Today I came across this story and it was so interesting. I've tried to validate this story on line, but while I can't find anything exactly like this story in "The Circle Maker", I have found lots of interesting facts about Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Hattie was born into the most distinguished family of clergymen in America. She was the seventh of 13 children. Her father, Lyman Beecher, was considered the greatest orator in America. That mantle was passed down to her brother, Henry Ward Beecher. But it was Hattie who would change the course of American history.
One Sunday morning in 1851, during a Communion service, Harriet fell into a trance not unlike the trance that Peter had on the rooftop of Simon the tanner's house. In her trance, Hattie saw an old slave being beaten to death. The vision left her so shaken that she could hardly keep from weeping. She walked her children home from church and skipped lunch. She immediately started writing down the vision God had given her as words poured from her pen. When she ran out of paper, she found brown grocery paper and continued to write. When she finally stopped, and read what she wrote, she could hardly believe she had written it. It was nothing short of divine inspiration. Hattie said that God wrote the book; she just put the words on paper.
Before she wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin, in 1849, her sixth child (they had seven total), Samuel Charles, died in a cholera epidemic in Cincinnati. There was no medical intervention available at the time, and all Harriet could do was watch helplessly while her eighteen-month-old child was wracked by convulsions and lost all the fluids in his body. She later wrote that there were circumstances of such bitterness in the manner of Charley's death that she didn't think she could ever be reconciled for it unless his death allowed her to do some great good to others. She also wrote that losing Charley made her understand what a slave woman felt when her child was taken away at the auction block.
Isn't it amazing how I can feel a connection with a mom so long ago and ache with her over losing a child? Maybe I need to read Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Samuel Charles
Harriet Beecher Stowe
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