Harriet beecher stowe biography summary examples

Its characters and their daily experiences made people uncomfortable as they realized enslaved people had families and hopes and dreams like everyone else, yet were considered chattel and exposed to terrible living conditions and violence. It also sparked outrage. In the North, the book stoked anti-slavery views. In some parts of the South, the book was illegal.

As it gained popularity, divisions between the North and South became further entrenched. By the mids, the Republican Party had formed to help prevent slavery from spreading. Following Nat Turner's rebellion of , legislation to limit Black people's access to education intensified. But enslaved people found ways to learn. In , Calvin retired and moved his family to Hartford, Connecticut—their neighbor was Mark Twain —but the Stowes spent their winters in Mandarin, Florida.

Stowe and her son Frederick established a plantation there and hired formerly enslaved people to work it. In , she wrote Palmetto Leaves , a memoir promoting Florida life. Controversy and heartache found Stowe again in her later years. In , her article in The Atlantic accused English nobleman Lord Byron of an incestuous relationship with his half-sister that produced a child.

The scandal diminished her popularity with the British people. Lyman Beecher took a strong abolitionist stance following the pro-slavery Cincinnati Riots of His attitude reinforced the abolitionist beliefs of his children, including Stowe. Stowe found like-minded friends in a local literary association called the Semi-Colon Club. Here, she formed a friendship with fellow member and seminary teacher Calvin Ellis Stowe.

They were married on January 6, , and eventually moved to a cottage near in Brunswick, Maine, close to Bowdoin College. Along with their interest in literature, Harriet and Calvin Stowe shared a strong belief in abolition. In , Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Law, prompting distress and distress in abolitionist and free Black communities of the North.

Stowe decided to express her feelings through a literary representation of slavery, basing her work on the life of Josiah Henson and on her own observations. Uncle Tom's Cabin was published as a book the following year and quickly became a best seller. Embraced in the North, the book and its author aroused hostility in the South. Enthusiasts staged theatrical performances based on the story, with the characters of Tom, Eva and Topsy achieving iconic status.

Stowe continued to write and to champion social and political causes for the rest of her life. Her son later reported that Lincoln greeted her by saying, "so you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war", [ 26 ] but this story has been found to be apocryphal. Stowe purchased property near Jacksonville, Florida.

In response to a newspaper article in , she wrote, "I came to Florida the year after the war and held property in Duval County ever since. In all this time I have not received even an incivility from any native Floridian. Stowe is controversial for her support of Elizabeth Campbell, Duchess of Argyll , whose grandfather had been a primary enforcer of the Highland Clearances , the transformation of the remote Highlands of Scotland from a militia-based society to an agricultural one that supported far fewer people.

The newly homeless moved to Canada, where very bitter accounts appeared. In , Stowe became one of the first editors of Hearth and Home magazine, one of several new publications appealing to women; she departed after a year. She can make no contract and hold no property; whatever she inherits or earns becomes at that moment the property of her husband Though he acquired a fortune through her, or though she earned a fortune through her talents, he is the sole master of it, and she cannot draw a penny She passes out of legal existence.

In the s, Stowe's brother Henry Ward Beecher was accused of adultery, and became the subject of a national scandal. Unable to bear the public attacks on her brother, Stowe again fled to Florida but asked family members to send her newspaper reports. After her return to Connecticut, Mrs. Stowe was among the founders of the Hartford Art School, which later became part of the University of Hartford.

Following the death of her husband, Calvin Stowe, in , Harriet started rapidly to decline in health. She imagined that she was engaged in the original composition, and for several hours every day she industriously used pen and paper, inscribing passages of the book almost exactly word for word. This was done unconsciously from memory, the author imagining that she composed the matter as she went along.

To her diseased mind the story was brand new, and she frequently exhausted herself with labor that she regarded as freshly created. Mark Twain , a neighbor of Stowe's in Hartford, recalled her last years in the following passage of his autobiography:. Her mind had decayed, and she was a pathetic figure. She wandered about all the day long in the care of a muscular Irish woman.

Among the colonists of our neighborhood the doors always stood open in pleasant weather. Stowe entered them at her own free will, and as she was always softly slippered and generally full of animal spirits, she was able to deal in surprises, and she liked to do it. She would slip up behind a person who was deep in dreams and musings and fetch a war whoop that would jump that person out of his clothes.

And she had other moods. Sometimes we would hear gentle music in the drawing-room and would find her there at the piano singing ancient and melancholy songs with infinitely touching effect. Modern researchers now speculate that at the end of her life she was suffering from Alzheimer's disease. Harriet Beecher Stowe died on July 1, , in Hartford, Connecticut , 17 days after her 85th birthday.

She is buried in the historic cemetery at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts , [ 38 ] along with her husband and their son Henry Ellis. Multiple landmarks are dedicated to the memory of Harriet Beecher Stowe, and are located in several states including Ohio, Florida, Maine and Connecticut.

Harriet beecher stowe biography summary examples

The locations of these landmarks represent various periods of her life such as her father's house where she grew up and where she wrote her most famous work. Her father was a preacher who was greatly affected by the pro-slavery Cincinnati Riots of Harriet Beecher Stowe lived here until her marriage. It is open to the public and operated as a historical and cultural site, focusing on Harriet Beecher Stowe, the Lane Seminary and the Underground Railroad.

The site also presents African-American history. In the s and s, Stowe and her family wintered in Mandarin , Florida, now a neighborhood of modern consolidated Jacksonville , on the St. Johns River. Stowe wrote Palmetto Leaves while living in Mandarin, arguably an eloquent piece of promotional literature directed at Florida's potential Northern investors at the time.

In , Stowe was honored by the governor of Florida as one of several northerners who had helped Florida's growth after the war. In addition to her writings inspiring tourists and settlers to the area, she helped establish a church and a school, and she helped promote oranges as a major state crop through her own orchards. This predated the national movement toward integration by more than a half century.

The marker commemorating the Stowe family is located across the street from the former site of their cottage. It is on the property of the Community Club, at the site of a church where Stowe's husband once served as a minister. Stowe and his famous wife. The house was constructed in which contained the Stowe Memorial stained glass window , created by Louis Comfort Tiffany.

Her husband was teaching theology at nearby Bowdoin College , and she regularly invited students from the college and friends to read and discuss the chapters before publication. Future Civil War general, and later Governor, Joshua Chamberlain was then a student at the college and later described the setting. It is now open to the public.

It was next door to the house of fellow author Mark Twain. In this 5, sq ft m 2 cottage-style house, there are many of Beecher Stowe's original items and items from the time period. In the research library, which is open to the public, there are numerous letters and documents from the Beecher family. The house is open to the public and offers house tours on the hour.

In , during Stowe's time in Cincinnati , the city was afflicted with a serious cholera epidemic. To avoid illness, Stowe made a visit to Washington, Kentucky , a major community of the era just south of Maysville. She stayed with the Marshall Key family, one of whose daughters was a student at Lane Seminary. It is recorded that Mr.

Key took her to see a slave auction, as they were frequently held in Maysville. Scholars believe she was strongly moved by the experience. The Marshall Key home still stands in Washington. The community for freed slaves founded by the Rev. Josiah Henson and other abolitionists in the s has been restored. There's also a museum. Contents move to sidebar hide.

Article Talk. After the American Civil War, Harriet moved to Florida and became one of the first editors of "Hearth and Home" magazine, one of the first magazines to be targeted exclusively toward women. Harriet Beecher Stowe died in at the age of She was buried in Andover, Massachusetts in a historic cemetery. The novel was an immediate success and became the best-selling novel of the 19th century.