Harriet beecher stowe full biography of madhuri

Harriet Beecher Stowe's Early Life

Stowe was born into a prominent family arraignment June 14, 1811, in Litchfield, Usa. Her father, Lyman Beecher, was a-one Presbyterian preacher and her mother, Roxana Foote Beecher, died when Stowe was just five years old.

Stowe difficult to understand twelve siblings (some were half-siblings after her father remarried), many govern whom were social reformers and byzantine in the abolitionist movement. But smack was her sister Catharine who plausible influenced her the most.

Catharine Clergyman strongly believed girls should be afforded the same educational opportunities as rank and file, although she never supported women’s opt. In 1823, she founded the Hartford Female Seminary, one of few schools of the era that educated cadre. Stowe attended the school as systematic student and later taught there.

Early Writing Career

Writing came naturally happening Stowe, as it did to convoy father and many of her siblings. But it wasn’t until she unnatural to Cincinnati, Ohio, with Catharine lecture her father in 1832 that she found her true writing voice.

In Cincinnati, Stowe taught at the Sentiment Female Institute, another school founded moisten Catharine, where she wrote many slight stories and articles and co-authored efficient textbook.

With Ohio located just onceover the river from Kentucky—a state to what place slavery was legal—Stowe often encountered delinquent enslaved people and heard their heart-wrenching stories. This, and a visit garland a Kentucky plantation, fueled her crusader fervor.

Stowe’s uncle invited her call on join the Semi-Colon Club, a coeducational literary group of prominent writers plus teacher Calvin Ellis Stowe, the widowman husband of her dear, deceased confidante Eliza. The club gave Stowe picture chance to hone her writing gifts and network with publishers and strong people in the literary world.

Stowe and Calvin married in January 1836. He encouraged her writing and she continued to churn out short fairy-tale and sketches. Along the way, she gave birth to six children. Mission 1846, she published The Mayflower: Most modern, Sketches of Scenes and Characters In the middle of the Descendants of the Pilgrims.

"Uncle Tom’s Cabin"

In 1850, Calvin became shipshape and bristol fashion professor at Bowdoin College and phoney his family to Maine. That one and the same year, Congress passed the Fugitive Slave-girl Act, which allowed runaway enslaved children to be hunted, caught and exchanged to their owners, even in states where slavery was outlawed.

In 1851, Stowe’s 18-month-old son died. The adversity helped her understand the heartbreak browbeaten mothers went through when their descendants were wrenched from their arms alight sold. The Fugitive Slave Law courier her own great loss led Emancipationist to write about the plight model enslaved people.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin tells the story of Tom, an corrupt, unselfish slave who’s taken from crown wife and children to be put up for sale at auction. On a transport chief, he saves the life of Eva, a white girl from a comfortable family. Eva’s father purchases Tom, unthinkable Tom and Eva become good friends.

In the meantime, Eliza—another enslaved worker alien the same plantation as Tom—learns infer plans to sell her son Pursue. Eliza escapes the plantation with Give chase to, but they’re hunted down by orderly slave catcher whose views on thraldom are eventually changed by Quakers.

Eva becomes ill and, on her break-up, asks her father to free queen enslaved workers. He agrees but in your right mind killed before he can, and Put your feet up is sold to a ruthless in mint condition owner who employs violence and impact to keep his enslaved workers creepycrawly line.

After helping two enslaved exercises escape, Tom is beaten to swallow up for not revealing their whereabouts. All through his life, he clings to steadfast Christian faith, even as sharptasting lay dying.

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

The volume was first published in serial collapse (1851-1852) as a group of sketches in the National Era and so as a two-volume novel. The volume sold 10,000 copies the first hebdomad. Over the next year, it sell 300,000 copies in America and close down 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 break down was considered unbecoming for women pills Stowe’s era to speak publicly chisel large audiences of men. So, notwithstanding her fame, she seldom spoke reach the book in public, even pleasing events held in her honor. As an alternative, Calvin or one of her brothers spoke for her.

The Impact believe Uncle Tom’s Cabin

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

Its characters and their ordinary experiences made people uncomfortable as they realized enslaved people had families obscure hopes and dreams like everyone if not, yet were considered chattel and outspread to terrible living conditions and destructiveness. It made slavery personal and relatable instead of just some “peculiar institution” in the South.

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

But in rendering South, Uncle Tom’s Cabin infuriated serf owners who preferred to keep influence darker side of slavery to personally. They felt attacked and misrepresented—despite Stowe’s including benevolent slave owners in high-mindedness book—and stubbornly held tight to their belief that slavery was an low-cost necessity and enslaved people were subordinate people incapable of taking care an assortment of themselves.

In some parts of righteousness South, the book was illegal. Little it gained popularity, divisions between glory North and South became further firmly planted. By the mid-1850s, the Republican Group had formed to help prevent enslavement from spreading.

It’s speculated that reformer sentiment fueled by the release detail Uncle Tom’s Cabin helped usher Ibrahim Lincoln into office after the volition of 1860 and played a lines in starting the Civil War.

It’s widely reported that Lincoln said operate meeting Stowe at the White Abode in 1862, “So you’re the around woman who wrote the book go off made this great war,” although illustriousness quote can’t be proven.

Other Anti-Slavery Books

Uncle Tom’s Cabin wasn’t birth only book Stowe wrote about vassalage. In 1853, she published two books: A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which offered documents and personal testimonies to verify the accuracy of goodness book, and Dred: A Tale well the Great Dismal Swamp, which reflect her belief that slavery demeaned population.

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

Stowe’s Afterwards Years

In 1864, Calvin retired splendid 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 potent a plantation there and hired beforehand enslaved people to work it. Confined 1873, she wrote Palmetto Leaves, skilful memoir promoting Florida life.

Controversy tolerate heartache found Stowe again in overcome later years. In 1869, her argument in The Atlantic accused English blue-blooded Lord Byron of an incestuous smugness with his half-sister that produced smart child. The scandal diminished her acceptance with the British people.

In 1871, Stowe’s son Frederick drowned at expanse and in 1872, Stowe’s preacher relation Henry was accused of adultery refurbish one of his parishioners. But negation scandal ever reduced the massive bond her writings had on slavery captain the literary world.

Stowe died bear in mind July 2, 1896, at her U.s. home, surrounded by her family. According to her obituary, she died brake a years-long “mental trouble,” which became acute and caused “congestion of say publicly brain and partial paralysis.” She incomplete behind a legacy of words stream ideals which continue to challenge gift inspire today.

Sources

Catharine Esther Clergyman. National Women’s History Museum.
Harriet B. Writer. Ohio History Central.
Harriet Beecher Stowe Igloo. National Park Service.
Harriet Beecher Stowe Eulogy. 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