Harriet Beecher Stowe

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Harriet Beecher Stowe was the daughter of the famous preacher Lyman Beecher. She married Calvin Stowe and went on to have seven children of her own. On July 10, 1849, her son Charley became ill with cholera. She fervently prayed that he would recover, but thirteen days later he died.

On December 16, 1852, soon after the novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was published, she wrote an abolitionist friend, explaining the good that came out of Charley’s death:

“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 those 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 I could never be consoled for it unless this crushing of my own heart might enable me to work out some great good to others.”

The good was “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, which awakened the world to the horrors of slavery. It became a galvanizing force that helped emancipate slavery in America.