HOW "UNCLE TOM'S CABIN" WAS BUILT

  AS a very little girl Mrs. Stowe had heard of the horrors of slavery from her aunt, Mary Hubbard, who had married a planter from the West Indies, and been unable to live on her husband's plantation because her health was undermined by the mental anguish that she suffered at the scenes of cruelty and wretchedness she was compelled to witness. She returned to the United States, and made her home with the Beechers. Of her Mrs. Stowe writes: "What she saw and heard of slavery filled her with constant horror and loathing. I often heard her say that she frequently sat by her window in the tropical night, when all was still, and wished that the island might sink in the ocean, with all its sin and misery, and that she might sink with it." The effect of such expressions on the mind of a sensitive child like Harriet Beecher may well be imagined.

  When she was about twenty years old she went to live in Cincinnati, on the very borders of

  The scene in "Uncle Tom's Cabin" in which the Senator takes Eliza into his carriage, after her wild

  She had in her family as a servant a young woman whose little boy was the original of the "little Harry" of the story. One day she came to Mrs. Stowe in great distress, and told her that her old master was in the city looking for her, and might at any moment appear and drag her back to slavery. That very night, dark and stormy though it was, Professor Stowe and Henry Ward Beecher, who was at that time a student in Lane Seminary, took the woman and her child in the family carriage over just such roads as are described in the book, and brought them to the lonely farmhouse of a man named Van Sant, who ran one of the stations of the underground railroad. As they drove up to the house, Van Sant came out with a lighted candle in his hand, shielding the light from his eyes with his immense palm.

  Professor Stowe sang out: "Are you the man who will shelter a poor woman and her child from slave-catchers?"

  "I rather think I am," answered the big, honest fellow.

  "I thought so," exclaimed Professor Stowe,helping the woman out of the carriage. So character after character, and scene after scene, in "Uncle Tom's Cabin" might be traced to the actual events and persons that inspired them years before the faintest notion of writing such a book had ever entered Mrs. Stowe's mind.

  It was early in the month of May of the year 1850 that Mrs. Stowe, on her way to Brunswick, Maine, reached the house of her brother, the Rev. Edward Beecher, in Boston. She was weary and physically exhausted with the long journey which she had been compelled to make alone with the whole charge of children, accounts, and baggage, pushing her way through hurrying crowds, looking out for trunks, and bargaining with expressmen and hackmen. Yet in Boston there was no rest for her. She had to buy furniture and household supplies and have them packed and ready for shipping by the Bath steamer, which she herself was to take the following week, as on the whole the easiest and cheapest way to reach Brunswick. She had to save in every imaginable way, and to keep a strict account of all money expended. As a result she was able to write her husband, who was ill in Cincinnati, that the whole expense of the

  She found her brother Edward and his wife greatly agitated over the Fugitive Slave Bill, which was at the time being debated in Congress. This law not only gave the slave-holder of the South the right to seek out and drag back into slavery any colored person that he claimed as his property, but commanded the people of the free States to assist in this pitiless business. Doctor Edward Beecher had been the intimate friend and supporter of Lovejoy, who had not long before been murdered by a pro-slavery mob for publishing an Anti-Slavery paper. The most frequent topic of conversation while Mrs. Stowe was in Boston was this proposed law, and as the result her soul was all on fire with indignation and grief over what she felt to be a new enormity and wrong about to be inflicted by the slave power on an innocent and defenseless race.

  On the eve of her departure for Brunswick she wrote to her old friend of Hartford school days, Georgiana May, now Mrs. Sykes: "I am wearied and worn out with seeing to bedsteads, tables, chairs, mattresses, and with thinking about shipping my goods, and making out accounts, and I

  "I beg you to look up Brunswick on the map; it is about half a day's ride in the cars from Boston. I expect to reach there by the way of Bath by to-morrow forenoon. There I have a house engaged and kind friends who offer every hospitable assistance. Come, therefore, to see me, and we will have a long talk in the pine woods, and knit up the whole history from the place where we left it." On her arrival in Brunswick, Mrs. Stowe was treated to an instructive if depressing lesson in New England weather. She says: "After a week of most incessant northeast storm, most discouraging and forlorn to the children, the sun has at length come out. . . . There is a fair wind blowing, and every prospect, therefore, that our goods will arrive from Boston, and that we shall be in our own house by next week."

