Stowe in Her Own Time: A Biographical Chronicle of Her Life, Drawn from Recollections, Interviews, and Memoirs by Family, F

[Stowe in Liverpool, 13 April 1853]

M [102] [Stowe in Liverpool, 13 April 1853] Anonymous On 1 April 1853, Stowe, her husband Calvin, her brother Charles, her sisterin -law Sarah Buckingham Beecher, and Sarah’s brother William and son George sailed for Liverpool, England, the first stop on a tour of Great Britain and Europe. Stowe was the triumphant author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, expressly invited to England to receive an antislavery petition, “An Affectionate and Christian Address of Many Thousands of Women of Great Britain and Ireland to Their Sisters the Women of the United States of America,” signed by over half a million women, and to attend a series of antislavery events. Throughout the journey, Stowe and the others kept journals and sent frequent letters home to family members and friends to record their impressions of their trip. When Stowe returned to the United States, she assembled her travel letters and published them in two volumes, Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands (1854). Calvin Stowe wrote the introduction for the book, which was followed by several accounts from unnamed newspapers designed to give readers contextual information about the events—the “general tone and spirit of the meetings ,” as he described it. The following account describes a public meeting in Liverpool where Stowe was an honored guest on 13 April 1853. The account includes the text of her speech, which was read by Calvin Stowe since Stowe did not give public speeches at that time. The chairman, (a. hodgson, Esq.,) in opening the proceedings, thus addressed Mrs. Beecher Stowe: The modesty of our English ladies, which, like your own, shrinks instinctively from unnecessary publicity, has devolved on me, as one of the trustees of the Liverpool Association, the gratifying office of tendering to you, at their request, a slight testimonial of their gratitude and respect. We had hoped almost to the last moment that Mrs. Cropper would have represented, on this day, the ladies with whom she has cooperated, and among whom she has taken a distinguished lead in the great work which you had the honor and the happiness to originate. But she has felt with you that the path most grateful and most congenial to female exertion, even in its widest and most elevated range, is still Anonymous [103] Portrait of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Calvin Ellis Stowe, ca. 1852. The Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University. a retired and a shady path; and you have taught us that the voice which most effectually kindles enthusiasm in millions is the still small voice which comes forth from the sanctuary of a woman’s breast, and from the retirement of a woman ’s closet—the simple but unequivocal expression of her unfaltering faith, and the evidence of her generous and unshrinking self-devotion. In the same spirit, stowe in her own time [104] and as deeply impressed with the retired character of female exertion, the ladies who have so warmly greeted your arrival in this country have still felt it entirely consistent with the most sensitive delicacy to make a public response to your appeal , and to hail with acclamation your thrilling protest against those outrages on our common nature which circumstances have forced on your observation. They engage in no political discussion, they embark in no public controversy; but when an intrepid sister appeals to the instincts of women of every color and of every clime against a system which sanctions the violation of the fondest affections and the disruption of the tenderest ties; which snatches the clinging wife from the agonized husband, and the child from the breast of its fainting mother; which leaves the young and innocent female a helpless and almost inevitable victim of a licentiousness controlled by no law and checked by no public opinion,—it is surely as feminine as it is Christian to sympathize with her in her perilous task, and to rejoice that she has shed such a vivid light on enormities which can exist only while unknown or unbelieved. We acknowledge with regret and shame that that fatal system was introduced into America by Great Britain; but having in our colonies returned from our devious paths, we may without presumption, in the spirit of friendly suggestion, implore our honored transatlantic friends to do the same. The ladies of Great Britain have been admonished by their fair sisters in America, (and I am sure they are bound to take the admonition in good part,) that there are social evils in our own country demanding our special...