Dred: A Tale Of The Great Dismal Swamp

The United States has been working on anti-slavery and racism for years upon years. We’ve been through a war and multiple multiple fights, and had many documents signed that allow for freedom of races of all kinds. However still today people of other races can still be looked down upon by other races. Racism is still real and people have to deal with it their whole lives. We have stopped multiple race “acts” that are now considered crimes. Such as slaves in general. But any ethnicity is still faced with racism to this day. With Harriet Beecher Stowe growing up in the early 1800’s, she witnessed a lot of this. From killings to just plain cruelty of different races except whites at the time. When she went on a trip to a slavery plantation this changed her whole

outlook on life. She had never really realized slavery as a big deal since she was of course a caucasian. When she got back from this trip she seen it as a calling to start writing and writing especially about slavery and the cruel act of holding human beings as such “animals”. She wrote a very big story about slaves and slavery called “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”. She was very intelligent since birth, by the time she was 5 she was attending school and was able to read perfectly fine. She had received top honors throughout her whole school career as well. She was then sent to Litchfield Academy, an all women school to study and work on writing and composing poems. By the age of 14 she had written an epic poem that still amazes people to this day called “Cleon”. From Harriet Beecher Stowe’s childhood up until she was grown in the 1800’s it’s easy to determine that the main purposes of her writings are to help with the things she had seen (slavery) and just the simple fact that she was very intelligent and a christian. You can tell this from some of the pieces she’s written such as “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and “Cleon” (being about someone who converted to Christianity) and “A New England Tale” (which was sold for fifty dollars back then which was very good money).

With Harriet growing up in the 1800’s, this lead to multiple scenarios of her seeing such acts of racism and torture. She had went to a slavery “plantation” in 1833 and witnessed these terrible, terrible acts of slavery which she was able to realize wasn’t right of course. “Harriet visited a plantation in Kentucky and witnessed first-hand the evils of slavery. She returned from her trip with increased sympathy for the abolitionist cause” (Aronson). Harriet knew that this act of treating people this way was not okay at all. She knew that she was only one person and one person can’t do a whole lot to a whole countries issues, but she knew she had to do something to help. She knew that there were certain places that were being hit with “attacks” more than others and she knew she had to find a way to get to them. She just didn’t know how to exactly do that yet. “Ohio was just north of the Mason-Dixon Line, a boundary between southern states that permitted slavery and northern states that did not. Due to its proximity to the Mason-Dixon Line, and the fact that it was a "free" state, Ohio was a hotbed of abolitionist activity.” (Aronson). She had to reach the people that were in Ohio and let them know somehow that acts happening were not okay and she needed to not only let them know, but let the whole country know to be exact. That’s when the idea hit her of starting to write about the problems happening, and maybe just maybe if she could get someone to publish something, then this could tell the country that what was happening was not okay. In 1852 she was able to publish the book that we all know today as “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”. This book talked about slavery and the horrible sense of it. Once this book was published people not only from the United States bought it and began to read it, but people in the United Kingdom did as well. “"Uncle Tom's Cabin" was so popular with the magazine's readership that it was published in book form in March 1852. It sold out within two days of its release. By the end of 1852, more than 300,000 copies had been sold the United States and 1.5 million in the United Kingdom” (Aronson). By this point Harriet knew that she had reached millions and millions of people about the terrible things that were happening and maybe, just maybe she could do something about these crimes being committed. She knew her talents of writing had helped a lot of people as well. This helped her strive for more and more stories to write not just about slavery but in general. But of course, especially back then when slavery was being fought, if she helped people she also hurt people. This meaning the people that were all for slavery wanted to fight the book and get rid of it because they didn’t like the fact that someone was speaking out against it and everyone was hearing about it. “"Uncle Tom's Cabin" opened readers' eyes to the atrocities being committed in the South, but at the same time heightened the tension between abolitionists and slavery supporters. Abolitionists hailed "Uncle Tom's Cabin" as a true portrayal of slavery, while others labeled it false anti-slavery propaganda” (Aronson) The slave owners obviously didn’t want people to think of it as “cruel” and “torture” so they tried to make it sound as good as possible. This also meant putting shame towards the book itself and calling it fake. Harriet seen this as a “disgrace” almost and didn’t think it was right for them to shame her book for telling the truth that everyone could see but themselves. But, she knew that the people that had read it and agreed with it would soon see that they all had to stand together on this topic to try to stop it. The people that were shaming her writings for going against their beliefs in slavery only motivated her. She knew that she had caused this long debate over what was right and what was wrong she she knew she had to have a part in the debate itself. This caused her to write a response to “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” also known as, “A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin”. “Stowe's response to the debate was to write "A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin," published in May 1853. "A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin" contained enough evidence in the form of actual letters, articles, trial transcripts, slave testimonies, and legal documents to establish the veracity of the portrayal of slave life in "Uncle Tom's Cabin" (Aronson). As stated before with Harriet helping people out and giving them support throughout the rough times, she also had people that tried to stop that because they didn’t think it was right. She knew that the people were speaking bad of her and saying that she was lying, so when she did produce “A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin” she knew that it had the evidence to prove that they were wrong. That being said people can’t fight and say that pure evidence was wrong by any means. With this book especially being bought around the world and most importantly the country, she became an even bigger writer and known person than before. This allowed for her to speak openly about slavery and people would listen, not only because her books showed it, but because she was such a big “figure” in general now. “Due to the success of her books, Stowe became a public figure. She used her fame to speak out against slavery both in the United States and abroad. She also dedicated her time to the abolitionist movement by writing anti-slavery pamphlets and articles from her home in Andover, Massachusetts” (Aronson). Not only with Harriet’s success in writing those two books did she stop supporting the movement of ending slavery. She continued to write specifically in her home on pamphlets and articles on the horrors of slavery. She began to contribute her life stopping slavery and spent most of her free time writing and writing on this topic. She knew that this wasn’t right and that she was now big enough to do something she was writing as her way on continuing to help stop the problem. She knew that these were most definitely getting to people and they were helping people see the evil.

