--MRS. STOWE'S JOURNEY TO BROOKLYN.--HER BROTHER'S
SUCCESS AS A MINISTER.--LETTERS FROM HARTFORD AND BOSTON.--ARRIVES IN
BRUNSWICK.--HISTORY OF THE SLAVERY AGITATION.--PRACTICAL WORKING OF
THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW.--MRS. EDWARD BEECHER'S LETTER TO MRS. STOWE
AND ITS EFFECT.--DOMESTIC TRIALS.--BEGINS TO WRITE "UNCLE TOM'S CABIN"
AS A SERIAL FOR THE "NATIONAL ERA."--LETTER TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS.--
"UNCLE TOM'S CABIN" A WORK OF RELIGIOUS EMOTION.
Early in the winter of 1849 Mrs. Stowe wrote in a private journal in
which she recorded thought and feeling concerning religious themes:
"It has been said that it takes a man to write the life of a man; that
is, there must be similarity of mind in the person who undertakes to
present the character of another. This is true, also, of reading and
understanding biography. A statesman and general would read the life
of Napoleon with the spirit and the understanding, while the
commonplace man plods through it as a task. The difference is that the
one, being of like mind and spirit with the subject of the biography,
is able to sympathize with him in all his thoughts and experiences,
and the other is not. The life of Henry Martyn would be tedious and
unintelligible to a mind like that of a Richelieu or a Mazarin. They
never experienced or saw or heard anything like it, and would be quite
at a loss where to place such a man in their mental categories.
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