Books: The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe

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Lastly, the great decisive measure of the war has appeared,--_the
President's Proclamation of Emancipation_.

This also has been much misunderstood and misrepresented in England.
It has been said to mean virtually this: Be loyal and you shall keep
your slaves; rebel and they shall be free. But let us remember what we
have just seen of the purpose and meaning of the Union to which the
rebellious States are invited back. It is to a Union which has
abolished slavery in the District of Columbia, and interdicted slavery
in the Territories; which vigorously represses the slave-trade, and
hangs the convicted slaver as a pirate; which necessitates
emancipation by denying expansion to slavery, and facilitates it by
the offer of compensation. Any slaveholding States which should return
to such a Union might fairly be supposed to return with the purpose of
peaceable emancipation. The President's Proclamation simply means
this: Come in and emancipate peaceably with compensation; stay out and
I emancipate, nor will I protect you from the consequences.

Will our sisters in England feel no heartbeat at that event? Is it not
one of the predicted voices of the latter day, saying under the whole
heavens, "It is done; the kingdoms of this world are become the
kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ"?

And now, sisters of England, in this solemn, expectant hour, let us
speak to you of one thing which fills our hearts with pain and
solicitude. It is an unaccountable fact, and one which we entreat you
seriously to ponder, that the party which has brought the cause of
freedom thus far on its way, during the past eventful year, has found
little or no support in England. Sadder than this, the party which
makes slavery the chief corner-stone of its edifice finds in England
its strongest defenders.

The voices that have spoken for us who contend for liberty have been
few and scattering. God forbid that we should forget those few noble
voices, so sadly exceptional in the general outcry against us! They
are, alas! too few to be easily forgotten. False statements have
blinded the minds of your community, and turned the most generous
sentiments of the British heart against us. The North are fighting for
supremacy and the South for independence, has been the voice.
Independence? for what? to do what? To prove the doctrine that all men
are _not_ equal; to establish the doctrine that the white may
enslave the negro!

In the beginning of our struggle, the voices that reached us across
the water said: "If we were only sure you were fighting for the
abolition of slavery, we should not dare to say whither our sympathies
for your cause might not carry us." Such, as we heard, were the words
of the honored and religious nobleman who draughted this very letter
which you signed and sent us, and to which we are now replying.

When these words reached us we said: "We can wait; our friends in
England will soon see whither this conflict is tending." A year and a
half have passed; step after step has been taken for liberty; chain
after chain has fallen, till the march of our armies is choked and
clogged by the glad flocking of emancipated slaves; the day of final
emancipation is set; the border States begin to move in voluntary
consent; universal freedom for all dawns like the sun in the distant
horizon, and still no voice from England. No voice? Yes, we have heard
on the high seas the voice of a war-steamer, built for a man-stealing
Confederacy, with English gold, in an English dockyard, going out of
an English harbor, manned by English sailors, with the full knowledge
of English government officers, in defiance of the Queen's
proclamation of neutrality! So far has English sympathy overflowed. We
have heard of other steamers, iron-clad, designed to furnish to a
slavery-defending Confederacy their only lack,--a navy for the high
seas. We have heard that the British Evangelical Alliance refuses to
express sympathy with the liberating party, when requested to do so by
the French Evangelical Alliance. We find in English religious
newspapers all those sad degrees in the downward-sliding scale of
defending and apologizing for slaveholders and slave-holding, with
which we have so many years contended in our own country. We find the
President's Proclamation of Emancipation spoken of in those papers
only as an incitement to servile insurrection. Nay, more,--we find in
your papers, from thoughtful men, the admission of the rapid decline
of anti-slavery sentiments in England.

This very day the writer of this has been present at a solemn
religious festival in the national capital, given at the home of a
portion of those fugitive slaves who have fled to our lines for
protection,--who, under the shadow of our flag, find sympathy and
succor. The national day of thanksgiving was there kept by over a
thousand redeemed slaves, and for whom Christian charity had spread an
ample repast. Our sisters, we wish _you_ could have witnessed the
scene. We wish you could have heard the prayer of a blind old negro,
called among his fellows John the Baptist, when in touching broken
English he poured forth his thanksgivings. We wish you could have
heard the sound of that strange rhythmical chant which is now
forbidden to be sung on Southern plantations,--the psalm of this
modern exodus,--which combines the barbaric fire of the Marseillaise
with the religious fervor of the old Hebrew prophet:--

"Oh, go down, Moses,
Way down into Egypt's land!
Tell King Pharaoh
To let my people go!
Stand away dere,
Stand away dere,
And let my people go!"

