The Prince George's enquirer and southern Maryland advertiser. (Upper Marlborough, Md.) 1882-1925, 1911-05-26
N JUNE of this year the one
4 hundredth anniversary of the
birth of Harriet Beecher Stowe

/
birth of Harriet Beecher Stowe
will be widely celebrated. A new
life of the little woman who
made the great war;" as Lincoln called
her, is about to come from the press,
written by her son, Charles Edward
Stowe, and her grandson, Lyman Bee
cher Stowe.
Among the most interesting of the
facts it brings out is that it never
occurred to the little woman" that
there was anything about Uncle
Toms Cabin" in the least likely to
prec1pitate a war. She wrote the
book with the kindliest feelings to-
ward the south, and her aim was to
be not only just but generous.
| To begin with, Mrs. Stowe was not
of the extreme abolitionist type. 1t
was her firm belief that the better
element in the south hated slavery,
and that this element was much larger
than was commonly supposed. Then,
TOO, while she loathed the system with
all her heart she was willing to be-
l1eve that it took more often than not
the kindly patriarchal form. -
She gave Uncle Tom three masters,
and two OF them were kind She made
one of her plantation owners detest
slavery and free his slaves. She want
ed to make the north understand that
the best southerners would cooperate
with them in a reasonable attempt
to do away with the evil
Never was little lady more sur
prfsed to find herself execrated. Her
feeling had been when she first wrote
the book that 1t would displease the
abolitionists and bring sympathetic re-
sponse from the south-that is, If
anybody ever read it at all, which she
had doubted.
When the book appeared the world
turned topsy-turvy for her. Garrison,
with whom she never quite agreed,
wrote her that she was no longer
abused-she had drawn it all on her.
self. People in the south who had
not read the book, or who had read it
with their minds made up beforehand.
thought her some sort of a monster.
A cousin who lived in Georgia did
not dare put the name of Mrs. Stowe
on the envelope when she wrote to
her
Mrs. Stowe found herself, In short,
put In class of agitators with whom
she had never belonged, and the poor
little dove of peace she had sent out
came back with it's feathers ruf1ed be-
yond recognition.
None the less, though she was bit
terly disappointed at the attitude of
the south, she would not forsake her
guns. She claimed that there was
nothing in Uncle Toms Cabin" not
based on actual occurrences. All this
might be found out in the "Key to
Uncle Toms Cabin" published so
many years ago, but that book long
since failed to attract any one but the
student of the times.
Harriet Beecher Stowe did not write
Uncle Toms Cabin" without having
served long apprenticeship to letters
From babyhood she had two great am
b1t1ons-to serve the Lord in some
way, as did the Hebrew woman she
heard about in church, and to write
something good. At the age of nine
she contributed to composition con-
test at school an essay on "The Diff
terence Between the Natural and the
Moral Sublime" and two years later
another composition, Can the Immor-
talfty of the Soul Be Proved by the
Light Of Nature?" was read aloud at
a public exhibition. 1t Is Interesting
to note that the eleven-year-old theo-
'og1an answered in the negative.
She did not long hold without oues-
tioning the religious beliefs in which
she was reared. The God of Calvin,
forthcoming to damnation, did not sat
isfy her heart, hard as she found It to
disagree with her beloved mother
The question of slavery came into
her life at an early period. 1t is not
true that she knew nothing of the
peculiar institution" at first Hand.
She lived long in Cincinnati and met
there many southerners, and 1t was
on plantations where she visited that
she got the color for the book she
was to write many years after.
She was hardly more than a girl
when she visited the Kentucky planta-
ton which became afterward the home
of Uncle Tom and Eliza, and about
the same time she met Topsy. Topsy
came to Cincinnati In the company of
a wealthy Louisiana family which had
liberated its slaves and 1t was in try
ing to teach her religion that the
famous conversation occurred: do
you know who made your" Nobody
as l knows on; l 'spect l growed."
In 1885 Cincinnati became the hot
bed of anttslavery talk Mr.. Theodore
Weld of Lane Theological seminary led
the movement. He had spent much
Of his life in the midst Of slavery and
was dedicattng the remainder of his
life to its overthrow. His ablest as
sistant, the editor of an abolitionist
paper, was DR.. Birney, a slave owner
from Alabama, who had freed his
slaves, and come away to fight the
system.
1t was natural that with these
friends Mrs. Stowe should have had
kindly feelings toward the south,
should have thought that it was rapid
ly Weakening to the horror of slavery,
and that the majority of it's citizens
were anxiously trying to put an END