Harriet Beecher Stowe (review)

76CIVIL WAR HISTORY of winning and achieving its goal. Volpe provides little systematic analysis of voting change between elections (either gains or losses). Even with basic stability, some did occur and may provide a clue to the degree of faith in their political strategy the religious partisans of the Liberty Party engendered. A more systematic analysis is also essential for understanding the transition that occurred when Free-Soil emerged. In short, while Volpe has succeeded in raising doubts about a number of our generalizations about antebellum politics in the Old Northwest, his work is far from definitive. Phyllis F. Field Ohio University Harriet Beecher Stowe. By John R. Adams. (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1989. Pp. 131. $17.95.) Most Americans know the name of Harriet Beecher Stowe and that of her most famous work, Uncle Tom's Cabin. It is difficult for many to divorce that piece of fiction from the real-life drama of the Civil War. John R. Adams, in this update of his 1963 work, looks not only at Uncle Tom's Cabin, but also examines Stowe's lesser known writings. This is a brief but valuable volume with which to discover more about Stowe, her work, and the environment that inspired her. Adams begins this study with a short biography of the author from her birth through the serialization of Uncle Tom's Cabin. In the first chapter, one can see where Adams revised his earlier interpretation, including here recent feminist critiques of Stowe and nineteenth-century womanhood in his appraisal of the author's early life. This revision is useful and appropriate, especially for the generation of scholars and students who are familiar with recent feminist scholarship. The remainder of the volume is devoted to an examination of Stowe's sixty-year career. Her writings appeared in many of the popular literary magazines of her time, including the Western Monthly, Illinois Monthly, and Atlantic Monthly. Her topics ranged from historical sketches of New England pioneers to essays on domestic life to moral stories. Stowe's literary output was amazing, yet she is usually remembered only for her most celebrated novel. Uncle Tom's Cabin receives an entire chapter in Adams's study. He traces the book's sources, which is interesting because prior to its serialization in the National Era, the author had never been an active abolitionist. Adams feels that much of the story can be traced to Stowe's own experiences: her proximity to slavery while living in Cincinnati, tales that may have been told by black servants in her family's household, and the experiences of her brother Charles who lived in Louisiana. She BOOK REVIEWS77 also read widely, including Theodore Dwight Weld's American Slavery as It Is, which Stowe admitted was a source for Uncle Tom's Cabin. In a brief section at the end, Adams assesses his subject's artistry. He feels that Stowe's conception of the art of writing was limited, as evinced by her comments in her essays on reading and writing for Hearth and Home. Yet, as Adams points out, her work must be taken in context— her time, her magazines, her audience. She wrote for them, not for future generations. This is a concise volume detailing the work of an author who would have probably remained one of the many "scribbling women" of the nineteenth century, far better known in her time than in ours. Instead, her best work granted her the immortality that most of her contemporaries lack. Adams's book is a perceptive analysis of Stowe, adeptly placing Uncle Tom's Cabin in the perspective of her entire career. Donna M. DeBlasio Ohio Historical Society The Public Years of Sarah and Angelina Grimké: Selected Writings, 1835-1839. Edited by Larry Ceplair. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989. Pp. xviii, 380. $45.00.) This selected edition of the writings of Sarah and Angelina Grimké documents the exiled South Carolinians' involvement in the abolitionist crusade and their pathbreaking efforts for women's equality. The collection includes such major works as Angelina's Appeal to the Christian Women of the South (1836) and Sarah's Letters on the Equality of the Sexes (1838), as well as...