When Mrs. Stowe was teaching in the Hartford School she was not without pupils that were full of mischief. One of these, being very fond of animals and bugs of all kinds, used to bring her favorites and install them in the desk, shutting down the wide cover as a door to their prison until she should get a chance to show them to her best-loved teacher, Miss Harriet Beecher, who could look unappalled into the desk with its nests of spiders or its families of toads, for there was not a creature that God could create that Harriet did not love. Nearly every novel that she ever wrote includes in its characters some favorite dog or cat; they were characters, too, for they were as different and as individual as people. Then there is her book called “Queer Little People,” where she tells tales about the Nutcracker family of Nutcracker Lodge, about Tip-top, Toddy, and Speckle of the Robin family, about that fascinating Hum, son of Buz, the humming-bird that was blown in at the window on a chilly day at the seashore, about the Squirrels that lived in a house, about the Mrs. Magpie that put on such airs and could not be cut, and about all the congregation of Carlos and Rovers and Princes, including the wonderful high-bred Giglio who was destined to an early demise, and the aristocratic Italian dog Florence who as they were one day riding along through the streets of Rome barked a familiar greeting to the Pope. Aunt Esther’s wonderful power in telling stories about animals, nineteen in a row on rats only, seems to have been handed down to her clever niece.

Well, this mischievous pupil at Hartford had one morning only one small katydid in her desk. It was very interesting in its fine dress of green and silver, with wings of point lace from Mother Nature’s finest web. It perked itself and stood up airily as if it knew that it was about to be immortalized in a human story. Harriet’s fancy saw the possibilities. She said to the student, “You write a story about it.”

“I? Write a story? I couldn’t do it for my life.”

“Yes, you can. Come; you write one and I will write one, too; then we will read them to each other.”

Harriet wrote that story and the copy of it in her own hand is to-day one of the treasures of that same pupil. The tale was also published later in “Queer Little People.” Strangely enough this story may serve to prove what Harriet Beecher Stowe’s feeling was even in her early life on the great matter that she made the theme of her greatest book.

The story is this: Miss Katydid consulted her cousin, the gallant Colonel Katydid, about the invitations to a grand party that she wanted to give. She was to ask only the higher circles, the Fireflies, of course, and the Butterflies; also the Moths, even though they were rather dull people, indelicately ate up ermine capes and got indigestion thereby. Then they must have that worthy family, the Bees, of course; the Bumblebees, too, who were so dashing and brilliant; the spiteful Hornets, just because they were so spiteful and must not be offended, and the plebeian Mosquitoes since they were becoming literary and had very sharp pens, and—the Crickets—should they be asked? The Locusts, of course, a very old and distinguished family, and the Grasshoppers, though they were not of much account, but the Crickets—no! One must draw the line somewhere.

“I thought they were nice, respectable people,” said Colonel Katydid.

“O yes—very good people. But you must see the difficulty.”

“My dear cousin, I am afraid you must explain.”

“Why, their color, to be sure. Don’t you see?”

“Oh, that’s it, is it? Excuse me, but I have been living in France where these distinctions are wholly unknown, and I have not yet got myself in the train of fashionable ideas here.”

“Well, then, let me teach you. You know we republicans go for no distinctions except those created by Nature herself, and we found our rank upon color, because it is clearly a thing that none has any hand in but our Maker. You see?”

“Yes, but who decides what shall be the reigning color?”

“I’m surprised to hear the question. The only true color—the only proper one—is our color, to be sure. A lovely pea-green is the precise shade on which to found aristocratic distinction.... Society would become dreadfully mixed if it were not fortunately ordered that the Crickets are as black as jet. The fact is that a class to be looked down upon is necessary to all elegant society, and if the Crickets were not black, we could not keep them down, because, as everybody knows, they are often cleverer than we.... Their being black is a convenience, because, as long as we are green and they black, we have a superiority that never can be taken from us. Don’t you see now?”

