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Uncle Toms Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe with Obbie Tyler Todd | America 250 · Christians Reading Classics

• 0:18
  SPEAKER_02: A thousand lives seemed to be concentrated in that one moment to Eliza.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_02: Her room opened by a side door to the river.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_02: She caught her child and sprang down the steps toward it.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_02: The traitor caught a full glimpse of her just as she was disappearing down the bank, and throwing himself from his horse and calling loudly on Sam and Andy, he was after her like a hound after a deer.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_02: In that dizzy moment, her feet to her scarce seemed to touch the ground, and a moment brought her to the water's edge.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_02: Right on behind her, they came, and nerved with strength such as God gives only to the desperate.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_02: With one wild cry and flying leap, she vated to cheer over the turbid corn by the shore, onto the raft of ice beyond.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_02: It was a desperate leap, impossible to anything but madness and despair.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_02: And Haley, Sam, and Andy instinctively cried out and lifted up their hands as she did it.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_02: The huge green fragment of ice on which she alighted pitched and creaked as her weight came on it.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_02: But she stayed there not for a moment.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_02: With wild cries and desperate energy, she leaped to another and still another cake, stumbling, leaping, slipping, springing upwards again.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_02: Her shoes were gone, her stockings cut from her feet, while blood marked every step.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_02: But she saw nothing, felt nothing, until dimly, as in a dream, she saw the Ohio side and a man helping her up the bank.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_02: So wrote Harriet Beecher Stowe in her best-selling novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, published serially in 1851-52 in The National Era, and then as a book in 1852.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to season two of Christians Reading Classics, a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_02: The theme for this second season is Classics American Christians Should Read in Honor of America's 250th.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_02: I am Nadia Williams, the books editor for Mere Orthodoxy, and the author of the book, Christians Reading Classics, out this past fall was Zondervan Academic.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_02: Today, it is my delight and privilege to talk about Uncle Thomas Cabin with Abi Tyler Todd, historian and an expert on the Beecher family.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_02: He is the author of award-winning book, The Beechers, America's Most Influential Family.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_02: So welcome.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for having me, Nadia.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just delighted to be here.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_02: So I'd like to start with a general question for you.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_02: What is a classic?
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's a great question.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: Because there's so many different kinds of classics, some are fictional, like um Harry Beecher Stowe's, and some are historical.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: I would say that a classic, in in my estimation, is a work, be it fiction or non, that um has that reflects the era in which it was written and has shaped the era in which it was written.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I think it's it's both a it's a it's a window into the time that we can peer in and see something about not only the author, but about the the milieu, if you will, um, but also one that reverberated uh throughout that generation and and generations um obviously after that, seeing as how we we read classics today.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um for instance, I'm I'm reading Edward Gibbons' The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, a little bit in your expertise, I would say.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um and uh and I'm I'm looking into his era, but I'm also looking into uh another era as well.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and it it both reflects the Enlightenment, but also it's shaped our understanding of uh the Roman Empire itself.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: So I would say, yeah, reflecting an era, but also shaping the era and and subsequent eras after it was written.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_02: I like that.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_02: So the idea that it's um it's something that continues to have an influence.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, that's and we're this is a testament right now.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: We're we're sitting here talking about um a work that was pinned in 1851 and yet has parallels and connections and and messages for us today in 20 um 26, um as we as we speak.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um so anyway, I I think that's the real power of a classic.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I would agree.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_02: It's striking.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_02: I was thinking about it because I first read this book, this novel in Russian as a student, like in the Soviet Union.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it was translated all.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it was translated into Russian.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_02: So like that's uh that was my first exposure to this book.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_02: And not a whole lot of American novels were translated into Russian, but this one was.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: Isn't that something?