This is when she decided to publish one of her next biggest books on slavery. This was called “Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp”.This book was a huge hit also, obviously dealing with the topic of slavery. “In 1856, Stowe wrote "Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp," a novel in which the protagonist, an escaped slave named Dred, encouraged other slaves to revolt. Published in 1856, it sold 100,000 copies in four weeks” (Aronson). Within a month, it sold many many many copies. Copies of this story are still being sold published and sold. With this book now being published, it was getting around to even the slaves of the people. They started hearing stories of this and learning from the “hint” Harriet was trying to say. She was trying to get the slaves to realize if they came together that they could people the slave holders of any kind. Slaves started to escape from their plantations and trying to run away to the northern states to completely escape. They realized that’s what they had to do from hearing about her books and articles that she was publishing like crazy. With all this happening, this led to a huge feud between blacks and whites of course, but also northern states and southern

states in general. Which is what we know of today as the Civil War. Stowe, being the intelligent woman she was, seen this opportunity of the Civil War as a way to end slavery everywhere. She knew that she had to talk to someone about ending this matter and matter give them a few ideas that would help win the war as well. So she had set up a meeting with president Lincoln to talk about these such topics. “Stowe believed that the Civil War was a means to end slavery. She met with President Abraham Lincoln in November 1862, to express her views on the matter” (Aronson). She began talking to Abraham about her best ideas on how to do this war to the best of her abilities. He held multiple meetings with her to discuss such topic. The war continued for years while she still wrote and helped guide as best as she could. She even wrote some that weren’t published or could even be found now. That was her way of “coping” and supporting the best she could. Being as intelligent as she was, she knew how to write specifically for racism and how to get in peoples heads she wanted to get into. This is what helped make her one of the most successful writers of her time especially. She is still considered one of the best Civil War timed writers. It was all because she knew the psychological ways of the brain and how certain things trigger others. So to an extent she was one of the reasons that the Civil War even happened. She got into the slave owners heads and this caused people to retaliate to the north. But with all wars that come to an end, one side has to win. This winner being the Union, or the northern states. This meant that slavery was now at an end by legal terms. It was now considered to be illegal to own slaves in any part of the United States whatsoever. “The Civil War ended on April 9, 1865. The Confederate states surrendered and were accepted back into the Union, and the 13th Amendment outlawing slavery was added to the Constitution. Stowe was overjoyed that her dream to see slavery abolished was realized” (Aronson). Harriet was proud and just filled with emotion when the news was received that this was the end of the Civil War and that the Union had won finally. She had put her whole life into this problem. Ever since she was a young woman and had went to that plantation she had realized that the world was wrong. She had realized that it wasn’t fair for such humans to be treated in this manner, and even if she couldn’t do much she was going to try to stop it from happening. So she took what she knew best to do and put it to use to help stand her ground in her part of the world. She used writing to destroy such terrible acts of slavery and it motivated her to continue to not only write about slavery, but write in general because it was her life.

