The Backstory: How one woman helped ignite the Civil War

Who wrote the best-selling book in the U.S. in the 1800s? Why was she attacked from both sides for her story? And finally, how did she come to write the same exact book, word for word, 40 years later?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Okay. We have a way of processing stuff from the
past that sometimes completely changes our outlook on it. It
happens when authors take on a controversial topic and then
years later folks think the story is outdated or even
just playing wrong. Mid nineteenth century author Harriet Beecher Stowe
was dead set against slavery, and she wrote Uncle Tom's

(00:23):
Cabin as a way to humanize enslaved people. Abolitionists loved
the book. Folks in the South who wanted to hang
onto slavery hated it. I'm Patty Steele, So what was
the later controversy about her book? And also really weird
thing happened to Harriet late in life. That's next on
the backstory. We're back with the backstory. Uncle Tom's Cabin,

(00:50):
written by fierce abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe, is considered a
landmark of protest literature. Federal government put the Fugitive Slave
Life Law in place in eighteen fifty that allowed slave
owners and bounty hunters to head north to chase down
and basically kidnap escaped enslaved people that they felt they owned,

(01:12):
even though slavery wasn't allowed in the North. That infuriated
abolitionists like Harriet beecher Stowe, and she started writing. She
wanted to show the humanity of enslaved people, and she
was incredibly successful. Uncle Tom's Cabin was the best selling novel, and,
after the Bible, the second best selling book of the

(01:33):
entire nineteenth century. It was first released in eighteen fifty
one as a forty episode series in an abolitionist newspaper.
When it was published as a two volume book in
eighteen fifty two, even critics admitted it help set a
fire under the abolitionist cause, helping lead to the Civil
War just nine years later. By eighteen fifty seven, it

(01:56):
had sold in amazing two million copies. Its son told
a legendary story claiming the book was so powerful that
when Abraham Lincoln met her at the start of the
Civil War, he said, so, this is the little lady
who started this great war. Yeah, men spoke that way
back then. Union general and politician James Weaver said he

(02:19):
got active in the abolitionist movement after reading Uncle Tom's Cabin,
and he wasn't alone. Even the great nineteenth century civil
rights leader Frederick Douglas heavily promoted the book in his newspaper.
He said he was convinced of its social use and
also of Stowe's humanitarianism, but he also published criticism of

(02:41):
the novel. More radical abolitionists criticized her story, saying it's
stereotyped black people and was too sentimental not tough enough.
But at the end of the day, the book's stories
of the cruelty of slavery horrified enough people in the
North to push them toward abolition. On the other side,
white people in the South were furious when it was published.

(03:04):
Harriet was accused of slander. Some tried to censor the
book and even chased booksellers out of a number of
southern towns when they tried to sell it there Whereas
yet she got death threats and even a package sent
to her that contained a slave's severed ear. Well like
it or not, the book was a total sensation. People

(03:24):
in the South wrote dozens of answer books, and in
the North, books with the same storyline were written. Uncle
Tom's Cabin was turned into a play, Folks made products
to sell based on the story, and advertising using Uncle
Tom themes, as well as merchandising kicked into gear. All
this in the mid eighteen fifties. It was all about

(03:47):
seizing on the most passionate topic of the day and
making a buck off of it. Sound familiar, So what
happened to Harriet well again. By eighteen fifty seven, two
million copies of Uncle Tom's Cabin had sold a lot
of them in Europe. There weren't copyright laws over there,
so she got none of the European royalties. However, she

(04:08):
made a bundle by touring around Europe giving public lectures
about the book and the fight against slavery in the
US after the Civil War, Harriet bought a house in Jacksonville, Florida,
as a bit of an escape and as a place
to write, and she had taken up women's liberation as
a cause. She grew oranges there and she promoted Florida's

(04:29):
beauty to her northern fans, but she still had her
home in Hartford, Connecticut. When she was about seventy five
years old, things started to fall apart a little bit,
and eventually a really unusual thing happened to Harriet. Her
husband had just died and her health started to deteriorate.
It's now thought that she was developing Alzheimer's. Mark Twain

(04:52):
a neighbor in Hartford, Connecticut, wrote about Harriet in his autobiography.
He said her mind had decayed. She was a pathetic figure.
She wandered about all the day long in the care
of a strong irishwoman in our neighborhood. The doors were
always open in pleasant weather, and missus Stowe would walk
in at her own free will. She liked to surprise people,

(05:15):
so she would slip up behind a person who was
deep in dreams and offer a war whoop that would
make anybody jump out of their clothes. Meantime, she started
writing another book. Her family was amazed she was writing
page after page, even revising her work. But then one
of her friends read the manuscript, and it turns out

(05:39):
Harriet was writing Uncle Tom's Cabin all over again. She
thought she was writing it for the first time, and amazingly,
she made the same notes, the same revisions, and wrote
the same exact novel to the letter. Her family said
she worked on it till she was exhausted. She told
them it would be an exciting, brand new story of

(06:01):
the utmost importance. Harriet Beecher Stowe died in eighteen ninety
six at the age of eighty five. She never knew
she had already written the exact same book over forty
years earlier. Hope you like the Backstory with Patty Steele.

(06:22):
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Backstories a production of iHeartMedia, Premier Networks, the Elvis Durand Group,

(06:45):
and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is Doug Fraser. Our
writer Jake Kushner. We have new episodes every Tuesday and Friday.
Feel free to reach out to me with comments and
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on Facebook at Patty Steele. Thanks for listening to the
Backstory with Patty Steele. The pieces of history you didn't

(07:06):
know you needed to know.