what did abraham lincoln say to harriet beecher stowe

Harriet Beecher Stowe was an anti-slavery activist and the author of Uncle Tom'southward Motel, a novel that did much to radicalize northerners against slavery. Harriet was the daughter, wife and sister of famous preachers. She criticized President Lincoln early in the Civil War, but changed her attitude after meeting with him in 1862.

Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote in her memoirs: "Probably no ruler e'er made a more profoundly and peculiarly Christian impression on the heed of the world than Lincoln. In his religious faith ii leading ideas were prominent from showtime to last – human being'southward helplessness, both as to strength and wisdom, and God's helpfulness in both."¹ She had become a Lincoln admirer, but she was not e'er so. Her son and grandson wrote: "Mrs. Stowe, like so many others at this time, had failed to grasp Lincoln's far-sighted statesmanship. 'Mr. Lincoln has been as well slow,' she said, speaking of what she chosen his 'Confiscation Pecker.' He should have done it sooner, and with an impulse….'"²

Stowe biographer Edward Wagenknecht wrote that Stowe "preferred to forget some things nearly her before mental attitude toward Lincoln. Her sketch of him in Men of Our Times was admiring without giving any proffer that she had been extremely critical of him until tardily in the war. The closes she comes is to say that 'there was a time when he pleased nobody.'" Wagenknecht wrote: "By September v, 1861, she was calling for firsthand emancipation past Presidential proclamation. She was furious when Lincoln overruled Frémont's liberating the slaves in captured territories and removed him from his command, and when the President said that his 'paramount object' was 'to save the Wedlock and…not either to relieve or destroy Slavery,' she produced a bitter parody by rewriting his statement as she thought Christ would have made information technology…"³

Biographer Constance Mayfield Rourke wrote that "she decided that Lincoln was 'too slow' and hastened to Washington to offering him advice. He seems to have received her gravely; after all he had been harassed past many evangels."⁴ Her son and grandson recalled: "Mrs. Stowe, in telling of her interview with Mr. Lincoln…dwelt specially on the rustic pleasantry with which that great man received her. She was introduced into a cosy room where the President had been seated before an open fire, for the day was damp and chilly. It was Mr. Seward who introduced her, and Mr. Lincoln rose awkwardly from his chair, saying, 'Why, Mrs. Stowe, right glad to see you!' And so with a humorous twinkle in his eye, he said, 'Then you're the trivial adult female who wrote the volume that fabricated this great war! Sit downward, please,' he added, every bit he seated himself once more than before the fire, meditatively warming his immense hands over the smouldering embers by commencement extending the palms, and then turning his wrists so that the grateful warmth reached the backs of his easily. The first thing he said was, 'I practise love an open fire. I always had one to home.' Mrs. Stowe especially remarked on the expression 'to home.' 'Mr. Lincoln,' said Mrs. Stowe, "I desire to ask you about your views on emancipation.' Information technology was on that subject that the conversation turned."^five

Rourke continued: "On she rushed, regardless of Lincolns, constantly nether foot, it would seem, enervating special privileges for her son Frederick, who had enlisted, insisting that she be kept in touch with the opinions and decisions and movements of cabinet officers and major officials."^{half dozen}

Harriet Beecher Stowe herself wrote: "Lincoln was a strong man, only his strength was of a peculiar kind; information technology was non ambitious so much as passive, and amid passive things it was like the strength non so much of a stone buttress as of a wire cable. It was strength swaying to every influence, yielding on this side and on that to popular needs, yet tenaciously and inflexibly leap to behave its great end. Probably by no other kind of strength could our national send accept been fatigued safely through and then dreadful a channel."⁷

Novelist Stowe wrote: "He saw through other men who thought all the while they were instructing or enlightening him, with a sort of dry, amused patience. He allowed the virtually tedious talker to prose to him, the nigh shallow and inflated to suggest him, reserving only to himself the right to a quiet chuckle far downward in the depths of his private consciousness. Thus all sorts of men and all sorts of deputations saw him, had their talks, bestowed on him al their tediousness, and gave him the benefit of their opinions; not a creature was denied admission."⁸

Regarding the "footling woman" quote attributed to the president, Lincoln scholar Daniel R. Vollaro wrote that information technology is likely that the Stowe quote was invented by the family unit at a later date and no contemporary evidence of it.^nine Don. E. Fehrenbacher wrote that the quote is "unverified family tradition."¹⁰

Mrs. Stowe was the girl of the Rev. Lyman Beecher and the brother of Henry War Beecher. Her novels include Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp, Oldtown Folks and The Pearl of Orr's Isle.

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Footnotes

1. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Men of Our Times; or Leading Patriots of the Mean solar day, p. 82.
2. Charles Edward Stowe and Lyman Beecher Stowe, Harriet Beecher Stowe: The Story of Her Life, p. 203.
3. Edward Wagenknecht, Harriet Beecher Stowe: The Known and the Unknown, p. 185.
4. Constance Mayfield Rourke, Trumpets of Jubilee, p. 124.
5. Charles Edward Stowe and Lyman Beecher Stowe, Harriet Beecher Stowe: The Story of Her Life, pp. 202-203.
6. Constance Mayfield Rourke, Trumpets of Jubilee, pp. 124-125.
7. Stowe, Men of Our Times; or Leading Patriots of the Day, p. 74
8. Stowe, Men of Our Times; or Leading Patriots of the Mean solar day, p. 74
9. Daniel R. Vollaro, "Lincoln, Stowe, and the 'Little Woman/Great War' Story: The Making, and Breaking of a Great American Anecdote, Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association, Winter 2009, p. 18-34.
10. Don E. Fehrenbacher, Recollected Words of Abraham Lincoln, p. 428.

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Source: http://www.mrlincolnswhitehouse.org/residents-visitors/notable-visitors/notable-visitors-harriet-beecher-stowe-1811-1896/

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