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: That is incredible.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: Read it in Russian.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_02: So that's a classic that made it into a variety of languages, including Soviet Union, where you know Russian school kids could read it.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's incredible.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah, to your point, not not just transgenerational, but transnational.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um I mean, yeah, the the not just in terms of of uh of of of endurance, but in terms of scope and how many people can read it.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um that's you know, there are some there are some amazing numbers when you consider who read um Uncle Tom's Cabin.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: Like, for instance, I think that the number is that it sold 300,000 copies in the first year, making it instantly, and I think it still is the best-selling book other than the Bible in the 19th century.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: But to think that you would have been reading it um in a Soviet context is just incredible.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's quite the testimony to its power.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, although I suspect part of the reason it was allowed was because it shows America in a somewhat iffy light.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: So that's yes, that we could spend a lot of time just talking about that.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: That's true.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_02: And we may get to that.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_02: But first I want to ask you why um to follow up on um your definition of a classic, why do you think this particular classic is worth reading for Christians in America during the year of America's 250th?
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think two things are important.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: One is that we need to remember, and it is apocryphal, but it's there are so many scholars that say he could have said it.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: And and we all love a good apocryphal quote, don't we?
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: We just can't, we can't.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yes.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: If it's if it if it's seemingly, if it might be true, we have to tell it as if it is.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um this quote that is just it's from Abraham Lincoln uh in 1863, I believe, uh, close to the time that he uh, I believe he had just signed the Emancipation Proclamation or was just going to, um, it may be the end of 1862.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: But she, Harriet Beecher Stowe comes to the White House, you know, she being a five foot seven woman, six woman, he being a six foot four Illinois uh rustic, gangly, you know, and he still kind of has that humor to him.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: And and President Lincoln says something to the effect of so you're the little woman who caused this great war.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think that's a testament to how many Americans saw Uncle Tom.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: So, so to your question, Christians who read this should understand um, both through it's the book itself and through the plays that were generated from this book, that's that's something that often gets overlooked.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: That there were just a uh a host of of dramatizations um from this that shaped the national understanding of slavery and of race.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and a side note, by the way, Harriet Beecher Stowe was initially opposed to her book being turned into a play.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh a little bit of the Beecherism there, a little bit of Lyman Beecher, you know, don't don't go into the theater.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um let's take that, let's take that gambling and that and that liquor and that theater, let's get it out.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, she eventually came around.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, back to your question.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: I think the second reason we should read it, there are, according to one scholar, over a hundred um references, allusions, and quotations from the Bible in the book itself.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, this this little woman, and she became in a in a family of 13, 11, 11 living siblings, uh, she became the most famous in a family of famous people because her pen was so powerful, and it was remembered at the time and still is remembered because of how sermonic it is.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, she doesn't just decry slavery, she she weaves in scripture throughout the uh the book.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and I think that was part of its power.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: It was a fictional book, but it also was laced with scripture.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: And and we can talk about this uh a little bit later, but I think something that gets often overlooked by um what we might call secular historians is the fact that there's a real that theodicy plays itself out in the book.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: I think it is my belief that Harriet's Harriet Beecher Stowe, her bel she believed that the true evil, the truest evil of slavery was that it deprived slaves of seeing the goodness of God and the gospel itself.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and there's a there's a uh a really stunning quote by George Harris uh in um in Ohio when he's when he's kind of I think he had just escaped um meeting Eliza in after she had crossed the Ohio River.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: He says, Is there a God to trust in?
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I've seen things all my life that have made me feel that there can't be a God.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: You Christians don't know how these things look to us.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: There's a God for you, but is there any for us?
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um she was pricking the national conscience by showing the American public and especially the North that slavery didn't just wasn't just a violation of human rights, it was it it projected a false view of God.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: That slaves, if they were in bondage and mistreated that long for that degree, how could they not yoke the the God of the Bible with the people who were enslaving them?
