Upon meeting the diminutive writer Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) in 1862, President Lincoln reportedly said, “So, you are the little woman who made the big war.” Her landmark social novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, might not have caused the Civil War, but it contributed significantly to the slavery debate.
Harriet’s father, Lyman Beecher, was an influential Puritan preacher, left to raise eight children when Harriet’s mom died when she was five. Harriet came to faith at age thirteen in response to one of her father’s sermons. Lyman moved the family to Cincinnati when he became president of Lane Seminary. Harriet was impacted by listening to seminary debates over slavery and witnessing dehumanizing slave auctions along the Ohio River. The death of one of Harriet’s sons gave her empathy for the pain enslaved mothers felt when their children were sold and separated from them. Harriet said of her writing, “My vocation is to preach on paper.” She originally published Uncle Tom’s Cabin in weekly installments for an anti-slavery journal. When it was compiled in book form, it sold three hundred thousand copies in the first year alone. When opponents dismissed her work as fictional, she published documents and testimonials in a sequel, A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, to validate her story.
Harriet wrote of prayer, “Prayer is a long rope with a strong hold.” An early riser, Harriet used to go on walks at 4:30 in the morning “to ponder the things of God.” She wrote the hymn “Still, Still with Thee” in 1853, reflecting on her experience of praying at the break of dawn. The hymn opens and closes with the assurance, “I am with Thee.”