A Writer on a Mission

“Later, Harriet remembered the house at Lane Seminary as ‘a kind of moral heaven.’ It resounded with laughter, prayer, and song. Here learned folk discussed the issues of the day. The very air seemed ‘replete with moral oxygen—fully charged with intellectual electricity’” (59).

The Book

Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Spiritual Life by Nancy Koester situates Stowe as more than the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. She was deeply impacted by her minister father—Lyman Beecher, a life-long writer, an astute observer, a devout Christian who had her doubts, and an abolitionist.

Stowe’s early life was shaped by her larger-than-life father who emphasized personal faith and led family discussions on sacred and secular literature. From an early age, she had a vivid imagination and loved to read; at nine, she was recognized for her writing skills. The Beecher family also wrote copious amounts of letters to each other; it is in these that Stowe worked out her theological beliefs for the rest of her life.

Originally from New England, the Beecher family moved to Cincinnati in 1832. Lyman Beecher had accepted the presidency of Lane Seminary. Stowe spent the next seventeen years in a city just across the Ohio River from the slave state Kentucky. Her only known visit to a slave plantation was in 1833, at the invitation of a former student. Shelby Plantation in Uncle Tom’s Cabin is based on this experience. In 1836, she married Calvin Stowe—a professor at Lane Seminary. He encouraged her writing and they hired a maid so she could have three hours a day to write. Stowe wrote short stories and magazine articles that helped supplement Calvin’s income. The passing of the Fugitive Slave Law drove Stowe to do something to fight slavery; the result was Uncle Tom’s Cabin, first released in installments of the National Era magazine. Since mere words had failed the anti-slavery movement, Stowe decided to use word pictures to enact change. She didn’t back down when faced with strong criticism from Southerners and Northerners, publishing A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin to present the proof and source material of the evils of slavery and complacency of many.

The massive success of Uncle Tom’s Cabin made Stowe an international celebrity, but she struggled with how to leverage that to unify a fractured anti-slavery movement in the United States, finally landing on the use of her pen to rally others to the cause. By 1856, Stowe “was less hopeful that slavery could be ended by moral suasion alone” (250). At the start of the Civil War, she recognized that it would be a long and difficult struggle; unlike many of her fellow Americans. A prolific writer—on a variety of genres and topics—Stowe spent her later life writing to support her family. She also continued to explore her theological beliefs, eventually rejecting the Calvinism of her father for the Episcopal Church. In 1866, she re-read Uncle Tom’s Cabin and reflected on the changes since the end of the Civil War.

Author Koester intertwines the life story of Stowe with the Beecher family, her husband and children, a strong faith, slavery, and the abolition movement. The narrative relies on Stowe’s writings—about her life and letters to others—that paint descriptive pictures of the times and people. One aspect I really appreciated was the inclusion of Stowe’s reactions to the events of the Civil War, through her letters. Short asides situate Stowe’s story in the larger context without interrupting the flow of the narrative. For three of Stowe’s novels, Koester spends a lot of time summarizing the story and incorporating literary criticism. These sections could have been a bit shorter and more seamlessly incorporated.

The Place

Today, the Harriet Beecher Stowe House is located in Cincinnati, Ohio; when Stowe and her family lived there it was in Walnut Hills (now a neighborhood in Cincinnati). It sits upon a hill and, at one time, you could see Cincinnati and the Ohio River below. Stowe lived in the House for four years (1832-1836), but it was during that time that she had her first encounters with slavery, its impact on American society, and interacted with abolitionists and leaders of the Underground Railroad. The tour of the House highlights the significance of this location, making the case that Uncle Tom’s Cabin may not have been written if Stowe had not moved to Cincinnati.

The House is open Thursday through Saturday, 10am-4pm, and Sunday, 12pm-4pm. Hour-long tours can be booked online or as a walk-in, with tours offered on the hour, and there is a fee. The tour focuses on two aspects of the House’s history: when the Stowe family lived there and when it was the Edgemont Inn, a boarding house and inn listed in the Green Book. A small parking lot is located behind the house and there is a city park next door with picnic tables.