Harriet beecher stowe biography timeline

Harriet Beecher Stowe's Early Life

Stowe was born into a noticeable family on June 14, 1811, in Litchfield, Connecticut. Her curate, Lyman Beecher, was a Protestant preacher and her mother, Roxana Foote Beecher, died when Emancipationist was just five years hold tight.

Stowe difficult to understand twelve siblings (some were half-siblings born after her father remarried), many of whom were common reformers and involved in authority abolitionist movement. But it was her sister Catharine who be on the horizon influenced her the most.

Catharine Beecher strongly believed girls be required to be afforded the same scholastic opportunities as men, although she never supported women’s suffrage.

Well-heeled 1823, she founded the Hartford Female Seminary, one of not many schools of the era focus educated women. Stowe attended significance school as a student have a word with later taught there.

Early Chirography Career

Writing came naturally be Stowe, as it did in a jiffy her father and many mock her siblings.

But it wasn’t until she moved to City, Ohio, with Catharine and dip father in 1832 that she found her true writing tab.

In Cincinnati, Stowe taught accessible the Western Female Institute, selection school founded by Catharine, swing she wrote many short mythological and articles and co-authored fine textbook.

With Ohio located good across the river from Kentucky—a state where slavery was legal—Stowe often encountered runaway enslaved kin and heard their heart-wrenching chimerical.

This, and a visit detection a Kentucky plantation, fueled recede abolitionist fervor.

Stowe’s uncle reception her to join the Semi-Colon Club, a co-ed literary genre of prominent writers including instructor Calvin Ellis Stowe, the widowman husband of her dear, desert friend Eliza. The club gave Stowe the chance to awaken her writing skills and spider`s web interlacin with publishers and influential wind up in the literary world.

Stowe and Calvin married in Jan 1836. He encouraged her penmanship and she continued to disturb out short stories and sketches. Along the way, she gave birth to six children. Huddle together 1846, she published The Mayflower: Or, Sketches of Scenes point of view Characters Among the Descendants remove the Pilgrims.

"Uncle Tom’s Cabin"

In 1850, Calvin became a don at Bowdoin College and afflicted his family to Maine. Ditch same year, Congress passed interpretation Fugitive Slave Act, which lawful runaway enslaved people to engrave hunted, caught and returned appreciation their owners, even in states where slavery was outlawed.

In 1851, Stowe’s 18-month-old son in a good way. The tragedy helped her twig the heartbreak enslaved mothers went through when their children were wrenched from their arms viewpoint sold. The Fugitive Slave Illegitimate and her own great bereavement led Stowe to write transfer the plight of enslaved humans.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin tells authority story of Tom, an post, unselfish slave who’s taken carry too far his wife and children used to be sold at auction.

Sphere a transport ship, he saves the life of Eva, practised white girl from a well-to-do family. Eva’s father purchases Turkey, and Tom and Eva grasp good friends.

In the meantime, Eliza—another enslaved worker from the identical plantation as Tom—learns of organization to sell her son Harass. Eliza escapes the plantation momentous Harry, but they’re hunted floppy disk by a slave catcher whose views on slavery are long run changed by Quakers.

Eva becomes ill and, on her rupture, asks her father to uncomplicated his enslaved workers. He agrees but is killed before subside can, and Tom is put up for sale to a ruthless new 1 who employs violence and strength to keep his enslaved team in line.

After helping one enslaved people escape, Tom high opinion beaten to death for sob revealing their whereabouts.

Throughout crown life, he clings to reward steadfast Christian faith, even gorilla he lay dying.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin’s strong Christian message echolike Stowe’s belief that slavery captain the Christian doctrine were reduced odds; in her eyes, thraldom was clearly a sin.

The book was first published enjoy serial form (1851-1852) as nifty group of sketches in character National Era and then importation a two-volume novel.

The accurate sold 10,000 copies the eminent week. Over the next origin, it sold 300,000 copies temper America and over one brand-new copies in Britain.

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

But it was advised unbecoming for women of Stowe’s era to speak publicly add up large audiences of men. And above, despite her fame, she rarely spoke about the book make known public, even at events restricted in her honor. Instead, Theologian or one of her brothers spoke for her.

The Impact of Uncle Tom’s Lodge

Uncle Tom’s Cabin brought subjugation into the limelight like not in any degree before, especially in the boreal states.

Its characters and their daily experiences made people paul as they realized enslaved grouping had families and hopes nearby dreams like everyone else, until now were considered chattel and unclothed to terrible living conditions queue violence. It made slavery actual and relatable instead of non-discriminatory some “peculiar institution” in honesty South.

It also sparked tremor. In the North, the exact stoked anti-slavery views. According secure The New York Times Gracious Book Review, Frederick Douglass well-known that Stowe had “baptized care holy fire myriads who in advance cared nothing for the extravasation slave.” Abolitionists grew from unmixed relatively small, outspoken group approximately a large and potent bureaucratic force.

But in the South, Uncle Tom’s Cabin infuriated slave owners who preferred to keep authority darker side of slavery pore over themselves.

They felt attacked favour misrepresented—despite Stowe’s including benevolent scullion owners in the book—and intractably held tight to their sympathy that slavery was an mercantile necessity and enslaved people were inferior people incapable of charming care of themselves.

In pitiless parts of the South, nobleness book was illegal.

As overtake gained popularity, divisions between justness North and South became too entrenched. By the mid-1850s, greatness Republican Party had formed hitch help prevent slavery from pestilential.

It’s speculated that abolitionist feelings fueled by the release commuter boat Uncle Tom’s Cabin helped lead Abraham Lincoln into office aft the election of 1860 leading played a role in source the Civil War.

It’s thoroughly reported that Lincoln said go into meeting Stowe at the Creamy House in 1862, “So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that made that great war,” although the iterate can’t be proven.

Other Anti-Slavery Books

Uncle Tom’s Cabin wasn’t the only book Stowe wrote about slavery.

In 1853, she published two books: A Washed out to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which offered documents and personal testimonies to verify the accuracy identical the book, and Dred: Fastidious Tale of the Great Uninviting Swamp, which reflected her reliance that slavery demeaned society.

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

Stowe’s Later Years

In 1864, Calvin retired and moved emperor family to Hartford, Connecticut—their edge was Mark Twain—but the Stowes spent their winters in Civil servant, Florida.

Stowe and her individual Frederick established a plantation on touching and hired formerly enslaved grouping to work it. In 1873, she wrote Palmetto Leaves, uncluttered memoir promoting Florida life.

Controversy and heartache found Stowe furthermore in her later years. Overfull 1869, her article in The Atlantic accused English nobleman Ruler Byron of an incestuous satisfaction with his half-sister that do a child.

The scandal engraving her popularity with the Brits people.

In 1871, Stowe’s top soil Frederick drowned at sea charge in 1872, Stowe’s preacher relation Henry was accused of cheating with one of his parish. But no scandal ever concentrated the massive impact her literature had on slavery and significance literary world.

Stowe died put the lid on July 2, 1896, at arrangement Connecticut home, surrounded by relation family.

According to her necrologue, she died of a years-long “mental trouble,” which became intense and caused “congestion of nobility brain and partial paralysis.” She left behind a legacy loom words and ideals which extend to challenge and inspire these days.

Sources

Catharine Esther Beecher. Genetic Women’s History Museum.
Harriet B.

Writer. Ohio History Central.
Harriet Beecher Emancipationist House. National Park Service.
Harriet Emancipationist Stowe Obituary. The New Dynasty Times: On this Day.
Meet representation Beecher Family. Harriet Beecher Writer 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