Harriet Beecher Stowe: a biography for girls

by Martha Foote Crow

It is now time to refer to the matter that Mrs. Stowe had in mind as one of the reasons for coming to Washington. During all these days she was carrying one special burden—something that seemed to her to be of national importance and also a matter of personal responsibility. To understand what this was we must recall the “Affectionate and Christian Address” which had been signed by those five hundred thousand women of Great Britain and Ireland, by duchesses, countesses, wives of generals and ambassadors, savants and men of letters, as well as by hands evidently unused to hold the pen. This “Address” had been sent to “their sisters, the women of the United States of America,” through that most representative of American women, Harriet Beecher Stowe, appealing to them to aid in the removal of slavery from the Christian world.

“We acknowledge with grief and shame,” they said, “our heavy share in this great sin. We acknowledge that our forefathers introduced, nay, even compelled the adoption of slavery in those mighty colonies. We humbly confess it before Almighty God; and it is because we so deeply feel and unfeignedly avow our own complicity that we now venture to implore your aid to wipe away our common crime and our common dishonor.”

Mrs. Stowe knew that her answer to this important letter would be a national matter—she could not make it otherwise. She must review the intricate history of the slave system and face its present problems, not one of the least of which was the fact that, in spite of letters and addresses to the contrary by an illuminated few, the great body of English sympathy was now being given to that party in this country that favored slavery. Therefore, the international situation was in a specially critical state. It seemed even possible that England as a nation would give aid to the forces that were trying to tear our republic apart. Mrs. Stowe saw that now in the fall of 1862 this was one of the greatest causes of apprehension. That this state of feeling should follow the outburst of enthusiasm for freeing the slaves that she herself had witnessed all over England and Scotland, seemed to her incomprehensible and heart-breaking, and it made her feel that she must not let the answer to the “Address” remain in the logic of events only, but that it now called for some direct expression from the one to whom it had been intrusted.

Under the circumstances what she should say in her public letter was a very delicate matter. She might describe the various important preparatory steps that the President had already taken; and she might describe the proclamation just given out, that document we now consider to have ushered in the political regeneration of the American people, in which the President had made solemn announcement that unless by the following January the states now in rebellion laid down arms to signify that they abandoned the system of slavery, the emancipation of all slaves in those states would at once be enforced.

So far, so good. She could tell what had been already done; but how much might happen between now and January 1, 1863! What battles and conquests and losses might be written upon our scroll! What a test the national spirit might be put to! What failures were perhaps possible! As Mrs. Elizabeth Browning in an anxious hour said in one of her last letters: “What I feared most was that the north would compromise; and I fear still that they are not heroically strong on their legs on the moral question (meaning slavery). I fear it much. If they can but hold up it will be noble.” And this expresses the better side of England’s interest in our national problem.

Mrs. Stowe’s heart cried, “We cannot, we must not fail!” But she had the wisdom to see that her opinion needed to be bolstered up by some more weighty judgment. So she said to herself, “When I go to Washington I will try to see the heads of departments and satisfy myself that I may refer to the Emancipation Proclamation as a reality, for I should be sorry to call the attention of my sisters in Europe to an impotent conclusion. And I mean to have a talk with Father Abraham himself if possible.”

For her to gain an interview with President Lincoln was comparatively easy, for one member of the President’s Cabinet, Mr. Salmon P. Chase, now Secretary of the Treasury, was an old Ohio friend of hers. Years back, in Cincinnati, he had been a member of the Semi-colon Club. It was natural that this former friend should now find it easy to arrange for Mrs. Stowe to call upon President Lincoln and to have a quiet conversation with him. Her son, Charles Edward, twelve years old, who still remembers the distinguished event of that day as though it had happened yesterday, and her grown-up daughter, Harriet, accompanied her. It was a wonderful experience for them. The White House with its Ionic pillars seemed to young Charles a palace of dreamland; as they passed through the halls and caught a glimpse through an open door of the wonderful East Room where the carpet, selected for that room by Mrs. Lincoln, was of a pale green tapestry worked with flowers, it must have seemed to him that the gleaming transparent waves of the ocean were tossing roses to his feet. They were conducted up a staircase and taken to the President’s reception parlor, then called the Red Room, where the interview was to be held. Though the room was richly furnished, it seemed like a quiet and cozy place to the little boy. Perhaps this was because it was a dark chilly day and there was a bright wood fire burning in the fireplace.

The President was sitting before the fire as they entered. His gaunt figure was bowed in a melancholy attitude, and he was warming his hands by turning them first the palms toward the flame and then the backs, seemingly just for the sheer enjoyment of the genial warmth.

Overcome by a natural feeling of reverence for the great man into whose presence they were being ushered, Mrs. Stowe and her little group held back for a moment and waited; but Mr. Chase led them forward and told the President that he had brought Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe to visit him. With that awkwardness which is one of our most appealing memories of him, Mr. Lincoln rose quickly from his chair, revealing his whole six feet and four inches of height, and came forward eagerly. “Why, Mrs. Stowe,” he exclaimed, holding out his hand, “I’m right glad to see you!” Leading her to a chair, he added with a mischievous twinkle in his eye, “So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war.” With this pleasantry they sat down together before the fire.

The first thing he said was, “I do love an open fire; I always had one to home.” The homely phrase “to home!” How near it seemed to bring him! Like all the other common expressions he used, it only made us love him more! His advisers used sometimes to try to get him to write in a more polished manner, but he would say, “Well, it may not be so elegant or classical, but the people will understand it, the people will understand it!” And they always did. Mrs. Stowe could hardly have been more effectually made to feel “to home” than she was.