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think that's something that um really we can read today and and think to ourselves, at the very least, I think she she evokes this sense of hey, the gospel we believe is always going to be projected by the way we live it out in our own lives.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so I think that's something that as Christians we can read it knowing that it had national significance, but also that we it has a personal application even today um that we can take note of.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_02: It's a warning.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: It is, it is and she and that that theme, by the way, plays itself out the entire time.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: And here's the thing Uncle Tom, they try to get Uncle Tom to run to Canada, but he does not.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's actually part of the power of the book, is it has your head you have two narratives going on at the same time.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: But Tom makes this powerful quote.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: He says, The God who is here in Kentucky is also the God who is down there in downriver, um, as if to say, I believe in the God here, and he's the same God anywhere I go.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the faith of Uncle Tom, not just in the immutability of God, but the faith of Tom in the Bible is really runs itself out throughout the the whole book.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: And in the book opens up on a plantation owned by the Shelbys in Kentucky.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: And at the beginning, the first chapter, I believe it's the first chapter, George Shelby, the 13-year-old son of the slave owner, is reading the Bible to Uncle Tom at a prayer meeting, and he's reading to these slaves the last chapters of the book of Revelation.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and they love it.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: They're singing Methodist hymns, and he and it's as if Harry Beecher Stowe at the very beginning of the book is seeing, is projecting this vision of the very end when all tribes, tongues, and nations would come together.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so very poetic, very beautiful, very powerful, and laced with scripture.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_02: That's that is powerful.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_02: So, since it's impossible to talk about this without talking about the Beecher family, tell us a bit more.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, this is what you just wrote your magisterial biography of the Beechers about.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_02: So tell us about the Beecher family, how uh and a little bit more about how Harriet fits into this story.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I look at Harriet Beecher Stowe through the lens of her father, her siblings.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, to a degree, I guess we should all do that if we have the uh the ability to, but it's just more difficult for a family of 13 kids.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um a little note some people uh sometimes forget that Harriet was actually the fourth daughter.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but there was a child who passed away whose name was Harriet.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um so she was actually the second Harriet in the family.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, not to be confused with Harriet Lyman's second wife.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: It gets confusing.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but essentially Lyman Beecher was a famous revivalist.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: Aside from Charles Finney, he was, I think, without question, the most famous revivalist of his time.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and he was also the champion for temperance.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: He was the most anti-drank, anti-drunkenness temperance advocate you could find in the 1800s.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: And uh Southerners didn't really like him because he was a, you know, he was a quote-unquote Yankee.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, Irish Catholics didn't like him because he was always meddling in their business and trying to shut their saloons down.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, he was just this classic uh Northern New England Puritan-esque moral reformer.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: And he kind of passed that on to his kids, and you can see that in Uncle Tom, in Uncle Tom's cabin.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because, you know, at the very beginning, Uncle Tom, I think the phrase is quote unquote got religion at a camp meeting.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I mean, there you go.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's revivalism uh par excellence.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure that um that that Lyman would have approved with so many uh Methodist illusions.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but that itself was revived, was, uh was Beecherism too, because she uh there was always this kind of um pan-denominational ethos that kind of ran itself through um the Beecher ministries.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um but anyway, back to the family.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: Uh there, I mean, it's hard to go down the list, but the oldest is Catherine.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: She's the inventor of home economics.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the second oldest is William.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: He's probably the lesser known.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: He was called William the Unlucky because he got dismissed from pastor, it's from opening his mouth, typically against slavery.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Edward was the president of Illinois College.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: He was the first to actually take a public defense against slavery.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: He wrote uh riots uh in Alton uh in 1837, which was essentially defending uh the man that we know today as the martyr of free speech, Elijah Lovejoy.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um Mary ran with her with her uh sister uh one of the very first women's quote-unquote seminaries, I guess is what they would say at that time.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: They were huge education reformers.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: Charles, uh this kind of gets in, we'll get talking later, but Charles actually wrote a famous treatise called uh The Duty of Christians to uh uh to disobey wicked laws.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: So so Charles had already written publicly against the fugitive slave law before Harriet writes Uncle Tom's Cabin.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: And and and I might be jumping the gun here, but that is the primary impetus for the book itself.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: It is it is a missile at the American public, if you will.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: It is a it is a it is a it is a conscience-pricking work to try to galvanize the American public into seeing just how evil, um idolatrous, uh, dare I say, uh from the lens of Stowe, um, and how violent um slavery really is.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and she does throw, and she does in a way, I think the work, I might be, I'm now I'm just full jumping the gun here.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: Go for it.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: It is the power, Uncle Tom's cabin.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: She's doing what her by the way, she had seven brothers who were all became ministers, which is incredible.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but she she takes the power of evangelical preaching and she and she essentially injects it into a fictional work.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think this work proves that fiction has the power to influence people in a way that oratory uh oftentimes does not.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um she was able to do in a fictional work what many orators, including Daniel Webster, um, including Henry Clay, was not able to do uh for the North.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: And um it really was a sermon in many ways.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: Back to the to the family, uh Henry Ward Beecher was the most famous preacher of his time.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's that is not hyperbole.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um and then you had um uh who am I forgetting?
