d despair caused by the law. Still more was the impressed by the
apathy of the Christian world at the North, and surely, she said, the
people did not understand what the "system" was. Appeals were made to
her, who had some personal knowledge of the subject, to take up her pen.
The task seemed beyond her in every way. She was not strong, she was in
the midst of heavy domestic cares, with a young infant, with pupils to
whom she was giving daily lessons, and the limited income of the family
required the strictest economy. The dependence was upon the small salary
of Professor Stowe, and the few dollars she could earn by an occasional
newspaper or magazine article. But the theme burned in her mind, and
finally took this shape: at least she would write some sketches and show
the Christian world what slavery really was, and what the system was
that they were defending. She wanted to do this with entire fairness,
showing all the mitigations of the "patriarchal" system, and all that
individuals concerned in it could do to alleviate its misery. While
pondering this she came by chance, in a volume of an anti-slavery
magazine, upon the authenticated account of the escape of a woman with
her child on the ice across the Ohio River from Kentucky. She began to
meditate. The faithful slave husband in Kentucky, who had refused to
escape from a master who trusted him, when he was about to be sold "down
river," came to her as a pattern of Uncle Tom, and the scenes of the
story began to form themselves in her mind. "The first part of the book
ever committed to writing [this is the statement of Mrs. Stowe] was the
death of Uncle Tom. This scene presented itself almost as a tangible
vision to her mind while sitting at the communion-table in the little
church in Brunswick. She was perfectly overcome by it, and could
scarcely restrain the convulsion of tears and sobbings that shook her
frame. She hastened home and wrote it, and her husband being away, read
it to her two sons of ten and twelve years of age. The little fellows
broke out into convulsions of weeping, one of them saying through his
sobs, 'Oh, mamma, slavery is the most cursed thing in the world!' From
that time the story can less be said to have been composed by her than
imposed upon her. Scenes, incidents, conversations rushed upon her with
a vividness and importunity that would not be denied. The book insisted
upon getting itself into being, and would take no denial."

When two or