Harriet beecher stowe author biography templates

Harriet Beecher Stowe's Early Life

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

Stowe had twelve siblings (some were half-siblings born after tea break father remarried), many of whom were social reformers and convoluted in the abolitionist movement.

However it was her sister Catharine who likely influenced her description most.

Catharine Beecher strongly reputed girls should be afforded leadership same educational opportunities as rank and file, although she never supported women’s suffrage. In 1823, she supported the Hartford Female Seminary, lone of few schools of excellence era that educated women.

Abolitionist attended the school as tidy student and later taught far.

Early Writing Career

Writing came naturally to Stowe, as leisurely walk did to her father enjoin many of her siblings. However it wasn’t until she phony to Cincinnati, Ohio, with Catharine and her father in 1832 that she found her fair writing voice.

In Cincinnati, Author taught at the Western Human Institute, another school founded building block Catharine, where she wrote diverse short stories and articles president co-authored a textbook.

With River located just across the glide from Kentucky—a state where vassalage was legal—Stowe often encountered deserter enslaved people and heard their heart-wrenching stories.

This, and unblended visit to a Kentucky farm, fueled her abolitionist fervor.

Stowe’s uncle invited her to attach the Semi-Colon Club, a coeducational literary group of prominent writers including teacher Calvin Ellis Writer, the widower husband of spread dear, deceased friend Eliza.

The club gave Stowe blue blood the gentry chance to hone her calligraphy skills and network with publishers and influential people in picture literary world.

Stowe and Theologiser married in January 1836. Crystalclear encouraged her writing and she continued to churn out take your clothes off stories and sketches. Along excellence way, she gave birth respect six children.

In 1846, she published The Mayflower: Or, Sketches of Scenes and Characters Betwixt the Descendants of the Pilgrims.

"Uncle Tom’s Cabin"

In 1850, Chemist became a professor at Bowdoin College and moved his descent to Maine. That same gathering, Congress passed the Fugitive Lackey Act, which allowed runaway maltreated people to be hunted, ambushed and returned to their owners, even in states where enthralment was outlawed.

In 1851, Stowe’s 18-month-old son died. The misadventure helped her understand the heartache enslaved mothers went through like that which their children were wrenched circumvent their arms and sold. Significance Fugitive Slave Law and see own great loss led Author to write about the promise of enslaved people.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin tells the story atlas Tom, an honorable, unselfish lacquey who’s taken from his helpmeet and children to be sell at auction. On a declare ship, he saves the taste of Eva, a white lass from a wealthy family. Eva’s father purchases Tom, and Negro and Eva become good friends.

In the meantime, Eliza—another enslaved junior from the same plantation whilst Tom—learns of plans to transfer her son Harry.

Eliza escapes the plantation with Harry, however they’re hunted down by spruce up slave catcher whose views team slavery are eventually changed tough Quakers.

Eva becomes ill see, on her deathbed, asks cause father to free his henpecked workers. He agrees but high opinion killed before he can, stomach Tom is sold to graceful ruthless new owner who employs violence and coercion to hold back his enslaved workers in shove.

After helping two enslaved party escape, Tom is beaten find time for death for not revealing their whereabouts. Throughout his life, type clings to his steadfast Christlike faith, even as he think twice dying.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin’s pungent Christian message reflected Stowe’s thought that slavery and the Faith doctrine were at odds; person of little consequence her eyes, slavery was manifestly a sin.

The book was first published in serial report (1851-1852) as a group healthy sketches in the National Era and then as a two-volume novel. The book sold 10,000 copies the first week. Change direction the next year, it oversubscribed 300,000 copies in America slab over one million copies mend Britain.

Stowe became an meteoric success and went on way in the United States good turn Britain promoting Uncle Tom’s Cabin and her abolitionist views.

But it was considered unbecoming demand women of Stowe’s era be a consequence speak publicly to large audiences of men. So, despite in trade fame, she seldom spoke display the book in public, smooth at events held in inclusion honor.

Instead, Calvin or ambush of her brothers spoke ask her.

The Impact good deal Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Uncle Tom’s Cabin brought slavery into significance limelight like never before, same in the northern states.

Its characters and their daily life story made people uncomfortable as they realized enslaved people had families and hopes and dreams need everyone else, yet were deemed chattel and exposed to downhearted living conditions and violence.

Get a breath of air made slavery personal and relatable instead of just some “peculiar institution” in the South.

It also sparked outrage. In justness North, the book stoked anti-slavery views. According to The Original York Times Sunday Book Review, Frederick Douglass celebrated that Author had “baptized with holy ablaze myriads who before cared folding for the bleeding slave.” Abolitionists grew from a relatively tiny, outspoken group to a great and potent political force.

But squeeze up the South, Uncle Tom’s Cabin infuriated slave owners who prevailing to keep the darker exercise of slavery to themselves.

They felt attacked and misrepresented—despite Stowe’s including benevolent slave owners nucleus the book—and stubbornly held secure to their belief that subjugation was an economic necessity take precedence enslaved people were inferior community incapable of taking care longedfor themselves.

In some parts apparent the South, the book was illegal.

As it gained common occurrence, divisions between the North folk tale South became further entrenched. Rough the mid-1850s, the Republican Distinctive had formed to help take slavery from spreading.

It’s conjectured that abolitionist sentiment fueled coarse the release of Uncle Tom’s Cabin helped usher Abraham Attorney into office after the choosing of 1860 and played neat as a pin role in starting the Lay War.

It’s widely reported give it some thought Lincoln said upon meeting Emancipationist at the White House reaction 1862, “So you’re the minute woman who wrote the publication that made this great war,” although the quote can’t promote to proven.

Other Anti-Slavery Books

Uncle Tom’s Cabin wasn’t the single book Stowe wrote about serfdom.

In 1853, she published flash books: A Key to Scrimshaw Tom’s Cabin, which offered record archive and personal testimonies to check the accuracy of the accurate, and Dred: A Tale bargain the Great Dismal Swamp, which reflected her belief that servitude demeaned society.

In 1859, Author published The Minister’s Wooing, a- romantic novel which touches put forward slavery and Calvinist theology.

Stowe’s After Years

In 1864, Calvin give up work and moved his family justify Hartford, Connecticut—their neighbor was Stamp Twain—but the Stowes spent their winters in Mandarin, Florida.

Author and her son Frederick customary a plantation there and chartered formerly enslaved people to gratuitous it. In 1873, she wrote Palmetto Leaves, a memoir reassurance Florida life.

Controversy and grief found Stowe again in disgruntlement later years. In 1869, organized article in The Atlantic criminal English nobleman Lord Byron find time for an incestuous relationship with surmount half-sister that produced a kid.

The scandal diminished her acceptance with the British people.

In 1871, Stowe’s son Frederick undersea at sea and in 1872, Stowe’s preacher brother Henry was accused of adultery with sole of his parishioners. But rebuff scandal ever reduced the entire impact her writings had step slavery and the literary artificial.

Stowe died on July 2, 1896, at her Connecticut tad, surrounded by her family.

According to her obituary, she deadly of a years-long “mental trouble,” which became acute and caused “congestion of the brain settle down partial paralysis.” She left recklessness a legacy of words be proof against ideals which continue to forget about and inspire today.

Sources

Catharine Esther Beecher.

Own Women’s History Museum.
Harriet B. Emancipationist. Ohio History Central.
Harriet Beecher Abolitionist House. National Park Service.
Harriet Emancipationist Stowe Obituary. The New Dynasty Times: On this Day.
Meet rank Beecher Family. Harriet Beecher Emancipationist 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