To be really great in little things, to be truly noble and heroic in the insipid details of everyday life, is a virtue so rare as to be worthy of canonization.

 —Harriet Beecher Stowe 

I. The times in which we are presently living challenge us to remember and listen to our memories and to do something with them. This is the hope of the Episcopal Church as it remembers and celebrates Harriet Beecher Stowe on July 1; that we would let her help us to remember and listen.

II. As we begin this Reflection it is crucial to remember Harriet Beecher Stowe more than her famous novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. But it is important to note the significance of the book and use it as a way to understand more about this extraordinary woman. Initially, the novel was serialized in June, 1851 until April, 1852 and published in book form in later 1852. It sold over 300,000 copies in its first year of publication. The distinguished African-American historian, John Hope Franklin, has written about Uncle Tom’s Cabin: [The novel] “increased the strain of intersectional relations between North and South. … Its story of abject cruelty on the part of the masters and overseers, its description of the privation and suffering of slaves, and its complete condemnation of Southern civilization won countless thousands over to abolition and left Southern leaders busy denying the truth of the novel. The damage had been done, however, and when Southerners counted their losses from this one blow, they found them to be staggering indeed.” We need to remember the woman who offered us this “one blow.” —(John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom, p.215) 

III. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s family was a source of great strength and inspiration for her. In the Beecher household, living a just life was an everyday commitment and one of the most important elements of this commitment was paying attention. Living a just life was a fundamental witness for the Beecher family and no one exemplified this more that the patriarch of the family, Lyman Beecher, the famed Calvinist preacher who was ever outspoken and hesitant about very little. It was said that during his full and rich life, Lyman Beecher was always involved with controversy; he was unafraid. Harriet Beecher Stowe and her siblings were students of their father and the family dynamic was aptly described by some verses of the 1st Letter of Peter, the second appointed reading for the liturgy of the day. …Those who desire life and desire to see good days, let them keep their tongues from evil and their lips from spreading deceit; let them turn away from evil and do good; let them seek peace and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous… (1 Peter 3: 10-12)

IV. Seven of Lyman Beecher’s children were active in the church, in education, and in the suffragette and abolitionist movements. Isabella Beecher Hooker was a suffragist, an abolitionist and a devoted mother; Catherine Beecher was an educator, founder of several schools for women and an activist; Thomas Beecher was a Congregational minister and principal of several schools; Henry Ward Beecher was a famous preacher and abolitionist; Charles Beecher was a minister, a composer of religious hymns and a prolific author; Edward Beecher was a Doctor of Divinity and American Theologian. And then there was Harriet Beecher Stowe who wrote 30 books of all kinds—travel memoirs, collections of articles and letters, an was abolitionist, a suffragist, a wife and mother of seven children. Imagine what it might be like to be a member of the Beecher family! Everywhere there seems to have been the desire to serve, to preach the word, to educate, to practice justice, to be bold and unafraid to speak out, and to be faithful to the Gospel and to the righteous: all this every day, without letting up. I wonder what kinds of questions the Beecher siblings had about their everyday lives, and whether there was ever any doubt among them. If Harriet Beecher Stowe’s life is any indication, we could surmise there was very little doubt. In fact, her heritage and her fidelity to “little things” may have prepared her for the “big thing” of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

V. Harriet Beecher Stowe was a serious Christian, familiar with scripture and steeped in Calvinist theology. As a Christian, she believed slavery was a sin and against all the Gospel precepts. There was no ambiguity for her. Her birth family, her schooling, the various places she lived, especially Cincinnati, her seminary professor husband and her children, all contributed to her growing understanding of the differences between the cultures in the North and South. In 1850 came the infamous and divisive federal law, the Fugitive Slave Law, the Federal mandate that prohibited any assistance to fugitives and strengthened sanctions and enforcement, even in free states. Because she was attuned to such developments and had heard countless stories, she knew what the tyrannical enforcement of the new law would do.  This was Harriet Beecher Stowe’s breaking point.

VI. It is said that not long after the passing of the Fugitive Slave Law, Harriet Beecher Stowe began to have visions from God. The depth and fervor of her spirituality could allow for such visions, not unlike those experienced by Jeanne d’Arc. Eventually, Beecher Stowe came to believe that “the deadly sin of slavery in its denial of humanity to man….to vilify and crush the image of God, in the person of the poor and lowly, has been the great sin of man since the creation of the world.” (HBS, A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, p.242). Along with the visions from God, came the pleas from her siblings and in-laws to write something to show the wickedness of slavery. She was, after all they said, a writer. 

VII. So as the Beecher family member who had a vocation to “preach on paper,” Harriet Beecher Stowe became (as Abraham Lincoln so famously put it) the “little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.” Like her brothers who turned preaching into narrative and as the writer who told stories, HBS wrote a great story that was its own gospel narrative, an awakening really: a not so “little thing” that was “truly noble and heroic” and which made the evil reality of slavery palpable to the American public.

VIII. Imagine all those “little things” that, taken together, brought Harriet Beecher Stowe to such a powerful and momentous narrative that moved a nation. And imagine what she had remembered in order to write her book. At the same time, we can ask ourselves what we are remembering during these weeks of such crushing realities. And then, perhaps we can even wonder what Harriet Beecher Stowe would say about the new clarity, all around, us of America’s systemic racism and the “Black Lives Matter” movement. What might she do or say about this clarity? And remembering her spirit and her work, I wonder if the best thing we could do now is read again or, for the first time, the little woman’s “book that started [the] great war.” 

“Gracious God, we thank you for the witness of Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose fiction

inspired thousands with compassion for the shame and suffering of enslaved peoples…

Help us, like her, to strive for your justice”

           (From the appointed collect of the day) 

Amen

Father Peter Kountz