Throughout this time of writing and doing her best to stop slavery, she had been in a romance with this man named Calvin Stowe. Between 1836 and 1850, they had already had six children. One of which died not too long after being born. They had a happy amazing family that was supported well, where one even grew up to go and join the Civil War. With Harriet being a successful writer, and her husband Calvin being a theology professor they were very wealthy. They never went hungry and had a very nice house. This also helped towards Harriets writing because at this time she was able to have the right equipment to write well written stories, essays, articles, documents, and many more things. This helped her in her career. But in 1857 one of her sons drowned, which caused her to become a religious person. She began to write stories about religion specifically since she had began to believe so much in it. Losing her son was one of the most difficult things for her to do in her entire life. When a loved one is lost most people go to religion to help cope with their loss of that certain person. Especially a son out of everything, or a child in general will cause you to lose your mind. So, to help her cope with the pain of losing a son, she began to write about religion. Her becoming a religious person allowed for her to continue to work and improve herself as a writer in general. “In 1857, Stowe's son Henry drowned. Stowe was deeply affected by his death, which perhaps influenced her to write about religion in her next novel, "The Minister's Wooing." Published in 1859, "The Minister's Wooing" scrutinizes the conflicts inherent within the Calvinist religion” (Aronson). “The Minister's Wooing” was a religion based book, but it also had ties with slavery, which did every other book she’s written. It’s a comedial type of book but it also has serious religious and slavery ties into it, such as “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”. It was made to be comedial, but also get to the point. With Stowe's son drowning, this caused her to add important religious ties into the book that also make slavery bad as well. In “The Minister’s Wooing” Harriet states, “Never say there isn’t enough time for a thing that ought to be done. If a thing is necessary, why, life is long enough to find a place for it.” You are able to dig into this quote and look into it many, many ways. It’s cuts ties into slavery and religion. With slavery being a terrible act that was going on in the world at the time, fixing it could have been the time you had in life to do it. If something should be done in life you have enough years to change it and make it right. You can’t waste time just sitting there and not doing what you want to get done. You have to jump into action and get it done yourself in you time, most importantly your lifetime. With slavery being a decent size part in this quote, you can see that she meant if life is long enough you need to do what you can to stop the problem you don’t like. Such as she didn’t like slavery so she did what she could in her lifetime to stop it, which indeed did help in the freedom of slaves of different races. But it isn’t just about racism and slavery, it also cuts into religion. If you look into religion in the Christianity way, God gave everyone life for a reason. He gave you a certain time on this Earth for a reason. Since he has done that, you shouldn’t waste it procrastinating on things you feel like should be changed. God always makes things work and will always give you time for something that you feel like needs to be done in life. So she gets deep religiously when you break it down and how God did certain things for a reason. Since he did such things, you should take advantage of this and never say “there isn’t enough time in the day”. She became a heavy religious person and believed in how everything was done for a reason and we should take that opportunity and run, such as she did. “Once in an age God sends to some of us a friend who loves in us, not a false-imagining, an unreal character, but looking through the rubbish of our imperfections, loves in us the divine ideal of our nature,—loves, not the man that we are, but the angel that we may be” (Stowe). With her son drowning at a very young age, she began to realize especially then that life was very short. Being a strong religious person, she believed as stated before that everything had a reasoning. If everything had a reasoning, then everyone's death is a reasoning, and she accepted that fact. When she talks about how we are sent someone to love us for us as humans, its because there's a reason for it. In religious terms, we as humans live off of love. If you look at Christianity, it goes all the way back to Adam and Eve a couple based off of love. If we are able to live long enough without passing, we are sent someone to love us for us, and that's how love works. God sends certain people down for certain other people that allow them to love them for them and not the person they could be. To understand that it’s life and to think non the less than what the person is themselves. Harriet, knowing this and being with Calvin allowed her to see the real value in religion and helped her to continue her religious writings. This allowed for many more religious writings, and even slavery writings. She thought of slavery as a sin through her beliefs in religion, which helped influence her to continue writing her slavery books and religious books. With her intelligence level being so high, she was not only able to understand the religious thoughts, but dig deeper into then and input them into her writings about how everything in the world was corrupt.

