"
The 7th of March, 1850, Daniel Webster made his celebrated speech, in
which he defended this compromise, and the abolitionists of the North
were filled with indignation, which found its most fitting expression
in Whittier's "Ichabod:"
"So fallen, so lost, the glory from his gray hairs gone."
. . .
"When honor dies the man is dead."
It was in the midst of this excitement that Mrs. Stowe, with her
children and her modest hopes for the future, arrived at the house of
her brother, Dr. Edward Beecher.
Dr. Beecher had been the intimate friend and supporter of Lovejoy, who
had been murdered by the slaveholders at Alton for publishing an anti-
slavery paper. His soul was stirred to its very depths by the
iniquitous law which was at this time being debated in Congress,--a
law which not only gave the slaveholder of the South the right to seek
out and bring back into slavery any colored person whom he claimed as
a slave, but commanded the people of the free States to assist in this
revolting business. The most frequent theme of conversation while Mrs.
Stowe was in Boston was this proposed law, and when she arrived in
Brunswick her soul was all on fire with indignation at this new
indignity and wrong about to be inflicted by the slave-power on the
innocent and defenseless.
After the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, letter after letter was
received by Mrs.
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