Yours respectfully and gratefully,
T. W. HIGGINSON.
A few days after the publication of the book, Mrs. Stowe, writing from
Boston to her husband in Brunswick, says: "I have been in such a whirl
ever since I have been here. I found business prosperous. Jewett
animated. He has been to Washington and conversed with all the leading
senators, Northern and Southern. Seward told him it was the greatest
book of the times, or something of that sort, and he and Sumner went
around with him to recommend it to Southern men and get them to read
it."
It is true that with these congratulatory and commendatory letters
came hosts of others, threatening and insulting, from the Haleys and
Legrees of the country.
Of them Mrs. Stowe said: "They were so curiously compounded of
blasphemy, cruelty, and obscenity, that their like could only be
expressed by John Bunyan's account of the speech of Apollyon: 'He
spake as a dragon.'"
A correspondent of the "National Era" wrote: "'Uncle Tom's Cabin' is
denounced by time-serving preachers as a meretricious work. Will you
not come out in defense of it and roll back the tide of vituperation?"
To this the editor answered: "We should as soon think of coming out in
defense of Shakespeare."
Several attempts were made in the South to write books controverting
"Uncle Tom's Cabin," and showing a much brighter side of the slavery
question, but they all fell flat and were left unread.
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