The Colonel saw. The party was held; the Crickets, being very musical, were asked to play for the dancing and came in concourses to do so. The ball went on until daybreak, so that it seemed that every leaf in the forest was alive. In fact those dissipated Katydids kept up this sort of thing till Parson To-whit preached against it and even till the celebrated Jack Frost epidemic occurred in the month of September.

Plainly Harriet had made up her mind that color was never a fit basis for social distinctions. One could, perhaps, even further back in her life, find sources for the conviction that to hold any person in a subject state because of the color of his skin was the greatest injustice. She had in Litchfield heard her father preach sermons on the subject of slavery and offer prayers for the slaves that had made her heart throb and ache. And when her Aunt Mary, spoken of in an earlier chapter, came from San Domingo and told of the sufferings of slaves as she had witnessed them there, her feeling was deepened and intensified.

As early as 1837 Catherine Beecher published a small book called “An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism with Reference to the Duty of American Females.” It was written in answer to a movement to induce women to join the Abolition Society. She opposed this movement strongly. She agreed with the members of the society in thinking slavery an evil, but she was most disinclined to any radical measures against it. Indeed she spent most of her time in criticizing the unwise and hasty measures of the abolitionists, their undue urgency and sledgehammer methods.

Sister Catherine, however, showed some foresight when she said, “It is my full conviction that if insurrection does burst forth, and there be the least prospect to the cause of the slave, there will be men from the North and West,11 standing breast to breast, with murderous weapons, in opposing ranks.” She counseled calm, rational Christian discussion as the only proper method of securing the ends of safety and peace. It seems that Catherine, with all her acumen, did not in the least realize that this was to be a case where benignity, urbanity, meekness and benevolence would not serve; and while she touches the idea of a possible “standing breast to breast with murderous weapons in opposing ranks,” the very fact that she can speak of it so calmly shows that it is now a matter of rhetoric with her rather than of shuddering prophecy. In her serene unconsciousness that the forces of war were even then forming, Catherine Beecher was not by any means alone. Almost to the last minute many, or perhaps most, of our great statesmen did not in the least imagine that sections of a people speaking one language, consecrated in their close relationship by like struggles in the past and united by like ideals and hopes for the future, could be separated by the sword over a mere difference of opinion as to the matter of holding slaves. We must try to remember that no one was really aware of this beforehand or we shall fail to understand why the formation of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s thought on this subject was so gradual. No doubt she was influenced by such a statement of views as her sister made in her book; as a result of this, and perhaps of other influences of like kind, she was for years trying to keep the subject of slavery as much as possible out of her mind. To her it was a horror in a distant part of the world that she could do nothing to mitigate, and if she should let her mind dwell upon it, she would be unable to do the duties that lay at hand. It seemed a subject “too painful to inquire into, and one that advancing light and civilization would live down.”12

Meantime she was being quietly prepared in one corner of the world for a fit and not inconspicuous part in the thrilling drama of emancipation. She seems to have had a real human interest in the negroes as the expression of a certain individual and racial character. Nearly every novel she wrote had first or last a negro character. These dusky people of her imaginary world if placed by themselves would form a collection of highly individualized portraits, all taken from her picture gallery of actual memories. At Easthampton, Dr. Beecher had preached to an adjacent colony of colored people and when the family moved to Litchfield “one Dinah” and “one Zillah” came with the caravan and formed a very necessary part of the household at the parsonage. There were always colored servants to help about the work in the big Beecher home. One of these, whose name was Candace, a portly old black washerwoman, would sometimes take the little Harriet aside and tell her with tears about the saintly virtues of her departed mother. When Harriet visited her aristocratic relatives in Guilford and was taught the catechism by her Aunt Harriet, black Dinah, along with Harry, the bound boy, ranged at a respectful distance behind her, was taught also. “Dine” was a great friend of Harriet’s; they had many frolics together and the black playmate told the little girl many stories and made herself very interesting.

When the Beechers came to live in Litchfield they found colored people still living there who had been born slaves. “Old Grimes,” famous in song and story, was a Litchfieldian slave; his character was sufficiently notorious for his death to be chronicled in the affecting lines:

This happened in the early days, but we would fain believe that the song was a favorite by the Parsonage fireplace.

