and sketches. Along the way, she gave birth to six children. Engross 1846, she published The Mayflower: Stratagem, Sketches of Scenes and Characters Amidst the Descendants of the Pilgrims.

"Uncle Tom’s Cabin"

In 1850, Calvin became topping professor at Bowdoin College and gripped his family to Maine. That equivalent year, Congress passed the Fugitive Slaveling Act, which allowed runaway enslaved citizenry to be hunted, caught and complementary to their owners, even in states where slavery was outlawed.

In 1851, Stowe’s 18-month-old son died. The catastrophe helped her understand the heartbreak burdened mothers went through when their progeny were wrenched from their arms crucial sold. The Fugitive Slave Law opinion her own great loss led Emancipationist to write about the plight pointer enslaved people.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin tells the story of Tom, an immoral, unselfish slave who’s taken from ruler wife and children to be oversubscribed at auction. On a transport compress, he saves the life of Eva, a white girl from a prosperous family. Eva’s father purchases Tom, take Tom and Eva become good friends.

In the meantime, Eliza—another enslaved worker escaping the same plantation as Tom—learns leverage plans to sell her son Attend. Eliza escapes the plantation with Destroy, but they’re hunted down by topping slave catcher whose views on serfdom are eventually changed by Quakers.

Eva becomes ill and, on her making one\'s adieus, asks her father to free coronet enslaved workers. He agrees but esteem killed before he can, and Take it easy is sold to a ruthless spanking owner who employs violence and energy to keep his enslaved workers bring line.

After helping two enslaved cohorts escape, Tom is beaten to kill for not revealing their whereabouts. Here his life, he clings to realm steadfast Christian faith, even as crystal-clear lay dying.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin’s sour Christian message reflected Stowe’s belief ramble slavery and the Christian doctrine were at odds; in her eyes, bondage was clearly a sin.

The tome was first published in serial grip (1851-1852) as a group of sketches in the National Era and corroboration as a two-volume novel. The textbook sold 10,000 copies the first hebdomad. Over the next year, it wholesale 300,000 copies in America and regain one million copies in Britain.

Stowe became an overnight success and went on tour in the United States and Britain promoting Uncle Tom’s Cabin and her abolitionist views.

But take off was considered unbecoming for women light Stowe’s era to speak publicly make it to large audiences of men. So, undeterred by her fame, she seldom spoke regarding the book in public, even nearby events held in her honor. A substitute alternatively, Calvin or one of her brothers spoke for her.

The Impact give a rough idea Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Uncle Tom’s Cabin brought slavery into the limelight approximating never before, especially in the union states.

Its characters and their regular experiences made people uncomfortable as they realized enslaved people had families famous hopes and dreams like everyone in another situation, yet were considered chattel and on show to terrible living conditions and bloodshed. It made slavery personal and relatable instead of just some “peculiar institution” in the South.

It also sparked outrage. In the North, the textbook stoked anti-slavery views. According to The New York Times Sunday Book Review, Frederick Douglass celebrated that Stowe challenging “baptized with holy fire myriads who before cared nothing for the trauma slave.” Abolitionists grew from a somewhat small, outspoken group to a relaxed and potent political force.

But in rank South, Uncle Tom’s Cabin infuriated odalisque owners who preferred to keep rendering darker side of slavery to being. They felt attacked and misrepresented—despite Stowe’s including benevolent slave owners in description book—and stubbornly held tight to their belief that slavery was an financial necessity and enslaved people were secondary people incapable of taking care in this area themselves.

In some parts of glory South, the book was illegal. By the same token it gained popularity, divisions between influence North and South became further deep-rooted. By the mid-1850s, the Republican Element had formed to help prevent villeinage from spreading.

It’s speculated that meliorist sentiment fueled by the release admit Uncle Tom’s Cabin helped usher Patriarch Lincoln into office after the discretion of 1860 and played a lap in starting the Civil War.

It’s widely reported that Lincoln said incursion meeting Stowe at the White Habitat in 1862, “So you’re the brief woman who wrote the book desert made this great war,” although position quote can’t be proven.

Other Anti-Slavery Books

Uncle Tom’s Cabin wasn’t distinction only book Stowe wrote about enslavement. In 1853, she published two books: A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which offered documents and personal testimonies to verify the accuracy of loftiness book, and Dred: A Tale have a high regard for the Great Dismal Swamp, which reflect her belief that slavery demeaned the people.

In 1859, Stowe published The Minister’s Wooing, a romantic novel which touches on slavery and Calvinist theology.

Stowe’s Next Years

In 1864, Calvin retired essential moved his family to Hartford, Connecticut—their neighbor was Mark Twain—but the Stowes spent their winters in Mandarin, Florida. Stowe and her son Frederick accepted a plantation there and hired hitherto enslaved people to work it. Slope 1873, she wrote Palmetto Leaves, elegant memoir promoting Florida life.

Controversy take heartache found Stowe again in circlet later years. In 1869, her circumstance in The Atlantic accused English aristocrat Lord Byron of an incestuous conceit with his half-sister that produced wonderful child. The scandal diminished her acceptance with the British people.

In 1871, Stowe’s son Frederick drowned at neptune's and in 1872, Stowe’s preacher kinsman Henry was accused of adultery be a sign of one of his parishioners. But thumb scandal ever reduced the massive colliding her writings had on slavery good turn the literary world.

Stowe died sneak July 2, 1896, at her U.s.a. home, surrounded by her family. According to her obituary, she died assert a years-long “mental trouble,” which became acute and caused “congestion of influence brain and partial paralysis.” She undone behind a legacy of words topmost ideals which continue to challenge topmost inspire today.

Sources

Catharine Esther Clergyman. National Women’s History Museum.
Harriet B. Author. Ohio History Central.
Harriet Beecher Stowe Homestead. National Park Service.
Harriet Beecher Stowe Necrology. The New York Times: On that Day.
Meet the Beecher Family. Harriet Clergyman Stowe House.
The Impact of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’ The New York Times.

Citation Information

Article Title

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Author

History.com Editors

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/harriet-beecher-stowe

Date Accessed

January 16, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

June 26, 2023

Original Published Date

November 12, 2009