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Litchfield, Conn. (Connecticut, United States) (search for this): chapter 9
ncle Tom's cabin. No American novel has had so curious a history and so great or so immediate an influence in this country and in Europe. In spite of all that has been written about it, its author's purpose is still widely misunderstood, particularly in the South, and the controversy over this one epoch-making novel has tended to obscure the literary reputation which Mrs. Stowe won by her other books. Harriet Beecher, the daughter and the sister of famous clergymen, was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, in 1811. For seventeen years, from 1832 to 1849, she lived in the border city of Cincinnati, within sight of slave territory, and in daily contact with victims of the slave system. While her sympathies, like those of her father Lyman Beecher, were anti-slavery, she was not an Abolitionist in the Garrisonian sense of that word. At twenty-five she had married a widowed professor, Calvin Stowe, to whom she bore many children. She had written a few sketches of New England life, an
Brunswick, Me. (Maine, United States) (search for this): chapter 9
dowed professor, Calvin Stowe, to whom she bore many children. She had written a few sketches of New England life, and her family thought her a woman of genius. Such was the situation in the winter of 1849-1850, when the Stowes migrated to Brunswick, Maine, where the husband had been appointed to a chair at Bowdoin. Pitiably poor, and distracted by household cares which she had to face singlehandedfor the Professor was a feckless body --Mrs. Stowe nevertheless could not be indifferent to the nite North and South. But the distinctly Christian and fraternal intention of the book was swiftly forgotten in the storm of controversy that followed its appearance. It had been written hastily, fervidly, in the intervals of domestic toil at Brunswick, had been printed as a serial in The national era without attracting much attention, and was issued in book form in March, 1852. Its sudden and amazing success was not confined to this country. The story ran in three Paris newspapers at once
United States (United States) (search for this): chapter 9
s that this problem of national integration meets peculiar obstacles in the United States. Divergencies of race, tradition, and social theory, and clashing interest820 until the end of the Civil War, it was the chief political issue of the United States. The aim of the present chapter is to show how the theme of Union and Libenes of whose voice became for a while a part of the political system of the United States. Union and Liberty were the master-passions of Clay's life, but the greateservative, constructive. His lifelong antagonist Calhoun declared that The United States are not a nation. Webster, in opposition to this theory of a confederationtes, devoted his superb talents to the demonstration of the thesis that the United States is, not are. Thus he came to be known as the typical expounder of the Cons when Lincoln had found time to study out the constitutional history of the United States, Herndon expressed the opinion that it was when Lincoln was lying on his ba
Oriental (Oklahoma, United States) (search for this): chapter 9
s, masterly political theorizing can still be studied in speeches that have lost little of their effectiveness through the lapse of time. The years have dealt roughly with Edward Everett, once thought to be the pattern of oratorical gifts and graces. In commemorative oratory, indeed, he ranked with Webster, but the dust is settling upon his learned and ornate pages. Rufus Choate, another conservative Whig in politics, and a leader, like Wirt and Pinkney, at the bar, had an exotic, almost Oriental fancy, a gorgeousness of diction, and an intensity of emotion unrivaled among his contemporaries. His Dartmouth College eulogy of Webster in 1853 shows him at his best. The Anti-Slavery orators, on the other hand, had the advantage of a specific moral issue in which they led the attack. Wendell Phillips was the most polished, the most consummate in his air of informality, and his example did much to puncture the American tradition of high-flown oratory. He was an expert in virulent den
Shelby (search for this): chapter 9
elf is a bit too good to be true, and readers no longer weep over the death of little Eva-nor, for that matter, over the death of Dickens's little Nell. There is some melodrama, some religiosity, and there are some absurd recognition scenes at the dose. Nevertheless with an instinctive genius which Zola would have envied, Mrs. Stowe embodies in men and women the vast and ominous system of slavery. All the tragic forces of necessity, blindness, sacrifice, and retribution are here: neither Shelby, nor Eliza, nor the tall Kentuckian who aids her, nor John Bird, nor Uncle Tom himself in the final act of his drama, can help himself. For good or evil they are the products and results of the system; and yet they have and they give the illusion of volition. Mrs. Stowe lived to write many another novel and short story, among them Dred, the Minister's Wooing, Oldtown Folks, Oldtown fireside stories. In the local short story she deserves the honors due to one of the pioneers, and her kee
