Nobly, indeed, did the women of America respond to her call, for during the Civil War, which was begun before the abolition of slavery was an accomplished fact, the women, though they went not to the war themselves, loyally sent out their fathers, husbands and brothers. Who shall say these women were not heroic?
After the close of the Civil War, Mrs. Stowe purchased a home in Florida overlooking the St. John's River, where she lived during the winter, going in summer to her old home in Hartford.
On her seventieth birthday, June 14, 1882, her publishers, Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin Company, of Boston, gave a reception for her in the form of a garden party at the beautiful residence of ex-Governor Claflin of Massachusetts in Newtonville, one of Boston's fine suburbs. Here gathered men and women well known in the literary and artistic world, eager to do honor to the woman whose life had been such an inspiration to others, and whose work of such benefit to mankind. Mr. Houghton made an address of congratulation and welcome, to which Henry Ward Beecher replied. Oliver Wendell Holmes spoke, and many poems and letters from noted persons were read.
This was the last public appearance of Mrs. Stowe. Her husband died in August, 1886, and she herself, passed away July 1, 1896, at Hartford, at the age of eighty-four. She was buried in the cemetery of the Theological Seminary at Andover, Massachusetts, next to her husband.
MARIA MITCHELL