  In a letter written the following December to her sister-in-law, Mrs. George Beecher, we have in her own words a graphic and amusing picture of that first spring and summer in Brunswick:—

  "Is it really true that snow is on the ground and Christmas coming, and I have not written unto thee, most dear sister? No, I don't believe it! I

  "...I put off writing when your letter first came because I meant to write you a long letter,—a full and complete one; and so the days slipped by, and became weeks, and then my little Charley came.^*

  "Sarah, when I look back, I wonder at myself, not that I forgot anything that I should remember, but that I have remembered anything. From the time that I left Cincinnati with my children to come forth to a country that I knew not of, almost to the present time, it has seemed that I could scarcely breathe, I was so pressed with care. My head dizzy with the whirl of railroads and steamboats; then ten days' sojourn in Boston, and a constant toil and hurry in buying my furniture and equipments; and then landing in Brunswick in the midst of a drizzly, inexorable northeast storm, and beginning the

work of getting in order a deserted, dreary, damp old house. All day long, running from one thing to another, as for example thus:—

  "Mrs. Stowe, how shall I make this lounge, and what shall I cover the back with first?'

  "Mrs. Stowe. 'With the coarse cotton in the closet.'

  "Woman. 'Mrs. Stowe, there isn't any more soap to clean the windows. Where shall I get soap?'

  "Mrs. Stove. 'Here, Hattie, run up to the store and get two bars.'

  "'There is a man below wants to see Mrs. Stowe about the cistern.'

  "'Before you go down, Mrs. Stowe, show me how to cover this round end of the lounge.'

  "'There's a man up from the station, and he says that there is a box that has come for Mrs. Stowe, and it's coming up to the house; will you come down and see about it?'

  "'Mrs. Stowe, don't go till you have shown the man how to nail the carpet in the corner. He's nailed it all crooked; what shall he do? The black thread is all used up; what shall I do about putting gimp on the back of that sofa? Mrs. Stowe, there is a man come with a lot of pails

  "'Mrs. Stowe, here is a letter just come from Boston inclosing that bill of lading; the man wants to know what he shall do with the goods. If you will tell me what to say, I will answer the letter for you.'

  "'Mrs. Stowe, the meat-man is at the door. Had n't we better get a little beef-steak or something for dinner?'

  "'Shall Hattie go to Boardman's for some more black thread?'

  "'Mrs. Stowe, this cushion is an inch too wide for the frame; what shall we do now?'

  "'Mrs. Stowe, where are the screws of the black-walnut bedstead?'

  "'Here's a man has brought in those bills for freight; will you settle them now?'

  "'Mrs. Stowe, I don't understand using this great needle. I can't make it go through the cushion; it sticks in the cotton.'

  "Then comes a letter from my husband, saying that he is sick abed, and all but dead; don't ever expect to see his family again; wants to know how I shall manage in case I am left a widow; knows that we shall get into debt and never get out;

  "Some of my adventures were quite funny; as, for example, I had in my kitchen elect no sink, cistern, or any other water privileges, so I bought at the cotton factory two of the great hogsheads that they bring oil in, which here in Brunswick are often used for cisterns, and had them brought up in triumph to my yard, and was congratulating myself on my energy, when, lo and behold! it was discovered that there was no cellar door except the one in the kitchen, which was truly a straight and narrow way down a long flight of stairs. Hereupon, as saith John Bunyan, 'I fell into a muse'—how to get my cisterns into my cellar. In the days of chivalry I might have got me a knight to make me a breach through the foundation walls; but that was not to be thought of now, and my oil hogsheads standing disconsolately in the yard seemed to reflect no great credit on my foresight. In this strait, I fell upon a real honest Yankee cooper, whom I besought, for the reputation of his craft and mine,

  "Professor Smith came down and looked very hard at them, and then said, 'Well, nothing can beat a willful woman!'

