“I am myself not insensible to the many difficulties that beset us on every hand. They fling their broad and gloomy shadows across the pathway of every thoughtful colored man in this country. For one, I see them clearly and feel them sadly. Standing, as it were, barefoot, and treading upon the sharp and flinty rocks of the present, and looking out upon the boundless sea of the future, I have sought in my humble way to penetrate the intervening mists and clouds, and, perchance, to descry in the dim and shadowy distance the white flag of freedom.”
CHAPTER X
DOUGLASS, HARRIET BEECHER STOWE AND JOHN BROWN
The anti-slavery agitation made and revealed some of the most notable characters in American history. As it grew in extent and intensity, it attracted to itself men and women gifted with the powers needed to force great issues to a conclusion. Those who were already in the struggle, like Mr. Douglass, became more strongly committed to it, and those who were not yet enlisted, but belonged to it by right of individual temperament and spiritual inheritance, hurriedly took their places in the foremost ranks of responsibility and action.
There was no such thing as indifference in this matter. For those who understood the vast issue there were grave questions involved, and in some form or other the right or wrong of it knocked at the door of every one’s mind and conscience.
To those who were sufficiently gifted to say and do anything great concerning this cause, the opportunity was now at hand. In the midst of the confusion and controversy, the public was ready to listen to some clear voice that would tell it the facts in regard to American slavery.
Harriet Beecher Stowe responded to this need and was inspired to recite the story of the Negro in America. This she did with a mastery and a fascination that commanded the widest reading ever yet given to an American book. She so stirred the hearts of the Northern people that a large part of them were ready either to vote, or, in the last extremity, to fight for the suppression of slavery. The value of Uncle Tom’s Cabin to the cause of Abolition can never be justly estimated.
Mrs. Stowe was a member of the great Beecher family, and was by inheritance, as well as by special inspiration, peculiarly fitted to perform this service. She developed a concern in the slavery question in the natural course of her interest in all questions of the time. She lived for awhile in Cincinnati, where she was brought into close touch with some of the most cruel incidents of slavery,—the flight and capture of fugitives. Her sensitive nature was stung by seeing men hunted through the streets of the city, and carried back into bondage. She was near the scene when Birney’s anti-slavery press was destroyed by the mob. The whole atmosphere about her was surcharged with the spirit of the controversy, and the more she learned of the issue, the deeper became her interest in it. Stirred by sympathy for those whom she had come to regard as the victims of a bad system, she determined to know everything that was possible to be known about it.
Crossing the Ohio River, Mrs. Stowe went down into the land of slavery, to study the institution at first hand. When she left the South and returned to New England with her husband, she saw and felt the evil as few in the North had ever seen and felt it.
She soon discovered that the great mass of the Northern people were not able to share her views. She found most of them either indifferent or incredulous, and concluded that if they had had her experiences, they would also have her convictions. The immediate incentive to the writing of Uncle Tom’s Cabin was the desire to arouse the national conscience and bring the people to a sense of their responsibility. This remarkable story first appeared in an anti-slavery newspaper, and proved so popular that it was soon issued in book form. The rapidity with which one edition after another was published and consumed at home and abroad, was without precedent. The Abolitionists were quick to recognize the story as the most powerful engine that had yet been employed against slavery. Frederick Douglass thus speaks of its influence:
“Nothing could have better suited the moral and humane requirements of the hour. Its effect was amazing, instantaneous, and universal. She [Mrs. Stowe] at once became the object of interest and admiration the world over.”