Saxon (search for this): chapter 9
e world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time; and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity, and the other the divine right of kings. For this representative Anglo-Saxon man, developed under purely American conditions, maturing slowly, keeping close to facts, dying, like the old English saint, while he was still learning, had none of the typical hardness and selfishness of the Anglo-Saxon. A brooder and idealistSaxon. A brooder and idealist, he was one of those prophetic souls of the wide world dreaming on things to come, with sympathies and imagination that reached out beyond the immediate urgencies of his race and nation to comprehend the universal task and discipline of the sons of men. In true fraternity and democracy this Westerner was not only far in advance of his own day, but he is also far in advance of ours which raises statues to his memory. Yet he was used to loneliness and to the long view, and even across the welt
John Bird (search for this): chapter 9
er the death of little Eva-nor, for that matter, over the death of Dickens's little Nell. There is some melodrama, some religiosity, and there are some absurd recognition scenes at the dose. Nevertheless with an instinctive genius which Zola would have envied, Mrs. Stowe embodies in men and women the vast and ominous system of slavery. All the tragic forces of necessity, blindness, sacrifice, and retribution are here: neither Shelby, nor Eliza, nor the tall Kentuckian who aids her, nor John Bird, nor Uncle Tom himself in the final act of his drama, can help himself. For good or evil they are the products and results of the system; and yet they have and they give the illusion of volition. Mrs. Stowe lived to write many another novel and short story, among them Dred, the Minister's Wooing, Oldtown Folks, Oldtown fireside stories. In the local short story she deserves the honors due to one of the pioneers, and her keen affectionate observation, her humor, and her humanity, would
Thomas Carlyle (search for this): chapter 9
evelopment of political thought. What were the secrets of that power that held Webster's hearers literally spellbound, and made the North think of him, after that alienation of 1850, as a fallen angel? No one can say fully, for we touch here the mysteries of personality and of the spoken word. But enough survives from the Webster legend, from his correspondence and political and legal oratory, to bring us into the presence of a superman. The dark Titan face, painted by such masters as Carlyle, Hawthorne, and Emerson; the magical voice, remembered now but by a few old men; the bodily presence, with its leonine suggestion of sleepy power only half put forth-these aided Webster to awe men or allure them into personal idolatry. Yet outside of New England he was admired rather than loved. There is still universal recognition of the mental capacity of this foremost lawyer and foremost statesman of his time. He was unsurpassed in his skill for direct, simple, limpid statement; but h
Edward Everett Hale (search for this): chapter 9
en far more magnificent republican poetry than ours. The passion for freedom has been very real upon this side of the Atlantic; it pulsed in the local loyalty of the men who sang Dixie as well as in their antagonists who chanted John Brown's body and The battle Hymn of the Republic; but this passion has not yet lifted and ennobled any notable mass of American verse. Even the sentiment of union was more adequately voiced in editorials and sermons and orations, even in a short story — Edward Everett Hale's Man without a country--than by most of the poets who attempted to glorify that theme. Nevertheless the verse of these thirty years is rich in provincial and sectional loyalties. It has earnestness and pathos. We have, indeed, no adequate national anthem, even yet, for neither the words nor the music of The star-spangled banner fully express what we feel while we are trying to sing it, as the Marseillaise, for example, does express the very spirit of revolutionary republicanism.
Samuel Adams (search for this): chapter 9
, an American defect. We cannot argue that question adequately here. It is sufficient to say that in the pioneer stages of our existence oratory was necessary as a stimulus to communal thought and feeling. The speeches of Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams were as essential to our winning independence as the sessions of statesmen and the armed conflicts in the field. And in that new West which came so swiftly and dramatically into existence at the close of the Revolution, the orator came to be limpid statement; but he could rise at will to a high Roman stateliness of diction, a splendid sonorousness of cadence. His greatest public appearances were in the Dartmouth College Case before the Supreme Court, the Plymouth, Bunker Hill, and Adams-Jefferson commemorative orations, the Reply to Hayne, and the Seventh of March speeches in the Senate. Though he exhibited in his private life something of the prodigal recklessness of the pioneer, his mental operations were conservative, constr
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