  "In all my moving and fussing Mr. Titcomb has been my right-hand man. This same John Titcomb, my very good friend, is a character peculiar to Yankeedom. He is part owner and landlord of the house I rent, and connected by birth with all the best families in town,—a man of real intelligence and good education, a great reader, and quite a thinker. . . . Whenever a screw was loose, a nail to be driven, a lock to be mended, a pane of glass to be set,—and these cases were manifold,—he was always on hand. My sink, however, was no fancy job, and I believe that

  "'Mr. Titcomb, about that sink?'

  "'Yes, ma'am; I was thinking about going down street this afternoon to look out stuff for it.'

  "'Yes, sir, if you would be good enough to get it done as soon as possible; we are in great need of it.'

  "'I think there's no hurry. I believe we are going to have a dry time now, so that you could not catch any water, and you won't need the pump at present.'

  "'These negotiations extended from the first of June to the first of July, and at last my sink was completed, as also was a new house-spout, concerning which I had divers communings with Deacon Dunning of the Baptist Church.

  "Also, during this time, good Mrs. Mitchell and myself made two sofas, or lounges, a barrel-chair, divers bedspreads, pillow-cases, pillows, bolsters, mattresses; we painted rooms; we revarnished furniture; we—what didn't we do?

  "Then came Mr. Stowe, and then came the eighth of July, and my little Charley. I was really glad for an excuse to lie in bed, for I was full tired, I can assure you. Well, I was what folks call very comfortable for two weeks, when my nurse had to leave me.

  "During this time I have employed my leisure hours in making up my engagements with newspaper editors. I have written more than anybody or I myself would have thought to be possible. I have taught an hour a day in our school, and I have read two hours every evening to the children. The children study English history in school, and I am reading Scott's historical novels with them in their order. To-night I finish 'The Abbot,' and shall begin 'Kenilworth' next week. Yet I am con-

  "Since I began this note, I have been called off at least a dozen times: once for the fish-man, to buy a codfish; once to see a man who had brought me some barrels of apples; once to see a book agent; then to Mrs. Upham's to see about a drawing I promised to make for her; then to nurse the baby; then into the kitchen to make a chowder for dinner; and now I am at it again, for nothing but deadly determination enables me ever to write; it is rowing against wind and tide."

  While all this was going on in Brunswick, her brother's family in Boston were consumed with righteous indignation over the workings of the Fugitive Slave Law.

  Mrs. Stowe received letter after letter from Mrs. Edward Beecher and other friends, picturing the heartrending scenes which were the inevitable results of the enforcement of this inhuman law. Cities were better adapted than the country to the work of capturing escaped slaves, and Boston, called the "Cradle of Liberty," opened her doors to slave-hunters. The sorrow and anguish caused was indescribable. Families were broken up. Some of the hunted ones hid in garrets and cellars. Others fled to the

  Mrs. Edward Beecher, writing of this period to Mrs. Stowe's youngest son, says:—

  "I had been nourishing an Anti-Slavery spirit since Lovejoy was murdered for publishing in his paper articles against slavery and intemperance, when our home was in Illinois. These terrible things that were going on in Boston were well calculated to rouse up this spirit. What can I do? I thought. Not much myself, but I know one who can. So I wrote several letters to your mother, telling her of the various heartrending events caused by the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law. I remember distinctly saying in one of them: 'Now, Hattie, if I could use a pen as you can, I would write something that would make this whole nation feel what an accursed thing slavery is!"'

  A daughter of Mrs. Stowe well remembered her whole life long the scene in the little parlor in Bruns-

wick when this letter was received and read. Mrs. Stowe read it aloud to the assembled family, and when she came to the words, "I would write something that would make this whole nation feel what an accursed thing slavery is," rising from her chair, and crushing the letter in her hand, she exclaimed, with an expression on her face that stamped itself permanently on the minds of her children:—

  "God helping me, I will write something. I will if I live."

  This purpose, though then definitely formed, could not be immediately carried out. In a letter written in the month of December, 1850, she refers to the matter in a way that shows how it weighed upon her mind:—

  "Tell sister Katy that I thank her for her letter, and will answer it. As long as the baby sleeps with me nights, I can't do much at anything; but I will do it at last. I will write that thing if I live.