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: Isabella, her younger sister, became one of the leading uh women's rights advocates for her time.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um you had James, who became one of the very first recruiters for an all um African American regiment in the Civil War.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I mean, the list goes down on and on.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: Thomas was a famous or a well-known preacher.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: He he he he actually presided over the wedding of Mark Twain and his wife.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I mean, you they're just rubbing shoulders all the time with famous people, and uh they are shapers uh for their generation, uh, but no one shaped their generation quite like Harriet.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_02: What a family.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, indeed.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why I was so surprised no one had written a book.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: Someone had, but it was someone who had really, if I may, I want to speak, speak well of it.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um they just didn't have as much of an understanding of religion.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: And if you don't have an understanding of religion, you just don't know the beechers.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and uh John Fiat, if I can bring up Dr.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: Fiat, he the first thing he said to me over email was, I actually thought about writing this book once.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think a lot of people can say that because they just come up all the time.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but it was to my surprise that no one had written it, uh written one in over 40 years.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_02: And you you make a really good argument for like we can't talk about the 19th century, America in the 19th century, without understanding this family.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: I think so.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm a little I'm a little partial, but I I think that they're they're kind of the forest gumps, if you will, of the 19th century.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: They just show up all the time in these these uh pivotal moments.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um but Uncle Tom's cabin is a landmark for uh the turning point, I think, in public sentiment in the north.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's probably how I would put it.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it is a land for Christians today to see that biblical values, principles had direct bearing upon the turning of the tide against slavery in the North, because a lot of people, you know, we have such a simplistic view of the Civil War era.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like the North was always against slavery, and the South, you know, you know, they were just warring like dogs and cats.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that's just not how it was.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, the the in Daniel Webster, for instance, and we haven't gotten to this yet, but the the compromise of 1850.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Here we go again, talking about Kentucky, my my my home state.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: Henry Clay devises this compromise where you have essentially California admitted as a free state, and then you have uh the slave trade eliminated in DC, but the compromise comes in the North allowing what becomes known as the fugitive slave law, which is that now uh the federal government is uh responsible for the rendition of runaway slaves back to the South.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: And that just ignites, oh my goodness, the just the explosion, the furor of the North or many people in the North, because now it's as if the North has to be complicit in slavery.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: Now it's as if slavery is not just bound.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: That was that was the the one thing kind of keeping it all in in play, or at least it uh seemingly peaceable to that point was this this not this thing.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: Kind of even Abraham Lincoln himself was kind of saying, hey, as long as it stays in the South, we're good.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: But now it's as if, hey, if they come out and and come into your backyard, you are responsible, or federal marshals are responsible for pegging the back.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: And now it's as if the North is like, wait a minute, now I've got blood on my hands.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um so once that happens, um, Daniel Webster, there's three men in the 19th century, at least at that time in the 1850s, who are really the three outstanding orators for their era: Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, uh, the New Englander, and then you have John C.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: Calhoun.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: And each one kind of represents the sections of the country.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Henry Clay is in the west, Daniel Webster is in the north, John C.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: Calhoun is in the south.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: And Harriet calls Daniel Webster a fallen angel because Daniel Webster seemingly betrays New England by supporting this compromise.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: And she makes a trip to Boston in maybe 1849, 1850, and she sees that the ministers in Boston are all afraid to speak out too publicly against um the fugitive slave law.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: And she writes to her father and says, I wish that a Martin Luther would would be raised up to set this community right.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um and in some ways she takes it upon herself to set the community right by writing a fictional work that would galvanize the American public.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that explains the time period when she wrote it.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: So yes.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: It does.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and she always credited God with um, she always credited God as the author of the book.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, that was another thing that was that that made people roll their eyes, especially in the South.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but she didn't do it sanctimoniously.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: She truly believed that.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and she did it with the help of her her siblings, Elizabeth or uh Catherine watched the kids.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, who's better to watch the kids than the woman that invented home economics?