As we were leaving, an aged woman came and lifted up her hands in
blessing. "Bressed be de Lord dat brought me to see dis first happy
day of my life! Bressed be de Lord!" In all England is there no Amen?

We have been shocked and saddened by the question asked in an
association of Congregational ministers in England, the very blood
relations of the liberty-loving Puritans,--"Why does not the North let
the South go?"

What! give up the point of emancipation for these four million slaves?
Turn our backs on them, and leave them to their fate? What! leave our
white brothers to run a career of oppression and robbery, that, as
sure as there is a God that ruleth in the armies of heaven, will bring
down a day of wrath and doom? Remember that wishing success to this
slavery-establishing effort is only wishing to the sons and daughters
of the South all the curses that God has written against oppression.
_Mark our words!_ If we succeed, the children of these very men
who are now fighting us will rise up to call us blessed. Just as
surely as there is a God who governs in the world, so surely all the
laws of national prosperity follow in the train of equity; and if we
succeed, we shall have delivered the children's children of our
misguided brethren from the wages of sin, which is always and
everywhere death.

And now, sisters of England, think it not strange if we bring back the
words of your letter, not in bitterness, but in deepest sadness, and
lay them down at your door. We say to you, Sisters, you have spoken
well; we have heard you; we have heeded; we have striven in the cause,
even unto death. We have sealed our devotion by desolate hearth and
darkened homestead,--by the blood of sons, husbands, and brothers. In
many of our dwellings the very light of our lives has gone out; and
yet we accept the life-long darkness as our own part in this great and
awful expiation, by which the bonds of wickedness shall be loosed, and
abiding peace established, on the foundation of righteousness.
Sisters, what have _you_ done, and what do you mean to do?

We appeal to you as sisters, as wives, and as mothers, to raise your
voices to your fellow-citizens, and your prayers to God for the
removal of this affliction and disgrace from the Christian world.

In behalf of many thousands of American women.

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.

WASHINGTON, _November_ 27, 1862.

The publication of this reply elicited the following interesting
letter from John Bright:--

ROCHDALE, _March_ 9, 1863.

DEAR MRS. STOWE,--I received your kind note with real pleasure, and
felt it very good of you to send me a copy of the "Atlantic Monthly"
with your noble letter to the women of England. I read every word of
it with an intense interest, and I am quite sure that its effect upon
opinion here has been marked and beneficial. It has covered some with
shame, and it has compelled many to think, and it has stimulated not a
few to act. Before this reaches you, you will have seen what large and
earnest meetings have been held in all our towns in favor of abolition
and the North. No town has a building large enough to contain those
who come to listen, to applaud, and to vote in favor of freedom and
the Union. The effect of this is evident on our newspapers and on the
tone of Parliament, where now nobody says a word in favor of
recognition, or mediation, or any such thing.

The need and duty of England is admitted to be a strict neutrality,
but the feeling of the millions of her people is one of friendliness
to the United States and its government. It would cause universal
rejoicing, among all but a limited circle of aristocracy and
commercially rich and corrupt, to hear that the Northern forces had
taken Vicksburg on the great river, and Charleston on the Atlantic,
and that the neck of the conspiracy was utterly broken.

I hope your people may have strength and virtue to win the great cause
intrusted to them, but it is fearful to contemplate the amount of the
depravity in the North engendered by the long power of slavery. New
England is far ahead of the States as a whole,--too instructed and too
moral; but still I will hope that she will bear the nation through
this appalling danger.