The Beechers considered their dark-skinned household helpers as members of the family, and absent children invariably included them when they sent messages of affection back to the home. When the Beecher party were pausing in New York on their way to Ohio, the faithful Zillah came to call upon them; Harriet said that she was quite unchanged, her voice soft as ever, as she told them that she was now in very comfortable circumstances. Harriet said that she would be glad if she were quite sure to fill up her chink in this mortal life as well as Zillah did!

All of these negroes were the descendants of the slaves of an earlier period, long since freed, who had lived for many generations on terms of equality and industrial exchange among gentle, high-born people. Harriet had known and met them on terms of mutual respect. It would have been inconceivable to her to enter into relations as owner and slave with that companionable “Dine” or that soft-voiced, ladylike Zillah.

As a result of her experience, she approached the slave question not as a mere theorist. It is evident that it cannot with truth be said that her study of it dated from the time of her settlement in Cincinnati; but it is certain that when she did come to live in Ohio, further opportunities were given her to know the conditions in her own country in regard to this matter. In New England she had been in a land of theories of human freedom; now she was to come into contact with facts; she was to have her heart bleed for the human misery and oppression which she saw.

The Belle Rivière was the dividing line between slave country and free country, Kentucky on the south being a slave state and Ohio on the north being ardently anti-slavery. And after the movement for freeing the slaves began, there was formed an “underground railroad”—that is, a series of farmhouses and homes that served as stations, at convenient distances from each other, where friendly people lived with whom the escaping slaves could find shelter, from Cincinnati all across the state to Canada. By this means any fugitive could be taken by night on horseback or in a covered wagon from station to station, until he passed beyond the Canadian boundaries where he was under the protection of the British power.

It is evident that there was at that time scarcely a spot in the United States where the excitement and irritation of the slavery agitation ran so high. People in Cincinnati had “property” (consisting of slaves) over the line in Kentucky and people in Kentucky were seeking their “property” that was running off to Ohio.

Negroes were negotiable currency; they were collateral security on half the contracts that were at that time being made between the thriving men of Cincinnati and the planters of the adjoining slave states. It was natural that when the structure of business included this kind of property and no one was willing to open the case of the rightfulness of keeping possession in that form at all, the excitement of the discussion should rise to a great pitch. It did reach such a height at last that there were mobs in the streets and danger to the lives of all about the city and the region.

Meantime Mrs. Stowe’s family were pursuing the even tenor of their way in the Walnut Hills suburb. Her husband was busied with Biblical exegeses, and she was giving her attention chiefly to pinafores and dishwashing; but each of them took the liveliest interest in what was going on. Mrs. Stowe’s brother Henry was one of the editors of the Cincinnati Journal and he took a great part in the activities of the hour; Mrs. Stowe also did some writing for his paper. Yet all this is in the very midst of the period in her life when, as she afterward said, she was trying her best not to think of the workings of slavery at all, because she did not see what could be done about it and could not bear to think about a wrong that she could do nothing to prevent!

Meantime the circle of friends about Mrs. Stowe must have thrashed out the whole subject, trying, as were many people elsewhere, to decide what was the right course to pursue. Good people felt that something ought to be done but were divided as to what was the wisest step to take first. There were extremists on both sides and many angry differences of opinion. Mrs. Stowe thought that no one could have the system of slavery brought home to him without an irrepressible desire to do something; but what was there to be done?

For a time she, with many others, believed that the solution must lie in some intermediate position, in some scheme like the proposal of the Colonization Society to send the negroes back to Africa, or perhaps in some segregation plan. That a civil war could be the outcome of the disagreement was not imagined.

Among the students in the Theological Seminary was a young enthusiast named Theodore Weld who, in a lecturing tour through the southern states, had seen much of slavery and slave owners, and who, as a result, held the strongest views against the system, which he did not hesitate to declare. He had converted to his views Mr. J. G. Birney, of Huntsville, Alabama, who then proceeded to free his slaves and become an ardent supporter of the doctrine. Together with Dr. Bailey of Cincinnati he founded a paper called The Philanthropist. His strong anti-slavery utterances in this paper aroused much question in that city in the summer and fall of 1836.

