Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  “The thought of the pleasant family circles that she has been meeting in spirit week after week has been a constant refreshment to her, and she cannot leave them without a farewell.

  “In particular the dear children who have followed her story have her warmest love. Dear children, you will soon be men and women, and I hope that you will learn from this story always to remember and pity the poor and oppressed. When you grow up, show your pity by doing all you can for them. Never, if you can help it, let a colored child be shut out from school or treated with neglect and contempt on account of his color. Remember the sweet example of little Eva, and try to feel the same regard for all that she did. Then, when you grow up, I hope the foolish and unchristian prejudice against people merely on account of their complexion will be done away with.

  “Farewell, dear children, until we meet again.”

  With the completion of the story the editor of the “Era” wrote: “Mrs. Stowe has at last brought her great work to a close. We do not recollect any production of an American writer that has excited more general and profound interest.”

  For the story as a serial the author received $300. In the mean time, however, it had attracted the attention of Mr. John P. Jewett, a Boston publisher, who promptly made overtures for its publication in book form. He offered Mr. and Mrs. Stowe a half share in the profits, provided they would share with him the expense of publication. This was refused by Professor Stowe, who said he was altogether too poor to assume any such risk; and the agreement finally made was that the author should receive a ten per cent royalty upon all sales.

  Mrs. Stowe had no reason to hope for any large pecuniary gain from this publication, for it was practically her first book. To be sure, she had, in 1832, prepared a small school geography for a Western publisher, and ten years later the Harpers had brought out her “Mayflower.” Still, neither of these had been sufficiently remunerative to cause her to regard literary work as a money-making business, and in regard to this new contract she writes: “I did not know until a week afterward precisely what terms Mr. Stowe had made, and I did not care. I had the most perfect indifference to the bargain.”

  The agreement was signed March 13, 1852, and, as by arrangement with the “National Era” the book publication of the story was authorized before its completion as a serial, the first edition of five thousand copies was issued on the twentieth of the same month.

  In looking over the first semi-annual statement presented by her publishers we find Mrs. Stowe charged, a few days before the date of publication of her book, with “one copy U. T. C. cloth $.56,” and this was the first copy of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” ever sold in book form. Five days earlier we find her charged with one copy of Horace Mann’s speeches. In writing of this critical period of her life Mrs. Stowe says: —

  “After sending the last proof-sheet to the office I sat alone reading Horace Mann’s eloquent plea for these young men and women, then about to be consigned to the slave warehouse of Bruin & Hill in Alexandria, Va., — a plea impassioned, eloquent, but vain, as all other pleas on that side had ever proved in all courts hitherto. It seemed that there was no hope, that nobody would hear, nobody would read, nobody pity; that this frightful system, that had already pursued its victims into the free States, might at last even threaten them in Canada.” [Footnote: Introduction to Illustrated Edition of Uncle Tom, p. xiii. (Houghton, Osgood & Co., 1879.)]

  Filled with this fear, she determined to do all that one woman might to enlist the sympathies of England for the cause, and to avert, even as a remote contingency, the closing of Canada as a haven of refuge for the oppressed. To this end she at once wrote letters to Prince Albert, to the Duke of Argyll, to the Earls of Carlisle and Shaftesbury, to Macaulay, Dickens, and others whom she knew to be interested in the cause of anti-slavery. These she ordered to be sent to their several addresses, accompanied by the very earliest copies of her book that should be printed.

  Then, having done what she could, and committed the result to God, she calmly turned her attention to other affairs.

  In the mean time the fears of the author as to whether or not her book would be read were quickly dispelled. Three thousand copies were sold the very first day, a second edition was issued the following week, a third on the 1st of April, and within a year one hundred and twenty editions, or over three hundred thousand copies of the book, had been issued and sold in this country. Almost in a day the poor professor’s wife had become the most talked-of woman in the world, her influence for good was spreading to its remotest corners, and henceforth she was to be a public character, whose every movement would be watched with interest, and whose every word would be quoted. The long, weary struggle with poverty was to be hers no longer; for, in seeking to aid the oppressed, she had also so aided herself that within four months from the time her book was published it had yielded her $10,000 in royalties.

  Now letters regarding the wonderful book, and expressing all shades of opinion concerning it, began to pour in upon the author. Her lifelong friend, whose words we have already so often quoted, wrote: —

  “I sat up last night until long after one o’clock reading and finishing ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’ I could not leave it any more than I could have left a dying child, nor could I restrain an almost hysterical sobbing for an hour after I laid my head upon my pillow. I thought I was a thorough-going abolitionist before, but your book has awakened so strong a feeling of indignation and of compassion that I never seem to have had any feeling on this subject until now.”

  The poet Longfellow wrote: —

  I congratulate you most cordially upon the immense success and influence of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” It is one of the greatest triumphs recorded in literary history, to say nothing of the higher triumph of its moral effect.

  With great regard, and friendly remembrance to Mr. Stowe, I remain,

  Yours most truly,

  HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.

