Harriet Beecher Stowe's Civil War

 

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) about 1863

When the Civil War began Harriet Beecher Stowe was living rather well in Andover, Massachusetts.  Royalties from her influential novel Uncle Tom's Cabin funded luxuries her minister husband's salary could not provide.

Calvin Ellis Stowe (1802-1886)

Harriet became Calvin's second wife in 1836.

They lived in this stone house that is now an Andover dormitory.

Calvin was teaching at Andover Academy and they had four living children with eldest boy Fred a student at Harvard studying medicine. After Lincoln's first call for troops Fred joined the 1st Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry.

Frederick William Stowe (1840-1871?)

About 1863

Charles Edward, their other remaining son (two had died) was about 11. Also at home were three daughters. Twins Eliza and Hatty in their mid-twenties never married and a younger Georgianna was in her late teens.

Collection of the Schlesinger Library

Hatty & Eliza born in 1836

Georgianna May Stowe (1843-1890)

Fred became addicted to alcohol in his teens and spent time in a "water-cure" sanitarium in the late 1850s. His alcoholism remained a problem in the army. After he transferred to the 1st Massachusetts Heavy Artillery Regiment he was sent to Fort Runyon near Washington, protecting the capitol from  Confederate attack that never happened. 

Fort Runyon near Washington's Long Bridge

from Harper's Weekly

After realizing how bored he was his mother decided to check on him to see if it was necessary get him transferred to a post where he had less idle time. Her second purpose for a trip to Washington City was political. After Lincoln published a draft of the Emancipation Proclamation in September, 1862 abolitionist Harriet worried he would not follow through. "I am going to Washington to see the heads of the departments myself," she wrote a friend---being Harriet Beecher Stowe she had little doubt she'd get in to see them as well as the President.

Harriet Beecher Stowe House Collection

Isabella Holmes Beecher Hooker (1822-1907) and son Edward about 1863 

She was accompanied by sister Isabella Beecher Hooker in her early forties and eldest daughter Hatty about 26, three ladies traveling alone being a bit difficult even for strong-minded women led by "Her Highness," as Isabella called her famous sister. The women toured public buildings and hospitals, ate a celebratory Thanksgiving dinner at the barracks of former slaves who'd escaped to Washington and listened in the ladies' gallery of Congress on December 1st when Lincoln opened the session with a reading of the Proclamation to take effect in a month. 

The following day they had their Presidential audience with the man Isabella thought rustic but sincere, followed by a meeting with Mary Todd Lincoln who received them with "better grace than I anticipated ---& was dressed in altogether better taste than usual according to report."

The President's wife in mourning for her son

Willie who'd died about 9 months before the Beecher's visit.

Many years later Isabella's son Charles Stowe and his son Lyman Beecher Stowe wrote about the family in a biography and described the now famous words by which Lincoln greeted the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin:

"So you're the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war!" 

Charles---in his early teens at the time---remained at home during the visit. He and son Lyman were given to rather colorful anecdotes that had little to do with actual family history in their book.

Phil Cardamone's sculpture of the famous meeting

The story is untrue. Lincoln in his daily flurry of visitors seems not to have recognized the women. Isabella recalled that "Lincoln had no conception who Mrs. Stowe was---and will not until Mrs. Lincoln instructs him on the subject in her own peculiar manner."

Isabella did remember that as usual Lincoln was reminded of a funny story from his days out west.

Harriet's other important mission was a temporary success. She asked a friend to give Fred a non-combatant position on his staff in the Army of the Potomac---but non-combatant or not---months later Fred fought at Gettysburg where he was wounded in the head by shrapnel. 

Letter about Fred's injury from J M Crowell 10 days after the event 

from Charles's biography of his mother: Harriet Beecher Stowe

 compiled from her letters and journals by her son Charles Edward Stowe

Fred's unhappy life seems to have come to an end five years after the war when he disappeared in San Francisco.

The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center in Hartford has this

crazy quilt dated 1887 in their collections, said to have been

made for Harriet's son Charles or sister-in-law Frances Beecher

 (Mrs. James Beecher). Frances's husband shot himself in 1886.

Harriet in 1886

Families blessed with creativity & brilliance as the Beechers were are often cursed with mental illness. James and brother George were both suicides. A difficult family story.

See a preview of The Life Of Harriet Beecher Stowe by Harriet's son Charles Beecher & & grandson Lyman Beecher Stowe:

https://books.google.com/books?id=EfVJEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=harriet+beecher+stowe+books&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiJ4LWokK6FAxVav4kEHciiAgA4MhDoAXoECAYQAg#v=onepage&q=harriet%20beecher%20stowe%20books&f=false

More about the "Little woman/big war" story:

https://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jala/2629860.0030.104/--lincoln-stowe-and-the-little-womangreat-war-story-the-%20making?rgn=main;view=fulltext