as if the whole vital
force had left her. She sank into a profound discouragement. Would this
appeal, which she had written with her heart's blood, go for nothing, as
all the prayers and tears and strivings had already gone? When the last
proof sheets left her hands, "it seemed to her that there was no hope;
that nobody would read, nobody would pity; that this frightful system,
which had already pursued its victims into the free States, might at
last even threaten them in Canada." Resolved to leave nothing undone to
attract attention to her cause, she wrote letters and ordered copies
of her novel sent to men of prominence who had been known for their
anti-slavery sympathies,--to Prince Albert, Macaulay, Charles Dickens,
Charles Kingsley, and Lord Carlisle. Then she waited for the result.

She had not long to wait. The success of the book was immediate. Three
thousand copies were sold the first day, within a few days ten thousand
copies had gone, on the 1st of April a second edition went to press, and
thereafter eight presses running day and night were barely able to keep
pace with the demand for it. Within a year three hundred thousand copies
were sold. No work of fiction ever spread more quickly throughout the
reading community or awakened a greater amount of public feeling. It was
read by everybody, learned and unlearned, high and low, for it was an
appeal to universal human sympathy, and the kindling of this spread the
book like wildfire. At first it seemed to go by acclamation. But this
was not altogether owing to sympathy with the theme. I believe that
it was its power as a novel that carried it largely. The community was
generally apathetic when it was not hostile to any real effort to be rid
of slavery. This presently appeared. At first there were few dissenting
voices from the chorus of praise. But when the effect of the book began
to be evident it met with an opposition fiercer and more personal than
the great wave of affectionate thankfulness which greeted it at first.
The South and the defenders and apologists of slavery everywhere were
up in arms. It was denounced in pulpit and in press, and some of the
severest things were said of it at the North. The leading religious
newspaper of the country, published in New York, declared that it was
"anti-Christian."

Mrs. Stowe was twice astonished: first by its extraordinary sale, and
second by the quarter from which the assault on it came. She herself
says that he