  "What are folks in general saying about the slave law, and the stand taken by Boston ministers in general, except Edward?

  "To me it is incredible, amazing, mournful! I feel that I should be willing to sink with it, were all this sin and misery to sink in the sea. . . . I

  At this time Mrs. Stowe was not an Abolitionist, nor did she ever become one after the Garrisonian type. She remembered hearing her father say about Garrison and Wendell Phillips that they were like men that would burn their houses down to get rid of the rats. She was virtually in sympathy with her father on the subject of slavery, and had unlimited confidence in his judgment. What Doctor Beecher thought of the Abolitionists, he expressed with a vigor and clarity that left no doubt as to his position. He said:—

  "I regard the whole Abolition movement, under its most influential leaders, with its distinctive maxims and modes of feeling, and also the whole temper, principles, and action of the South in justification of slavery, as a singular instance of infatuation permitted by Heaven for purposes of national retribution. God never raised up such men as Garrison and others like him as the ministers of his mercy for purposes of peaceful reform, but only

  These words were written in 1838, and show how true was the prophetic sense of Lyman Beecher. Garrison was at this time preaching secession and praying for the dissolution of the Union, and calling the Constitution of the United States a "Covenant with Death and an Agreement with Hell." No true Abolitionist should vote or have anything to do with the Government as then constituted. In this sense, neither Mrs. Stowe nor her husband were Abolitionists. Mrs. Stowe wished to be more than fair to the South. She intended to be generous. She made two of Uncle Tom's three masters men of good character, amiable, kind, and generous. She tried to show that the fault was not with the Southern people, but with the system. A friend of hers, who had many friends in the South, wrote to her: "Your book is going to be the great pacificator; it will unite North and South." Mrs. Stowe did not expect that the Abolitionists would be satisfied with the story, but she confidently expected that it would be favorably received in the South. Great was her surprise, then, when from the whole South arose a storm of abuse, while the Abolitionists received her with open arms. Mr.

  It was in the winter of 1850 that she wrote to her husband, who was in Cincinnati, giving a picture of her life in the old, wind-swept castle of a house in Brunswick.

  "Sunday night I rather watched than slept. The wind howled, and the house rocked, just as our old Litchfield house used to do. . . I am projecting a sketch for the Era on the capacity of liberated blacks to take care of themselves. Can't you find out for me how much Willie Watson has paid for the liberation of his friends? Get any items of that kind that you can pick up in Cincinnati. . . .

  "When I have a headache, and feel sick, as I do to-day, there is actually not a place in the house where I can lie down and take a nap without being disturbed. Overhead is the schoolroom; next door is the dining-room, and the girls practice there two hours a day on the piano. If I lock my door and lie down, some one is sure to be rattling the latch before two minutes have passed. . . .

  "There is no doubt in my mind that our expenses this year will come two hundred dollars, if not three, beyond our salary. We shall be able to come through notwithstanding; but I don't want to feel obliged to work as hard every year as I have this. I can earn four hundred dollars a year by writing; but I don't want to feel that I must, when weary with teaching the children, and tending the baby, and buying provisions, and mending dresses, and darning stockings, sit down and write a piece for some paper."

  Again she writes:—

  "Ever since we left Cincinnati to come here, the good hand of God has been visibly guiding our way. Through what difficulties have we been brought! Though we knew not where means were to come from, yet means have been furnished at every step of the way, and in every time of need. I was just in some discouragement with regard to my writing, thinking that the editor of the Era was overstocked with contributors and would not want my services another year, and, lo, he sends me one hundred dollars, and ever so many good words with it. Our income this year will be seventeen hundred dollars in all, and I hope to bring our expenses within thirteen hundred." At the

  About the last of January, 1850, she went to Boston to visit her brother Edward, and there she met, for the first time, the Rev. Josiah Henson. She heard his story of his escape from slavery. He remembered seeing his own father lying on the ground, bruised, bloody, and dying from the blows of a white overseer, because, mere slave and "nigger" that he was, he had pretended that the mother of his children was his wife, and had tried to defend her from an indecent assault that this same overseer had attempted on her person. What struck her most forcibly in Henson's story was the sweet Christian spirit of the man, as manifested even when he spoke of injuries calculated to rouse a human being to a frenzy of vindictive revengefulness.

