"
The poet Longfellow wrote:--
I congratulate you most cordially upon the immense success and
influence of "Uncle Tom's Cabin." It is one of the greatest triumphs
recorded in literary history, to say nothing of the higher triumph of
its moral effect.
With great regard, and friendly remembrance to Mr. Stowe, I remain,
Yours most truly,
HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.
Whittier wrote to Garrison:--
"What a glorious work Harriet Beecher Stowe has wrought. Thanks for
the Fugitive Slave Law! Better would it be for slavery if that law had
never been enacted; for it gave occasion for 'Uncle Tom's Cabin.'"
Garrison wrote to Mrs. Stowe:--
"I estimate the value of anti-slavery writing by the abuse it brings.
Now all the defenders of slavery have let me alone and are abusing
you."
To Mrs. Stowe, Whittier wrote:--
Ten thousand thanks for thy immortal book. My young friend Mary Irving
(of the "Era") writes me that she has been reading it to some twenty
young ladies, daughters of Louisiana slaveholders, near New Orleans,
and amid the scenes described in it, and that they, with one accord,
pronounce it true.
Truly thy friend,
JOHN G. WHITTIER.
From Thomas Wentworth Higginson came the following:--
To have written at once the most powerful of contemporary fiction and
the most efficient of anti-slavery tracts is a double triumph in
literature and philanthropy, to which this country has heretofore seen
no parallel.
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