Gathering her family about her she read what
she had written. Her two little ones of ten and twelve years of age
broke into convulsions of weeping, one of them saying through is sobs,
"Oh, mamma! slavery is the most cruel thing in the world." Thus Uncle
Tom was ushered into the world, and it was, as we said at the
beginning, a cry, an immediate, an involuntary expression of deep,
impassioned feeling.
Twenty-five years afterwards Mrs. Stowe wrote in a letter to one of
her children, of this period of her life: "I well remember the winter
you were a baby and I was writing 'Uncle Tom's Cabin.' My heart was
bursting with the anguish excited by the cruelty and injustice our
nation was showing to the slave, and praying God to let me do a little
and to cause my cry for them to be heard. I remember many a night
weeping over you as you lay sleeping beside me, and I thought of the
slave mothers whose babes were torn from them."
It was not till the following April that the first chapter of the
story was finished and sent on to the "National Era" at Washington.
In July Mrs. Stowe wrote to Frederick Douglass the following letter,
which is given entire as the best possible introduction to the history
of the career of that memorable work, "Uncle Tom's Cabin."
BRUNSWICK, _July 9_, 1851. FREDERICK DOUGLASS, ESQ.:
_Sir_,---You may perhaps have noticed in your editorial readings
a series of articles that I am furnishing for the "Era" under the
title of "Uncle Tom's Cabin, or Life among the Lowly.
Pages:
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