  Shortly after this visit to Boston, Mrs. Stowe was seated in her pew in the college church at Brunswick during the communion service. She

  That Sunday afternoon she went to her room, locked the door, and wrote out, substantially as it appears in the published editions, the chapter called "The Death of Uncle Tom." As sufficient paper was not at hand, she wrote a large part of it in pencil on some brown paper in which groceries had been delivered. It seemed to her as if what she wrote was blown through her mind as with the rushing of a mighty wind. In the evening she gathered her little family about her and read them what she had written. Her two little boys of ten and twelve burst into tears, sobbing out, " Oh, mamma, slavery is the most cruel thing

  In an introduction to "Uncle Tom's Cabin," written late in life, Mrs. Stowe refers to the incident of Eliza's flight over the ice as the first "salient point" in the story. She also refers to the incident as though she had learned of it for the first time in the pages of an Anti-Slavery magazine. As a matter of fact, it was an actual occurrence during her residence in Ohio. She had known and had often talked with the very man who helped Eliza up the bank of the river. This was years before she had ever thought of writing such a book as "Uncle Tom's Cabin." No one is entirely reliable as a witness to events long past. Furthermore, in Mrs. Stowe's case, the great burden of so many overtaxed years had by this time made her memory more treacherous than she or her family realized. Professor Stowe, who was still living at the time, called attention to these and other inaccuracies, but for some reason not known they were never corrected.

  At the time this occurred Mrs. Stowe's mind

  Neither Mrs. Stowe nor her husband had the remotest idea of the unique power and interest of the story that was being written. Nor, indeed, did it dawn upon either of them until after the publication of the first edition in book form. Professor Stowe was a very emotional man, and was accustomed to water his wife's literary efforts liberally with his tears; so the fact that he

  It was a jolly, rollicking household in Brunswick, and Mrs. Stowe was herself full of fun. It was during the writing of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" that there occurred the following incident characteristic of the family life. Professor Stowe was at heart one of the most genial of men; but, being of an exceedingly nervous temperament, he was liable to go off at half cock on the slightest provocation, and become for the time being unpleasantly peppery. One day he bought a dozen eggs to set under a brooding hen, with a view to producing an unusually fine lot of chickens. Without disclosing his purpose he hid the eggs, as he thought securely, in the wood-shed. One of the children discovered them, and bore them in triumph into the house. Mrs. Stowe was on the point of sending to the store for eggs, and looking upon this discovery as providential, took them and had them cooked. Upon returning from one of his lectures, the Professor felt himself the most abused of men when he sought his eggs

  "Pa's mad!" observed one of the children.

  "I tell you what we'll do, children; when he comes back to dinner, we will make him laugh and he'll get all over it," said Mrs. Stowe, with a roguish twinkle in her eye. The Professor returned, and found the dinner on the table, ready and waiting, but not one of the family visible. While speculating on this unusual state of affairs, he heard a very human imitation of the cackling of hens proceeding from the wood-shed. It made up in vigor what it lacked in genuineness. On investigation, he found his wife and all the children, and even Rover, the dog, perched on a beam, after the manner peculiar to hens. He burst into laughter, and they all trooped into the house and had a very jolly time at dinner.

  "Uncle Tom's Cabin " began as a serial in the National Era, June 5, 1851, and in July of the same year Mrs. Stowe wrote as follows to Frederick Douglass: "You may perhaps have noticed in your editorial readings a series of articles that I am furnishing for the Era, under the title

  "In the course of my story the scene will fall upon a cotton plantation. I am very desirous, therefore, to gain information from one who has been an actual laborer on one, and it occurred to me that in the circle of your acquaintance there might be one who would be able to communicate to me such information as I desire. I have before me an able paper written by a Southern planter, in which the details and modus operandi are given from his point of sight. I am anxious to have something more from another standpoint. I wish to make a picture that shall be graphic and true to nature in its details. Such a person as Henry Bibb, if in the country, might give me just the kind of information I desire. You may possibly know of some other person. I will subjoin to this letter a list of questions, which in that case you will do me a favor by inclosing to the individual, with the request that he will at earliest convenience answer them. . . ."

