And so, in tribute I would like to share with you the story of one of my new heroines.
In 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote a book that arguably had the biggest impact of any book ever written on the course of American history. Her book, Uncle Tom's Cabin, made Abraham Lincoln say when he met her: "So, you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war." I will not share with you how I coincidentally came to to read her book, Uncle Tom's Cabin: Life Among the Lowly during this inspirational Women's History Month of March. Suffice it to say, it was fate.
Harriet Beecher Stowe was the daughter of an evangelist, wife of Bowdoin College professor Calvin Ellis Stowe and mother of seven children (including twin daughters). Stowe was a deeply religious woman among a family of abolitionists and writers. Prior to marrying Calvin Ellis Stowe, she belonged to the Semi-Colon Club, a literary salon and social club and over the course of her life wrote somewhere around 20 books.
(Spoiler alert: this will ruin the ending of the book for you, but don't worry if you haven't read it by now you probably never will.) In the 1850's it was very rare for anyone to portray African Americans in a positive light, especially in politics. Uncle Tom's Cabin was a very political book- at the heart of the political argument, for many white Americans of the day, lay the questions: Is slavery morally wrong? Doesn't the Bible condone slavery? Shouldn't Christians accept slavery as morally acceptable? Aren't African Americans less than human and beneath whites anyway?
Harriet Beecher Stowe uses Uncle Tom's Cabin to effectively destroy the pro-slavery arguments of the day and throughout the book uses the Bible, politics, common sense, and deep emotions of both Christian and atheist characters to do so.
She didn't do this all by herself, however; she had some help.
First, Stowe had help from Hammatt Billings, a Boston artist and illustrator quite famous in his day. One of the most popular editions of Uncle Tom's Cabin was called "The Splendid Edition" and had over a hundred illustrations by Billings of scenes from the book. Understand that readers in 1850 most likely had almost exclusively seen African Americans depicted in demeaning ways in political cartoons- subhuman, lustful, with exaggerated features and acting in irresponsible, half-brained or stupid manners. But nowhere in the Splendid Edition did Billings portray Uncle Tom or any of the African American characters in demeaning or demoralizing ways. Many of the pictures depict Tom and the other black characters acting kindly and justly, which was simply revolutionary at the time.
Stowe also, history would show, had help from God. The following is taken from the Introduction of the Splendid Edition by David Reynolds: "According to Stowe, she attended a communion service in a church in Brunswick, Maine and was so moved by the thought of the Passion that she had a vision of an enslaved man whipped to death by two fellow slaves under the command of their master. At the time she had this vision, she was in turmoil over the recently passed Fugitive Slave Law, which stipulated that anyone who helped a runaway slave could by punished by a $1000 fine and a year in jail. (The Stowes were temporarily housing runaway slaves in their own home in the Underground Railroad.) As she recalled, she rushed home and wrote a descriptive vignette of a slave whipped to death by two other slaves at the command of their master- the piece that became the climatic chapter of Uncle Tom's Cabin."
Uncle Tom's Cabin is an incredible novel that portrays Tom as a true Christian- humble, just, gentle, kind, patient, obedient, and true-hearted; throughout the book readers come to really love Tom. That's why the climax so powerfully showed the fault in system of slavery, that even though for the majority of the book Tom had two good hearted masters, through chance and the fate of an evil system he ultimately came under an evil master and was whipped to death despite his good heart.
America was groaning under the injustice of the system of slavery, and for many slaves justice came much too late. God's ways are not human ways; but it seems that in this case, he used the Holy Spirit to inspire a mother of seven in Maine and a gave her a vision to write a book that became so powerful it sold hundreds of thousands of copies and changed the hearts of the Northern nation in favor of abolition.
And so, I think we may just hang a picture of her with Lincoln's quote underneath it in her honor.
Happy Women's History Month!