As matters grew more serious the excitement increased. The printing establishment was mobbed and when Mrs. Stowe saw her brother Henry putting pistols in order, declaring, with set face, that he stood ready to fight if need be, she could see how critical was the time. The mobs even threatened the houses of all that professed abolition sentiments and there was danger that the Theological Seminary might be attacked. From her home at Walnut Hills, Mrs. Stowe could see the light of the burning houses upon the sky for many nights. What was right to think or do, she could not see, but whatever the outcome was she thought that the rule of mob was wrong. While she believed the cause was a just one, she deplored the excesses of the excited people. As for herself, she was not afraid. They were protected, she said afterward in her funny way, by the distance of the Seminary from the city and by the providential depth and adhesiveness of the Cincinnati mud. She was, however, excited, indignant, and thoroughly aroused. She hoped that Mr. Birney would stand his ground in his fireproof building and assert his rights. If she were a man, she cried, she would go and she believed she could take good care of at least one window.

By this time Mrs. Stowe had gained some practical knowledge of what the slavery system really meant. When she had been but one year in Cincinnati she had gone with friends to visit a plantation across the river. Here she had seen a happy prosperous slave life, under owners that seemed to be the sincere well-wishers of the negroes who served them. There was little to shock or distress her in what she saw. Most of the day she moved about as one in a dream. She sat apart, heeding not the antics and gambols of the little darkies. But we know that the scenes she saw that day were unconsciously laid up in her memory to be recalled when the building of the book had come into her mind and she needed the material for her great purpose. Years afterward, when the friend who accompanied her on that Kentucky visit read the account of the doings on the Shelby Farm as Mrs. Stowe depicted them in the “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” she saw in the description an exact correspondence to the events of that day as she remembered them.

Here was, then, a picture of the slave system at its best. Perhaps her gravity and absorption during the picnic merriment of the day was caused by the thought that the owners of the happy plantation had it in their power to separate any husband and father there from his family or any little girl from her mother, and, if he needed the money, sell them to slave traders who would carry them “down the river” to be lost to their own forever. Of what such a fate might mean Mrs. Stowe learned from her brother Charles, who acted for some months as collecting agent for a New Orleans commission house. On one of the trips up the Red River he had come upon a plantation where the slaves were treated with a brutality almost indescribable. Of this he tried to draw a faithful picture in his next letter to his sister, and she had thus placed in her storehouse another chapter for the book she was unconsciously preparing to write. Almost incredible as it may seem, the Legree plantation was, therefore, a scene taken directly from life. In another letter Charles Beecher told how from the deck of a steamer on which he was traveling he had seen a slave mother seek death by springing into the river with her child clasped to her bosom. She preferred death for herself and her child rather than to allow her little girl to enter the life into which she knew she would be sold.

Still other ways of seeing the under side of the movement that was going on were being afforded the quiet little woman in the Cincinnati suburb. Every month there was something happening. A press that printed abolition matter was destroyed, a house was mobbed, a free negro was kidnapped, the shop of an abolitionist was riddled, or a negro schoolhouse razed to the ground. And in the mobs of 1840 there was a general attack upon the negro population in the midst of which rescued slaves were caught and hurried back across the line to their plantations. Houses were battered down by cannon, violence and crime naturally followed in the wake of mob law. The smoke of the conflagration could be seen from the house where Mrs. Stowe lived and the sorrowful processions of colored people with what remained of their possessions starting out for Canada, passed by her door; mothers passed with children in their arms or toddling along by their side, and discouraged men, bearing heavy burdens. Sometimes at night she heard the rattle of a big covered wagon in which she would be sure was an escaping woman being helped to the border.

In such ways as these Mrs. Stowe was unconsciously trained for a special work. So far the preparation had been mostly by hearsay. The practical demonstrations that followed it were to be even more effective.