I well remember the evening at Rome and our conversation. You lamented
the election of Buchanan. You judged him with a more unfriendly but a
more correct eye than mine. He turned out more incapable and less
honest than I hoped for. And I think I was right in saying that your
party was not then sufficiently consolidated to enable it to maintain
its policy in the execution, even had Frémont been elected. As it is
now, six years later, the North but falteringly supports the policy of
the government, though impelled by the force of events which then you
did not dream of. President Lincoln has lived half his troubled reign.
In the coming half I hope he may see land; surely slavery will be so
broken up that nothing can restore and renew it; and, slavery once
fairly gone, I know not how all your States can long be kept asunder.

Believe me very sincerely yours,

JOHN BRIGHT.

It also called forth from Archbishop Whately the following letter:--

PALACE, DUBLIN, _January_, 1863.

DEAR MADAM,--In acknowledging your letter and pamphlet, I take the
opportunity of laying before you what I collect to be the prevailing
sentiments here on American affairs. Of course there is a great
variety of opinion, as may be expected in a country like ours. Some
few sympathize with the Northerns, and some few with the Southerns,
but far the greater portion sympathize with neither completely, but
lament that each party should be making so much greater an expenditure
of life and property than can be compensated for by any advantage they
can dream of obtaining.

Those who are the least favorable to the Northerns are not so from any
approbation of slavery, but from not understanding that the war is
waged in the cause of abolition. "It was waged," they say, "ostensibly
for the restoration of the Union," and in attestation of this, they
refer to the proclamation which announced the confiscation of slaves
that were the property of secessionists, while those who adhered to
the Federal cause should be exempt from such confiscation, which, they
say, did not savor much of zeal for abolition. And. if the other
object--the restoration of the Union--could be accomplished, which
they all regard as hopeless, they do not understand how it will tend
to the abolition of slavery. On the contrary, "if," say they, "the
separation had been allowed to take place peaceably, the Northerns
might, as _we_ do, have proclaimed freedom to every slave who set
foot on their territory; which would have been a great check to
slavery, and especially to any cruel treatment of slaves." Many who
have a great dislike to slavery yet hold that the Southerns had at
least as much right to secede as the Americans had originally to
revolt from Great Britain. And there are many who think that,
considering the dreadful distress we have suffered from the cotton
famine, we have shown great forbearance in withstanding the temptation
of recognizing the Southern States and to break the blockade.

Then, again, there are some who are provoked at the incessant railing
at England, and threats of an invasion of Canada, which are poured
forth in some of the American papers.

There are many, also, who consider that the present state of things
cannot continue much longer if the Confederates continue to hold their
own, as they have done hitherto; and that a people who shall have
maintained their independence for two or three years will be
recognized by the principal European powers. Such appears to have been
the procedure of the European powers in all similar cases, such as the
revolt of the Anglo-American and Spanish-American colonies, of the
Haytians and the Belgians. In these and other like cases, the rule
practically adopted seems to have been to recognize the revolters, not
at once, but after a reasonable time had been allowed to see whether
they could maintain their independence; and this without being
understood to have pronounced any decision either way as to the
justice of the cause.

Moreover, there are many who say that the negroes and people of color
are far from being kindly or justly treated in the Northern States. An
emancipated slave, at any rate, has not received good training for
earning his bread by the wages of labor; and if, in addition to this
and his being treated as an outcast, he is excluded, as it is said,
from many employments, by the refusal of white laborers to work along
with him, he will have gained little by taking refuge in the Northern
States.

I have now laid before you the views which I conceive to be most
prevalent among us, and for which I am not myself responsible.

For the safe and effectual emancipation of slaves, I myself consider
there is no plan so good as the gradual one which was long ago
suggested by Bishop Hinds. What he recommended was an _ad valorem
tax_ upon slaves,--the value to be fixed by the owner, with an
option to government to purchase at that price. Thus the slaves would
be a burden to the master, and those the most so who should be the
most valuable, as being the most intelligent and steady, and therefore
the best qualified for freedom; and it would be his interest to train
his slaves to be free laborers, and to emancipate them, one by one, as
speedily as he could with safety. I fear, however, that the time is
gone by for trying this experiment in America.

With best wishes for the new year, believe me

Yours faithfully,

Rd. Whately.

