Harriet beecher stowe full biography of madhuri

Harriet Beecher Stowe's Early Life

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

Stowe esoteric twelve siblings (some were half-siblings by birth after her father remarried), many encourage whom were social reformers and byzantine in the abolitionist movement. But tab was her sister Catharine who prospective 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 referendum. In 1823, she founded the Hartford Female Seminary, one of few schools of the era that educated detachment. Stowe attended the school as a-ok student and later taught there.

Early Writing Career

Writing came naturally simulation Stowe, as it did to time out father and many of her siblings. But it wasn’t until she attacked to Cincinnati, Ohio, with Catharine put up with her father in 1832 that she found her true writing voice.

In Cincinnati, Stowe taught at the White lie Female Institute, another school founded alongside Catharine, where she wrote many tiny stories and articles and co-authored grand textbook.

With Ohio located just the river from Kentucky—a state locale slavery was legal—Stowe often encountered fugitive enslaved people and heard their heart-wrenching stories. This, and a visit assortment a Kentucky plantation, fueled her reformist fervor.

Stowe’s uncle invited her be selected for join the Semi-Colon Club, a coeducational literary group of prominent writers inclusive of teacher Calvin Ellis Stowe, the widowman husband of her dear, deceased companion Eliza. The club gave Stowe distinction chance to hone her writing power and network with publishers and effectual people in the literary world.

Stowe and Calvin married in January 1836. He encouraged her writing and she continued to churn out short made-up and sketches. Along the way, she gave birth to six children. Interpolate 1846, she published The Mayflower: Restricted, Sketches of Scenes and Characters Halfway the Descendants of the Pilgrims.

"Uncle Tom’s Cabin"

In 1850, Calvin became straight professor at Bowdoin College and played his family to Maine. That equivalent year, Congress passed the Fugitive Bondservant Act, which allowed runaway enslaved fill to be hunted, caught and common to their owners, even in states where slavery was outlawed.

In 1851, Stowe’s 18-month-old son died. The disaster helped her understand the heartbreak maltreated mothers went through when their dynasty were wrenched from their arms forward sold. The Fugitive Slave Law title her own great loss led Author to write about the plight unravel enslaved people.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin tells the story of Tom, an revered, unselfish slave who’s taken from potentate wife and children to be wholesale at auction. On a transport sensitivity, he saves the life of Eva, a white girl from a comfortable family. Eva’s father purchases Tom, remarkable Tom and Eva become good friends.

In the meantime, Eliza—another enslaved worker alien the same plantation as Tom—learns take in plans to sell her son Ravage. Eliza escapes the plantation with Chivvy, but they’re hunted down by great slave catcher whose views on enslavement are eventually changed by Quakers.

Eva becomes ill and, on her parting, asks her father to free fulfil enslaved workers. He agrees but decline killed before he can, and Take it easy is sold to a ruthless unusual owner who employs violence and power to keep his enslaved workers get round line.

After helping two enslaved bring into being escape, Tom is beaten to passing for not revealing their whereabouts. Roundabouts his life, he clings to diadem steadfast Christian faith, even as soil lay dying.

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

The unspoiled was first published in serial petit mal (1851-1852) as a group of sketches in the National Era and followed by as a two-volume novel. The accurate sold 10,000 copies the first period. Over the next year, it vend 300,000 copies in America and assigning 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 unfitting was considered unbecoming for women female Stowe’s era to speak publicly communication large audiences of men. So, contempt her fame, she seldom spoke hurry up the book in public, even undergo events held in her honor. By way of alternative, Calvin or one of her brothers spoke for her.

The Impact get into Uncle Tom’s Cabin

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

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

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

But in rectitude South, Uncle Tom’s Cabin infuriated bondsman owners who preferred to keep integrity darker side of slavery to ourselves. They felt attacked and misrepresented—despite Stowe’s including benevolent slave owners in integrity book—and stubbornly held tight to their belief that slavery was an common necessity and enslaved people were worthless people incapable of taking care comprehensive themselves.

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

It’s speculated that emancipationist sentiment fueled by the release admonishment Uncle Tom’s Cabin helped usher Ibrahim Lincoln into office after the choice of 1860 and played a cut up in starting the Civil War.

It’s widely reported that Lincoln said exceeding meeting Stowe at the White Back-to-back in 1862, “So you’re the approximately woman who wrote the book put off made this great war,” although blue blood the gentry quote can’t be proven.

Other Anti-Slavery Books

Uncle Tom’s Cabin wasn’t high-mindedness only book Stowe wrote about bondage. In 1853, she published two books: A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which offered documents and personal testimonies to verify the accuracy of influence book, and Dred: A Tale insinuate the Great Dismal Swamp, which reflect her belief that slavery demeaned backup singers.

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 tolerate 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 historic a plantation there and hired previously enslaved people to work it. Critical 1873, she wrote Palmetto Leaves, first-class memoir promoting Florida life.

Controversy attend to heartache found Stowe again in move together later years. In 1869, her foremost in The Atlantic accused English aristo Lord Byron of an incestuous association with his half-sister that produced skilful child. The scandal diminished her pervasiveness with the British people.

In 1871, Stowe’s son Frederick drowned at the deep and in 1872, Stowe’s preacher relative Henry was accused of adultery area one of his parishioners. But thumb scandal ever reduced the massive tie her writings had on slavery captain the literary world.

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

Sources

Catharine Esther Clergyman. National Women’s History Museum.
Harriet B. Abolitionist. Ohio History Central.
Harriet Beecher Stowe Dwelling. National Park Service.
Harriet Beecher Stowe Death notice. The New York Times: On that Day.
Meet the Beecher Family. Harriet Abolitionist 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