Since birth Harriet was very, very intelligent. When she was a young child she was more developed than a normal child would be at that age. By the age of 5 she was able to speak full drawn out complex sentences. The way that the support from her family being surprised of this kind’ve intelligence motivated her to become even more smart than she was already. Her family began to push them themselves and continued to motivate her throughout her entire life up until and adult. “When Harriet was five years old, her grandmother taught her to read. She began attending school that same year, and entered the Litchfield Academy in 1821. Harriet was an excellent student who received top honors” (Aronson). Her grandmother seen the potential in her granddaughter and began teaching her advanced things, so she could stay advanced. This allowed for her to start attending school at a younger age compared to all the other kids back in that age. With Litchfield Academy being a school for smart children, she was one of the smartest in her class still. This is how she was able to receive the top honors without a single problem not only as a 5 year old, but throughout her whole school career. She liked being this, and being the best at what she could be so this motivated her to become smarter and smarter each day and study and study. But Harriet began to get into her teenage years and continued to get smarter and smarter, so Catherine (the oldest of them all that was serving as Harriets guardian) opened a teenage school for just girls. WIth that being said Harriet was enrolled into this school with no exceptions where she would still receive top honors and begin to start her writings.”When she was fourteen years old, Harriet wrote an epic poem called "Cleon" about a Greek nobleman who converted to Christianity” (Aronson). At 14 Harriet was able to fall in love with writing and the love for composing such materials. She wanted to continue writing, but this was one of the things that she was not supported on. This drove her into wanting to write more and continue her passion for writing. She also knew that she had the intelligence to be writing such poems and stories, because she had be learning since the age of 5. Her older sister Catherine then found this amazing poem that she had written and got rid of it because she didn’t think that Harriet needed to be wasting her time on such things. Catherine felt like Harriet needed to be teaching kids with the intelligence she had instead of writing things such as poems. So she gave Harriet teaching jobs that would fit her school schedule. “She assigned Harriet some teaching duties to fill her schedule more appropriately. Harriet taught part-time until she graduated, after which she accepted a full-time teaching position” (Aronson).Since Harriet didn’t get to practice much writing since Catherine would just get rid of it, she decided to full time teach after graduating high school. Since she had been teaching from age 14 she knew that she had the talent to be a writer, especially the fact that everyone thought the poem she wrote was amazing except for Catherine. Harriet was still writing on the side now that she was grown and Catherine couldn’t tell her what she could do and what she couldn’t. Soon after Harriet acquiring the job, the family moved to Cincinnati. Here Catherine then started a college for women only as well. With there being a college around especially owned by Catherine, Harriet decided to attend here as a student and learn more. She craved learning and becoming more and more intelligent because she knew she had it in her. So she began attending here where she helped Catherine write a geography textbook for one of the classes where she got her first check as a “writer”. She knew then that she loved writing as a whole. She continued to go to college to study and increase vocabulary and just increase her intelligence even more than she already had. She knew she had to take another step further if she wanted to pursue this, so she entered a writing contest knowing that she would win being smart from birth. “In 1833, Harriet entered and won a writing contest sponsored by "Western Monthly Magazine." Shortly thereafter, she sold two pieces to the same magazine: an article about grammar, and a short story called "A New England Tale," which sold for fifty dollars apiece” (Aronson). To be able to sell things for 50 dollars a piece back then was amazing money. People enjoyed to read her pieces and she enjoyed to write them very much. She knew that she had to use her intelligence for good use and to do something loved, and something other people loved as well.