Among the many letters written from this side of the Atlantic
regarding the reply, was one from Nathaniel Hawthorne, in which he
says:--

I read with great pleasure your article in the last "Atlantic." If
anything could make John Bull blush, I should think it might be that;
but he is a hardened and villainous hypocrite. I always felt that he
cared nothing for or against slavery, except as it gave him a vantage-
ground on which to parade his own virtue and sneer at our iniquity.

With best regards from Mrs. Hawthorne and myself to yourself and
family, sincerely yours,

NATH'L HAWTHORNE.

CHAPTER XVII.

FLORIDA, 1865-1869.

LETTER TO DUCHESS OF ARGYLL.--MRS. STOWE DESIRES TO HAVE A HOME AT THE
SOUTH.--FLORIDA THE BEST FIELD FOR DOING GOOD.--SHE BUYS A PLACE AT
MANDARIN.--A CHARMING WINTER RESIDENCE.--"PALMETTO LEAVES."--EASTER
SUNDAY AT MANDARIN.--CORRESPONDENCE WITH DR. HOLMES.--"POGANUC
PEOPLE."--RECEPTIONS IN NEW ORLEANS AND TALLAHASSEE.--LAST WINTER AT
MANDARIN.

In 1866, the terrible conflict between the North and South having
ended, Mrs. Stowe wrote the following letter to the Duchess of
Argyll:--

HARTFORD, _February_ 19, 1866.

MY DEAR FRIEND,--Your letter was a real spring of comfort to me,
bringing refreshingly the pleasant library at Inverary and the lovely
days I spent there.

I am grieved at what you say of your dear mother's health. I showed
your letter to Mrs. Perkins, and we both agreed in saying that
_we_ should like for a time to fill the place of maid to her, as
doubtless you all feel, too. I should so love to be with her, to read
to her, and talk to her! and oh, there is so much that would cheer and
comfort a noble heart like hers that we could talk about. Oh, my
friend, when I think of what has been done these last few years, and
of what is now doing, I am lost in amazement. I have just, by way of
realizing it to myself, been reading "Uncle Tom's Cabin" again, and
when I read that book, scarred and seared and burned into with the
memories of an anguish and horror that can never be forgotten, and
think it is all over now, all past, and that now the questions debated
are simply of more or less time before granting legal suffrage to
those who so lately were held only as articles of merchandise,--when
this comes over me I think no private or individual sorrow can ever
make me wholly without comfort. If my faith in God's presence and
real, living power in the affairs of men ever grows dim, this makes it
impossible to doubt.

I have just had a sweet and lovely Christian letter from Garrison,
whose beautiful composure and thankfulness in his hour of victory are
as remarkable as his wonderful courage in the day of moral battle. His
note ends with the words, "And who but God is to be glorified?"
Garrison's attitude is far more exalted than that of Wendell Phillips.
He acknowledges the great deed done. He suspends his "Liberator" with
words of devout thanksgiving, and devotes himself unobtrusively to the
work yet to be accomplished for the freedmen; while Phillips seems
resolved to ignore the mighty work that has been done, because of the
inevitable shortcomings and imperfections that beset it still. We have
a Congress of splendid men,--men of stalwart principle and
determination. We have a President [Footnote: Andrew Johnson] honestly
seeking to do right; and if he fails in knowing just what right is, it
is because he is a man born and reared in a slave State, and acted on
by many influences which we cannot rightly estimate unless we were in
his place. My brother Henry has talked with him earnestly and
confidentially, and has faith in him as an earnest, good man seeking
to do right. Henry takes the ground that it is unwise and impolitic to
endeavor to force negro suffrage on the South at the point of the
bayonet. His policy would be, to hold over the negro the protection of
our Freedman's Bureau until the great laws of free labor shall begin
to draw the master and servant together; to endeavor to soothe and
conciliate, and win to act with us, a party composed of the really
good men at the South.

For this reason he has always advocated lenity of measures towards
them. He wants to get them into a state in which the moral influence
of the North can act upon them beneficially, and to get such a state
of things that there will be a party _at the South_ to protect
the negro.

Charles Sumner is looking simply at the abstract _right_ of the
thing. Henry looks at actual probabilities. We all know that the state
of society at the South is such that laws are a very inadequate
protection even to white men. Southern elections always have been
scenes of mob violence _when only white men voted_.

