Cabin, Dec. 19
Mr. Garrison
Dear Sir:
After seeing you, I enjoyed the pleasure of a personal interview with Mr.
Douglass and I feel bound in justice to say that the impression was far
more satisfactory, than I had anticipated.
There does not appear to be any deep underlying stratum of bitterness --
he did not seem to me malignant or revengeful. I think that it was only a
temporary excitement and one which he will outgrow.
I was much gratified with the growth and development both of his mind and
heart. I am satisfied that his change of sentiments was not a mere
political one but a genuine growth of his own conviction. A vigorous
reflective mind like his cast among those holding new sentiments is
naturally led to modified views.
At all events, he holds no opinion which he cannot defend, with a variety
and richness of thought and expression and an aptness of illustration
which show it to be a growth from the soil of this own mind with a living
root and not a twig broken off other men's thoughts and stuck down to
subserve a temporary purpose.
His plans for the elevation of his own race, are manly, sensible,
comprehensive, he has evidently observed carefully and thought deeply and
will I trust act efficiently.
You speak of him as an apostate -- I cannot but regard this language as
unjustly severe -- Why is he any more to be called an apostate for having
spoken ill tempered things of former friends than they for having spoken
severely and cruelly as they have of him? -- Where is this work of
excommunication to end -- Is there but one true anti-slavery church and
all others infidels? -- Who shall declare which it is.
I feel bound to remostrate with this -- for the same reason that I do with
slavery -- because I think it, an injustice. I must say still further,
that if the first allusion to his family concerns was unfortunate this
last one is more unjustifiable still -- I am utterly surprised at it -- as
a friend to you, and to him I view it with the deepest concern and regret.
What Douglass is really, time will show -- I trust that he will make no
further additions to the already unfortunate controversial literature of
the cause. Silence in this case will be eminently -- golden.
I must indulge the hope you will reason at some future time to alter your
opinion and that what you now cast aside as worthess shall yet appear to
be a treasure.
There is abundant room in the antislavery field for him to perform a work
without crossing the track or impeding the movement of his old friends and
perhaps in some future time meeting each other from opposite quarters of a
victorious field you may yet shake hands together.
I write this letter because in the conversation I had with you, and also
with Miss Weston I admitted so much that was unfavorable to Mr. Douglass
that I felt bound in justice to state the more favorable views which had
arisen to my mind.
Very sincerely your friend,
H. B. Stowe
The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass, Volume
II
Pre-Civil War Decade 1850-1860
Philip S. Foner
International Publishers Co., Inc., New York, 1950 |
In 1853, Harriet Beecher Stowe,
author of the anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom's
Cabin, wrote a letter to William Lloyd Garrison about their mutual
friend, Frederick Douglass. Garrison and Douglass -- two of the country's
leading abolitionists -- were not on speaking terms due to differences of
opinion which had led each to attack the other publicly. After meeting
with Douglass, Stowe was persuaded that his convictions were based on
"the growth from the soil of his own mind" and not, as Garrison
believed, the views of less-radical abolitionists. Her hope to reconcile
the two former friends with this appeal would not be realized.
Harriet Beecher
Stowe
 Harriet Beecher Stowe was born on June 14, 1811, in
Litchfield, Connecticut. Her father, Lyman Beecher, was a famous minister.
She taught school in Hartford, but moved to Cincinnati in 1832. There she
taught school and socialized in literary circles. Harriet Beecher married
Calvin Ellis Stowe, a clergyman and seminary professor, in 1836. He
encouraged her to write.
In 1850, the St owe's moved to Brunswick, Maine, where Calvin Stowe
became a professor at Bowdoin College. It was in Brunswick that Harriet
wrote her most famous book, Uncle Tom's Cabin, or Life Among the
Lowly. The book was so popular it was translated into twenty-three
languages. In 1853, she published The Key to Uncle Tom's
Cabin,
which documented slavery as an abusive, inhumane system. Because of her works against slavery, Harriet Beecher Stowe rallied
Northern sentiments against Southern slave owners. When President Lincoln
met her he said, "So you're the little lady who started this big war."
Harriet Stowe died on July 1, 1896.
Taken from Sojourner Truth: Ain't I a Woman? by Patricia and
Fredrick McKissack.
|
