ppy years, in which her seventh child was born, a son who lived to
be her biographer, and in which she wrote "Uncle Tom's Cabin." It will
be remembered that the year 1850 was made memorable by the enactment
of the Fugitive Slave Law. How the attempted execution of this law
affected Mrs. Stowe can be anticipated. "To me," she says, "it is
incredible, amazing, mournful. I feel as if I should be willing to
sink with it, were all this sin and misery to sink in the sea.... I
sobbed, aloud in one pew and Mrs. Judge Reeves in another."

In this mood, Mrs. Stowe received a letter from Mrs. Edward Beecher
saying, "Hattie, if I could use a pen as you can, I would write
something to make this nation feel what an accursed thing slavery is."
Her children remember that at the reading of this letter, Mrs. Stowe
rose from her chair, crushing the letter in her hand, and said, "I
will write something,--I will if I live." The fulfilment of this vow
was "Uncle Tom's Cabin."

This story was begun in _The National Era_, on June 5, 1851; it was
announced to run through three months and it occupied ten. "I could
not control the story," said Mrs. Stowe; "it wrote itself." Again, she
said, "I the author of 'Uncle Tom's Cabin!' No, indeed. The Lord
himself wrote it, and I was but the humblest instrument in his hand."
It has been said that "'Uncle Tom's Cabin' made the crack of the
slave-driver's whip and the cries of the tortured blacks ring in every
household in the land, till human hearts could bear it no longer," and
that it "made the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law an
impossibility."

It is possible to discuss the question whether "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is
a work of art, just as it is possible to discuss whether the Sermon on
the Mount is a work of art, but not whether the story was effective,
not whether it hit the mark and accomplished its purpose. Mrs. Stowe's
story is not so much one story as a dozen; in the discriminating
language of her son, it is "a series of pictures," and who will deny
that the scenes are skilfully portrayed!

Mrs. Stowe did not know that she had made her fortune; she had not
written for money; nevertheless when the story was republished in a
volume, her ten per cent. of the profits brought her $10,000 in four
months. It went to its third edition in ten days, and one hundred and
twenty editions, or more than 300,000 copies were sold in this country
within one year. This astounding popularity was exceeded in Gr