Multitudes of lives have been lost at the polls in this way, and if
against their will negro suffrage was forced upon them, I do not see
how any one in their senses can expect anything less than an immediate
war of races.

If negro suffrage were required as a condition of acquiring political
position, there is no doubt the slave States would grant it; grant it
nominally, because they would know that the grant never could or would
become an actual realization. And what would then be gained for the
negro?

I am sorry that people cannot differ on such great and perplexing
public questions without impugning each other's motives. Henry has
been called a backslider because of the lenity of his counsels, but I
cannot but think it is the Spirit of Christ that influences him.
Garrison has been in the same way spoken of as a deserter, because he
says that a work that _is_ done shall be called done, and because
he would not keep up an anti-slavery society when slavery is
abolished; and I think our President is much injured by the abuse that
is heaped on him, and the selfish and unworthy motives that are
ascribed to him by those who seem determined to allow to nobody an
honest, unselfish difference in judgment from their own.

Henry has often spoken of you and your duke as pleasant memories in a
scene of almost superhuman labor and excitement. He often said to me:
"When this is all over,--when we have won the victory,--_then_ I
will write to the duchess." But when it was over and the flag raised
again at Sumter his arm was smitten down with the news of our
President's death! We all appreciate your noble and true sympathy
through the dark hour of our national trial. You and yours are almost
the only friends we now have left in England. You cannot know what it
was, unless you could imagine your own country to be in danger of
death, extinction of nationality. _That_, dear friend, is an
experience which shows us what we are and what we can feel. I am glad
to hear that we may hope to see your son in this country. I fear so
many pleasant calls will beset his path that we cannot hope for a
moment, but it would give us _all_ the greatest pleasure to see
him here. Our dull, prosy, commonplace, though good old Hartford could
offer few attractions compared with Boston or New York, and yet I hope
he will not leave us out altogether if he comes among us. God bless
him! You are very happy indeed in being permitted to keep all your
dear ones and see them growing up.

I want to ask a favor. Do you have, as we do, _cartes de visite_?
If you have, and could send me one of yourself and the duke and of
Lady Edith and your eldest son, I should be so very glad to see how
you are looking now; and the dear mother, too, I should so like to see
how she looks. It seems almost like a dream to look back to those
pleasant days. I am glad to see you still keep some memories of our
goings on. Georgie's marriage is a very happy one to us. They live in
Stockbridge, the loveliest part of Massachusetts, and her husband is a
most devoted pastor, and gives all his time and property to the great
work which he has embraced, purely for the love of it. My other
daughters are with me, and my son, Captain Stowe, who has come with
weakened health through our struggle, suffering constantly from the
effects of a wound in his head received at Gettysburg, which makes his
returning to his studies a hard struggle. My husband is in better
health since he resigned his professorship, and desires his most
sincere regards to yourself and the duke, and his profound veneration
to your mother. Sister Mary also desires to be remembered to you, as
do also my daughters. Please tell me a little in your next of Lady
Edith; she must be very lovely now.

I am, with sincerest affection, ever yours,

H. B. STOWE.

Soon after the close of the war Mrs. Stowe conceived the idea of
making for herself and her family a winter home in the South, where
she might escape the rigors of Northern winters, and where her
afflicted son Frederick might enjoy an out-of-door life throughout the
year. She was also most anxious to do her share towards educating and
leading to a higher life those colored people whom she had helped so
largely to set free, and who were still in the state of profound
ignorance imposed by slavery. In writing of her hopes and plans to her
brother Charles Beecher, in 1866, she says:--

"My plan of going to Florida, as it lies in my mind, is not in any
sense a mere worldly enterprise. I have for many years had a longing
to be more immediately doing Christ's work on earth. My heart is with
that poor people whose cause in words I have tried to plead, and who
now, ignorant and docile, are just in that formative stage in which
whoever seizes has them.

"Corrupt politicians are already beginning to speculate on them as
possible capital for their schemes, and to fill their poor heads with
all sorts of vagaries. Florida is the State into which they have, more
than anywhere else, been pouring. Emigration is positively and
decidedly setting that way; but as yet it is mere worldly emigration,
with the hope of making money, nothing more.

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