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Chapter 13: Anti-slavery women
My father was a subscriber to the
National Era, the Anti-Slavery weekly that was published in
Washington City before the war by
Dr. Gamaliel Bailey.
Being the youngest member of the family, I usually went to the post-office for the paper on the day of its weekly arrival.
One day I brought it home and handed it to my father, who, as the day was warm, was seated outside of the house.
He was soon apparently very much absorbed in his reading.
A call for dinner was sounded, but he paid no attention to it. The meal was delayed a little while and then the call was repeated, but with the same result.
At last the meal proceeded without my father's presence, he coming in at the close and swinging the paper in his hand.
His explanation, by way of apology, was that he had become very much interested in the opening installment of a story that was begun in the
Era, and which he declared would make a sensation.
“It will make a renovation,” he repeated several times.
That story, it is almost needless to say, was
Uncle Tom's Cabin, and it is altogether needless to say that it fully accomplished my father's prediction as to its sensational effects.
Since the appearance of