  Then, after a vigorous defense of churches and ministers whom Douglass had assailed, she continues:—

  "I am a minister's daughter, and a minister's

  "I was a child in 1820, when the Missouri question was agitated, and one of the strongest and deepest impressions on my mind was that made by my father's sermons and prayers, and the anguish of his soul for the poor slave at that time. I remember his preaching drawing tears down the hardest faces of the old farmers of his congregation.

  "I remember his prayers, morning and evening, in the family for 'poor, oppressed, bleeding Africa,' that the time of her deliverance might come; prayers offered with strong crying and tears, prayers that indelibly impressed my heart, and made me, what I am, the enemy of all slavery. . . .

  "Every brother I have has been in his sphere a leading Anti-Slavery man. One of them, Edward, was to the last the bosom friend and counselor of Lovejoy. As for myself and my husband, we have for the last seventeen years lived on the border of a slave state, and we have never shrunk from the fugitives, and we have helped them with all we had to give. I have received the children of lib-

  In a letter written to Mrs. Follen in February, 1853, after the publication of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," Mrs. Stowe throws additional light on the way in which that Cabin was built out of the sorrows and experiences of her own life. Speaking of her life in Cincinnati, she writes:—

  "A number of poor families settled in our vicinity, from whom we could occasionally obtain domestic service. About a dozen families of liberated slaves were among the number, and they became my favorite resort in cases of emergency. If any one wants to see a black face look handsome, let them be left, as I have been, in feeble health, in oppressive weather, with a sick baby in arms, and two or three other little ones in the nursery, and not a servant in the whole house to do a single turn. Then, if they could see my good old Aunt Frankie coming with her honest, bluff, black face, her long strong arms, her chest as big and stout as a barrel, and her hilarious, hearty laugh, perfectly delighted to take one's washing, and do it at a fair price, they would appreciate the beauty of black people. My cook, Eliza Buck, was a regular epitome of slave life in herself,—fat, gentle,

  Later in this same letter she connects intimately the writing of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" with her own griefs and bereavements. "I have been the mother of seven children, the most beautiful and most loved of whom lies buried near my Cincinnati residence. It was at his dying bed and at his grave that I learned what a poor slave mother may feel when her child is torn away from her. In these depths of sorrow, which seemed to me immeasurable, it was my only prayer to God that such anguish might not be suffered in vain. There were circumstances about his death of such peculiar bitterness, of what seemed almost cruel suffering, that I felt that I could never be consoled for it, unless this crushing of my own heart might enable me to work

  Such is Mrs. Stowe's own account of where and how she gained the material and the inspiration for writing "Uncle Tom's Cabin." The book came as the ripe fruit of her whole life experience up to the time when she wrote the first words on the rough pieces of brown paper.

  It was written mostly in Brunswick, Maine. Some of the chapters were written in Boston, while she was visiting her brother, Edward Beecher, and part of the concluding chapter in Andover. Begun as a serial in the National Era, June 5, 1851, and announced to run for but three months, it was not completed till April 1, 1852, and was published in book form March 20 of the same year.

  John P. Jewett, a young publisher of Boston, made overtures for the publication of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" in book form long before it was

  Mr. Jewett offered her either ten per cent on all sales, or half profits with half the risk in case the venture proved unprofitable. Professor and Mrs. Stowe had for their business adviser Mr. Philip Greeley, who had formerly been Collector of the Port of Boston and was then a member of Congress. On this matter, without reading the story, he strongly advised them to accept the ten per cent on all sales, and to take no risk whatever in the enterprise. He reasoned that the subject was very unpopular, and that a book written by a woman could not be expected to have a very large sale in any case. Doctor Stowe took the first copy of the first edition to the railroad station and put it into Mr. Greeley's hands just as he was leaving