  Whittier wrote to Garrison: —

  “What a glorious work Harriet Beecher Stowe has wrought. Thanks for the Fugitive Slave Law! Better would it be for slavery if that law had never been enacted; for it gave occasion for ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’”

  Garrison wrote to Mrs. Stowe: —

  “I estimate the value of anti-slavery writing by the abuse it brings. Now all the defenders of slavery have let me alone and are abusing you.”

  To Mrs. Stowe, Whittier wrote: —

  Ten thousand thanks for thy immortal book. My young friend Mary Irving (of the “Era”) writes me that she has been reading it to some twenty young ladies, daughters of Louisiana slaveholders, near New Orleans, and amid the scenes described in it, and that they, with one accord, pronounce it true.

  Truly thy friend,

  JOHN G. WHITTIER.

  From Thomas Wentworth Higginson came the following: —

  To have written at once the most powerful of contemporary fiction and the most efficient of anti-slavery tracts is a double triumph in literature and philanthropy, to which this country has heretofore seen no parallel.

  Yours respectfully and gratefully,

  T. W. HIGGINSON.

  A few days after the publication of the book, Mrs. Stowe, writing from Boston to her husband in Brunswick, says: “I have been in such a whirl ever since I have been here. I found business prosperous. Jewett animated. He has been to Washington and conversed with all the leading senators, Northern and Southern. Seward told him it was the greatest book of the times, or something of that sort, and he and Sumner went around with him to recommend it to Southern men and get them to read it.”

  It is true that with these congratulatory and commendatory letters came hosts of others, threatening and insulting, from the Haleys and Legrees of the country.

  Of them Mrs. Stowe said: “They were so curiously compounded of blasphemy, cruelty, and obscenity, that their like could only be expressed by John Bunyan’s account of the speech of Apollyon: ‘He spake as a dragon.’”

  A correspondent of the
“National Era” wrote: “‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ is denounced by time-serving preachers as a meretricious work. Will you not come out in defense of it and roll back the tide of vituperation?”

  To this the editor answered: “We should as soon think of coming out in defense of Shakespeare.”

  Several attempts were made in the South to write books controverting “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and showing a much brighter side of the slavery question, but they all fell flat and were left unread. Of one of them, a clergyman of Charleston, S.C., wrote in a private letter: —

  “I have read two columns in the ‘Southern Press’ of Mrs. Eastman’s ‘Aunt Phillis’ Cabin, or Southern Life as it is,’ with the remarks of the editor. I have no comment to make on it, as that is done by itself. The editor might have saved himself being writ down an ass by the public if he had withheld his nonsense. If the two columns are a fair specimen of Mrs. Eastman’s book, I pity her attempt and her name as an author.”

  In due time Mrs. Stowe began to receive answers to the letters she had forwarded with copies of her book to prominent men in England, and these were without exception flattering and encouraging. Through his private secretary Prince Albert acknowledged with thanks the receipt of his copy, and promised to read it. Succeeding mails brought scores of letters from English men of letters and statesmen. Lord Carlisle wrote: —

  “I return my deep and solemn thanks to Almighty God who has led and enabled you to write such a book. I do feel indeed the most thorough assurance that in his good Providence such a book cannot have been written in vain. I have long felt that slavery is by far the topping question of the world and age we live in, including all that is most thrilling in heroism and most touching in distress; in short, the real epic of the universe. The self-interest of the parties most nearly concerned on the one hand, the apathy and ignorance of unconcerned observers on the other, have left these august pretensions to drop very much out of sight. Hence my rejoicing that a writer has appeared who will be read and must be felt, and that happen what may to the transactions of slavery they will no longer be suppressed.”

  To this letter, of which but an extract has been given, Mrs. Stowe sent the following reply: —

  MY LORD, — It is not with the common pleasure of gratified authorship that I say how much I am gratified by the receipt of your very kind communication with regard to my humble efforts in the cause of humanity. The subject is one so grave, so awful — the success of what I have written has been so singular and so unexpected — that I can scarce retain a self-consciousness and am constrained to look upon it all as the work of a Higher Power, who, when He pleases, can accomplish his results by the feeblest instruments. I am glad of anything which gives notoriety to the book, because it is a plea for the dumb and the helpless! I am glad particularly of notoriety in England because I see with what daily increasing power England’s opinion is to act on this country. No one can tell but a native born here by what an infinite complexity of ties, nerves, and ligaments this terrible evil is bound in one body politic; how the slightest touch upon it causes even the free States to thrill and shiver, what a terribly corrupting and tempting power it has upon the conscience and moral sentiment even of a free community. Nobody can tell the thousand ways in which by trade, by family affinity, or by political expediency, the free part of our country is constantly tempted to complicity with the slaveholding part. It is a terrible thing to become used to hearing the enormities of slavery, to hear of things day after day that one would think the sun should hide his face from, and yet, to get used to them, to discusss them coolly, to dismiss them coolly. For example, the sale of intelligent, handsome colored females for vile purposes, facts of the most public nature, have made this a perfectly understood matter in our Northern States. I have now, myself, under charge and educating, two girls of whose character any mother might be proud, who have actually been rescued from this sale in the New Orleans market.

