Abolition by Tim Black

Author:Tim Black [Black, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Young Adult Fiction
Publisher: Untreed Reads
Published: 2019-03-15T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

As the students buckled themselves into their classroom seats for the next hop through time, Nikola Tesla set the coordinates for Brunswick, Maine. When they arrived at their destination, Mr. Greene walked to his desk and motioned for Victor to pass out copies of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s famous novel.

“I want each of you to have a copy of the first edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. These books in this condition are nearly priceless. And we are going to make them even more valuable as collector’s items by having Harriet Beecher Stowe sign the copies. So, this is my reason for the unplanned stop in Brunswick, Maine.

“First, a little background on Harriet Beecher Stowe, one of the remarkable Beecher sisters. She was one of thirteen children in the Beecher clan, a very religious family whose patriarch was Congregation Minister Lyman Beecher. Her brother Henry Ward Beecher was one of the most well-known ministers of the antebellum period. Lyman Beecher was strongly anti-slavery and his children followed his example, Harriet Beecher being the most famous, of course. But the other Beechers were abolitionists as well. When Lyman Beecher was preaching in Cincinnati, his home became an overnight stop on the Underground Railroad for slaves fleeing Kentucky. The escapees were then sent on to Canada to beyond the reach of slave catchers, as the British Empire had abolished slavery in 1833 and Canada was part of the empire. Harriet married a seminary teacher named Calvin Stowe, and after their wedding the couple moved to Maine, close to Bowdoin College in Brunswick.”

“Isn’t that where Gettysburg hero Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain went to school, Mr. Greene?” Victor asked. “I wouldn’t want to run into him here considering how he met Bette and I at the Battle of Gettysburg.”

“Relax, Victor. I planned for that. Chamberlain graduated in June 1852 and went off to seminary in Bangor, Maine, so we won’t run into him.”

“That’s good,” Victor said, relieved.

“Was Uncle Tom’s Cabin Harriet Beecher Stowe’s first publication, Mr. Greene?”

“No, Harriet was born in 1811 and she had been publishing articles and stories since 1834. She was an accomplished writer, but she had no idea how successful her novel would be. No one did. It was totally unexpected. I compare her novel to the Broadway show Hamilton, an incredible success that no one expected. Let me read you a letter sent to Gamaliel Bailey, who was the editor of an anti-slavery paper published in Washington, The National Era…

Mr. Bailey, Dear Sir: I am at present occupied upon a story, which will be a much longer one than any I have written, embracing a series of sketches which give the lights and shadows of the “patriarchal institution,” written either from observation, incidents which have occurred in the sphere of my personal knowledge, or in the knowledge of my friends. I shall show the best side of the thing and something faintly approaching the worst.

And so, she began a serialization of what would later be the first blockbuster novel in United

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