Stowe, Thoreau, Douglass, Whitman

Harriet Beecher Stowe 1811-1896

She was an American author whose books are politically engaged, in particular she was interested in slavery and in the abolitionist cause. Indeed about this topic she wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin which became the most sold book after the Bible and which made her a national and international celebrity. Its aim was to inspire emancipation by demonstrating the evil and unchristian nature of slavery, in fact the book helped push abolitionism from margins to mainstream and thus moved the nation closer to Civil War.

Early life and education

She was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, seventh child of Lyman Beecher, an evangelical Calvinist minister. Her mother died when she was four, and her father remarried quickly, so the family numbered thirteen children. Lyman’s Protestant evangelical vision profoundly influenced his children, who took on leadership roles in culture. Indeed, men became ministers, and women became writers, teachers, and reformers. Between 1819 and 1824 Harriet studied at Sarah Pierce’s girls’ academy, one of the earliest schools to offer serious academic training to women, where the curriculum included both humanistic and scientific subjects. Then two of her sisters founded a female academy in Hartford, where Harriet concluded her studies and became a teacher in 1827.

Career and personal life

In 1832 the Beecher family moved to Cincinnati, because Lyman was convinced that the future of American Protestantism depended on evangelical work in the western states. They also founded the Western Female Institute to train Christian women who would teach the children of farmers and workers in the Midwest. In 1834 Harriet began to write short stories and became aware of the controversy over slavery when a number of students rebelled against Lyman Beecher’s antislavery position. He supported shipping free American blacks to a colony in Africa and withdrew from his Lane Theological Seminary. Two years later, she married Calvin Stowe, a professor of biblical literature at Lane, and she had three children, but she continued writing for money. Her first book, appeared in 1843, was a collection of stories titled The Mayflower, whereas her first antislavery sketch, titled Immediate Emancipation, appeared in 1845.

In the following years, she lost a child, her family returned to New England, and her knowledge of slavery and her interest in the abolitionist cause were growing. Until the Passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, which made it criminal for anybody to aid an escaping slave, created a sense of outrage in Harriet and many other New Englanders, and pushed her to begin the writing of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which is far beyond the standard abolitionist tract. Initially, the novel was serialized in The National Era, a weekly antislavery journal of Washington, D.C., and it was well received even though the audience was limited. Then, in 1852, it appeared in book form, becoming a best-seller which, during the following ten years, was reprinted in twenty-two languages and which moved the nation closer to Civil War.

In 1856 she wrote another antislavery novel called Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp, where she depicted slave rebels who made their way to New York and Canada. As the Civil War approached, she continued to write on behalf of abolitionism in the New York Independent. Meanwhile, she also wrote novels focused on New England culture and history such as The Minister’s Wooing, The Pearl of Orr’s Island, Oldtown Folks, and Poganue People, in which emerged the figure of an innocent young woman whose religious intuitions resist the bookish theologies of male religious authorities. She also wrote a historical novel, Agnes of Sorrento, about her travels in Italy.

In 1863 the family moved back to Hartford, and she became Episcopalian. Understanding the importance of her masterpiece in American culture also reminds us how central women were to literary life before the Civil War, and how they engaged themselves with every kind of topic.

Uncle Tom's Cabin 1852

It is an anti-slavery novel which had a profound effect on attitudes toward African Americans and slavery in the U.S. and it helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War.

The book opens with Arthur Shelby, a Kentucky farmer, facing the loss of his farm because of debts. So, he and his wife decide to raise the needed funds by selling two of their slaves to a slave trader, Mr. Haley. The two slaves are Uncle Tom, a middle-aged man, and Harry, the son of Eliza, who is Emily Shelby's maid. Her son, George Shelby, doesn't want to see Tom go, because he sees the man as a friend and mentor. Eliza overhears the Shelbys planning to sell Tom and Harry, so she decides to run away with her son. She departs that same night, leaving a note to apologize to her mistress. Uncle Tom is sold and placed on a riverboat which sets sail down the Mississippi River. While on board, he meets a young white girl named Eva, whose father Augustine St. Clare buys Tom from the slave trader and takes him to their home in New Orleans. Uncle Tom and Eva become friends because of the deep Christian faith they both share.

Meanwhile, Eliza meets up with her husband George Harris, who had run away previously (thanks to his almost white skin), and they decide to attempt to reach Canada, even though they are tracked by Tom Loker, a slave hunter. George shoots him in the side. Before they leave, Eliza and George make sure that Tom Loker will receive medical treatment.

Back in New Orleans, after Uncle Tom has lived with the St. Clares for two years, Eva grows very ill. Before she dies, she experiences a vision of Heaven which she shares with the people around her. As a result of her death and vision, the other characters resolve to change their lives, and St. Clare pledges to free Uncle Tom. Before he can do anything, St. Clare dies after being stabbed outside of a tavern. His wife doesn't follow through his pledge and sells Tom at auction to a plantation owner called Simon Legree, who takes Tom to rural Louisiana. There, Tom refuses to whip his fellow slaves, so Legree beats Tom and decides to crush his faith in God. Despite Legree's cruelty, Tom refuses to stop reading his Bible and comforting the other slaves. Tom meets Cassy, another slave who was previously separated from her son and daughter when they were sold, and, unable to endure the pain of seeing another child sold, she killed her third child.

At this point, George, Eliza, and Harry have obtained their freedom after crossing into Canada, while in Louisiana, Uncle Tom almost succumbs under Legree's hands. However, he has two visions of Jesus and Eva, which renew his intention to remain a faithful Christian, even until death. So, he encourages Cassy to escape, which she does, and when Tom refuses to tell Legree where Cassy is, Legree orders his men to kill Tom. As Tom is dying, he forgives the overseers who beat him, and both men become Christians.

Very shortly before Tom's death, George Shelby arrives to buy Tom's freedom, but finds he is too late. At the end of the book, on her boat ride to freedom, Cassy meets George Harris's sister, and discovers that Eliza is her long-lost daughter who was sold as a child. They travel together as a family to France and eventually Liberia, the African nation created for former American slaves. George Shelby returns to Kentucky and frees all the slaves of his farm. He tells them to remember Tom's sacrifice and his belief in the true meaning of Christianity.

Henry David Thoreau 1817-1861

He was an American author, poet, philosopher, and naturalist. He is best known for his book Walden, or Life in the Woods, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings in which he presents himself as an exemplary figure who, by his nonconformity and appreciative observation of the natural world, could serve as a model for others.

The third of four children of a storekeeper, Thoreau was born in Concord on July 12, 1817. He studied at the private Concord Academy and then began his studies at Harvard in 1833, excelling in languages; after his graduation in 1837, he returned to Concord and taught briefly at a local elementary school before resigning in protest after he was instructed to flog some of his students.