“The story appeared first as a serial in the National Era, an antislavery paper, beginning in June 1851. She did some research in Boston and corresponded with Frederick Douglass on certain details. But for all that, the book would be written more out of something within her, something she knew herself about bondage and the craving for liberation, than from any documentary sources or personal investigation of black slavery in the South. Indeed she really knew very little about black slavery in the South. McCullough, David. Brave Companions (p. 43). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition. Calvin thought the book had little importance. He wept over it, but he wept over most of the things she wrote. Her publisher warned that her subject was unpopular and said she took too long to tell her story. On the advice of a friend who had not read the manuscript, she decided to take a 10 percent royalty on every copy sold instead of a 50-50 division of profit or losses, as had also been offered to her. She herself expected to make no money from it; she thought it inadequate and was sure her friends would be disappointed with her. Within a week after publication ten thousand copies had been sold. The publisher had three power presses running twenty-four hours a day. In a year sales in the United States came to more than three hundred thousand. The book made publishing history right from the start. In England, where Mrs. Stowe had no copyright and therefore received no royalties, sales were even more stupendous. A million and a half copies were sold in about a year’s time. The book had a strange power over almost everyone who read it then, and for all its Victorian mannerisms and frequent patches of sentimentality much of it still does. Its characters have a vitality of a kind comparable to the most memorable figures in literature. There is sweep and power to the narrative, and there are scenes that once read are not forgotten. The book is also rather different from what most people imagine, largely because it was eventually eclipsed by the stage version, which Mrs. Stowe had nothing to do with (and from which she never received a cent), and which was probably performed more often than any play in the language, What the book did at the time was to bring slavery out into the open and show it for what it was, in human terms. No writer had done that before. Slavery had been argued over in the abstract, preached against as a moral issue, its evils whispered about in polite company. But the book made people at that time feel what slavery was about. (“The soul of eloquence is feeling,†old Lyman had written.) Moreover, Harriet Stowe had made a black man her hero, and she took his race seriously, and no American writer had done that before. When war came, everyone told her it was her war, and she thought so too. she went down to Washington when he finally proclaimed that the slaves would be free, and was received privately in the White House. The scene is part of our folklore. “So this is the little woman who made this big war,†Lincoln is supposed to have said as he shook her hand. Unwittingly she had written the abolitionist manifesto, although she did not consider herself an abolitionist. She agreed with her father that abolitionists “were like men who would burn down their houses to get rid of the rats.†She was not a crusader pure and simple. She never considered herself an extremist, and she seldom took an extreme position on any issue. She was a reformer, McCullough, David. Brave Companions (pp. 46-47). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition. McCullough, David. Brave Companions (p. 46). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition. McCullough, David. Brave Companions (p. 46). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition. McCullough, David. Brave Companions (p. 45). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition. McCullough, David. Brave Companions (pp. 44-45). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition. McCullough, David. Brave Companions (p. 44). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition. McCullough, David. Brave Companions (p. 44). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition. McCullough, David. Brave Companions (p. 44). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition. ”
