reader never tires any more than the son
of Massachusetts does of the minutest details of that famous scene in
the Senate Chamber when Webster replied to Hayne.

At the age of twenty-four the author was married and went to live in
Cincinnati, where her husband held a chair in the Lane Theological
Seminary. There for the first time she was brought into relations
with the African race and saw the effects of slavery. She visited
slaveholders in Kentucky and had friends among them. In some homes she
saw the "patriarchal" institution at its best. The Beecher family were
anti-slavery, but they had not been identified with the abolitionists,
except perhaps Edward, who was associated with the murdered Lovejoy.
It was long a reproach brought by the abolitionists against Henry Ward
Beecher that he held entirely aloof from their movement. At Cincinnati,
however, the personal aspects of the case were brought home to Mrs.
Stowe. She learned the capacities and peculiarities of the negro race.
They were her servants; she taught some of them; hunted fugitives
applied to her; she ransomed some by her own efforts; every day there
came to her knowledge stories of the hunger for freedom, of the ruthless
separation of man and wife and mother and child, and of the heroic
sufferings of those who ran away from the fearful doom of those "sold
down South." These things crowded upon her mind and awoke her deepest
compassion. But what could she do against all the laws, the political
and commercial interests, the great public apathy? Relieve a case here
and there, yes. But to dwell upon the gigantic evil, with no means of
making head against it, was to invite insanity.

As late as 1850, when Professor Stowe was called to Bowdoin College, and
the family removed to Brunswick, Maine, Mrs. Stowe had not felt impelled
to the duty she afterwards undertook. "In fact, it was a sort of general
impression upon her mind, as upon that of many humane people in those
days, that the subject was so dark and painful a one, so involved in
difficulty and obscurity, so utterly beyond human hope or help, that it
was of no use to read, or think, or distress one's self about it." But
when she reached New England the excitement over the fugitive slave law
was at its height. There was a panic in Boston among the colored people
settled there, who were daily fleeing to Canada. Every mail brought her
pitiful letters from Boston, from Illinois, and elsewhere, of the terror
an