  I desire to inclose a tract [Footnote: Afterwards embodied in the Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin.] in which I sketched down a few incidents in the history of the family to which these girls belong; it will show more than words can the kind of incident to which I allude. The tract is not a published document, only printed to assist me in raising money, and it would not, at present, be for the good of the parties to have it published even in England.

  But though these things are known in the free States, and other things, if possible, worse, yet there is a terrible deadness of moral sense. They are known by clergymen who yet would not on any account so far commit themselves as to preach on the evils of slavery, or pray for the slaves in their pulpits. They are known by politicians who yet give their votes for slavery extension and perpetuation.

  This year both our great leading parties voted to suppress all agitation of the subject, and in both those parties were men who knew personally facts of slavery and the internal slave-trade that one would think no man could ever forget. Men united in pledging themselves to the Fugitive Slave Law, who yet would tell you in private conversation that it was an abomination, and who do not hesitate to say, that as a matter of practice they always help the fugitive because they can’t do otherwise.

  The moral effect of this constant insincerity, the moral effect of witnessing and becoming accustomed to the most appalling forms of crime and oppression, is to me the most awful and distressing part of the subject. Nothing makes me feel it so painfully as to see with how much more keenness the English feel the disclosures of my book than the Americans. I myself am blunted by use — by seeing, touching, handling the details. In dealing even for the ransom of slaves, in learning market prices of men, women, and children, I feel that I acquire a horrible familiarity with evil.

  Here, then, the great, wise, and powerful mind of England, if she will but fully master the subject, may greatly help us. Hers is the same kind of mind as our own, but disembarrassed from our temptations and unnerved by the thousands of influences that blind and deaden us. There is a healthful vivacity of moral feeling on this subject that must electrify our paralyzed vitality. For this reason, therefore, I rejoice when I see minds like your lordship’s turning to this subject; and I feel an intensity of emotion, as if I could say, Do not for Christ’s sake let go; you know not what you may do.

  Your lordship will permit me to send you two of the most characteristic documents of the present struggle, written by two men who are, in their way, as eloquent for the slave as Chatham was for us in our hour of need.

  I am now preparing some additional notes to my book, in which I shall further confirm what I have said by facts and statistics, and in particular by extracts from the codes of slaveholding States, and the records of their courts. These are documents that cannot be disputed, and I pray your lordship to give them your attention. No disconnected facts can be so terrible as these legal decisions. They will soon appear in England.

  It is so far from being irrelevant for England to notice slavery that I already see indications that this subject, on both sides, is yet to be presented there, and the battle fought on English ground. I see that my friend the South Carolinian gentleman has sent to “Fraser’s Magazine” an article, before published in this country, on “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” The article in the London “Times” was eagerly reprinted in this country, was issued as a tract and sold by the hundred, headed, “What they think of ‘Uncle Tom’ in England.” If I mistake not, a strong effort will be made to pervert the public mind of England, and to do away the impression which the book has left.

  For a time after it was issued it seemed to go by acclamation. From quarters the most unexpected, from all political parties, came an almost unbroken chorus of approbation. I was very much surprised, knowing the explosive nature of the subject. It was not till the sale had run to over a hundred thousand copies that reaction began, and the reaction was led off by the London “Times.” Instantly, as by a preconcerted signal, all papers of a certain class began to abuse; and some who had at first issued articles entirely commenda
tory, now issued others equally depreciatory. Religious papers, notably the “New York Observer,” came out and denounced the book as anti- Christian, anti-evangelical, resorting even to personal slander on the author as a means of diverting attention from the work.

  All this has a meaning, but I think it comes too late. I can think of no reason why it was not tried sooner, excepting that God had intended that the cause should have a hearing. It is strange that they should have waited so long for the political effect of a book which they might have foreseen at first; but not strange that they should, now they do see what it is doing, attempt to root it up.

  The effects of the book so far have been, I think, these: 1st. To soften and moderate the bitterness of feeling in extreme abolitionists. 2d. To convert to abolitionist views many whom this same bitterness had repelled. 3d. To inspire the free colored people with self-respect, hope, and confidence. 4th. To inspire universally through the country a kindlier feeling toward the negro race.

  It was unfortunate for the cause of freedom that the first agitators of this subject were of that class which your lordship describes in your note as “well-meaning men.” I speak sadly of their faults, for they were men of noble hearts. “But oppression maketh a wise man mad” and they spoke and did many things in the frenzy of outraged humanity that repelled sympathy and threw multitudes off to a hopeless distance. It is mournful to think of all the absurdities that have been said and done in the name and for the sake of this holy cause, that have so long and so fatally retarded it.

  I confess that I expected for myself nothing but abuse from extreme abolitionists, especially as I dared to name a forbidden shibboleth, “Liberia,” and the fact that the wildest and extremest abolitionists united with the coldest conservatives, at first, to welcome and advance the book is a thing that I have never ceased to wonder at.

  I have written this long letter because I am extremely desirous that some leading minds in England should know how we stand. The subject is now on trial at the bar of a civilized world — a Christian world! and I feel sure that God has not ordered this without a design. Yours for the cause,