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um and uh who's running women's schools.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: By the way, that's how uh Harriet got her her start in education, is she was just working for her big sister's school in New England.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um Harriet was born in Litchfield, I believe.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: But um, but yeah, so so anyway, there's there's this fugitive law.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: Basically, once she talks with Henry, and Henry is is is is conducting what we call today mock slave auctions at his uh church in Brooklyn, uh, where essentially he's taking slaves and freeing them, but it's it's as if they're auctioning.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the this is probably we would say this would probably be very offensive today in 21st century, but they're acting as if they're buying the slaves, but they're actually buying their freedom.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um and Harriet just thinks this is just fantastic.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so she has the prodding of her siblings, the help of her sisters.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Lyman is there, he's retired now, he's writing a theological work.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I've always thought it's ironic that a man who devoted himself to theology and writing, he's writing his main theological treatise while down the very same hallway, his uncredentialed um daughter is writing a book that will shape the American future way more than anything he's ever said, you know.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um it is, and I don't say this exaggeratively, but it is no there's no question that the the women in this family were oh my goodness, they were they were they could go toe-to-toe with their brothers, I'll just say that.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um they that but they each kind of conduct this moral influence project, and um I think Harriet just takes her own pulpit, if you will, by uh by writing this book, and and she gets a a national audience that is absolutely riveted, um, such that a uh I think no historian has denied uh that I know of that this book essentially turns the tide in in the north uh to a a hostility to uh to slavery.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't want to speak too exaggerately.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: The historian in me doesn't want to make, doesn't want to paint with too broad a brush.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but there is a it is a um an inflection point, if you will.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: Most Christian parents I know want to pass their faith on to their kids, but there's a tension.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: The work of discipling your children has largely been outsourced to church programs like Sunday school, youth group, and children's ministry.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: And those things are great.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: But the research actually suggests that when faith formation is treated like a class to complete, the kids graduate from church the same way they graduate from high school.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: They just move on.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: Mirror Orthodoxy has put together a free ebook called Spiritual Formation for the Family that takes a different approach.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's rooted in the life of the household and the family and takes the spiritual formation of the family seriously.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's practical, it's theologically serious, and it's free.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: You can get access to it and even download a free PDF of it at Mereorthodoxy.com slash family.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's Mereorthodoxy.com slash family to get free access to spiritual formation for the family.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_02: Well, for those who might not have read this book, obviously you're you're explaining very well why someone should pick it up now if they haven't read it yet.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_02: Or if you haven't read it in a while, this is a good time to reread.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_02: But how would you introduce this novel to someone who might not have read it before?
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_02: And what should we pay attention to going into it?
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: The book has a way of it's critiqued.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_01: I'll start with some some of the critiques.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_01: Some of the critiques of of it were that um, you know, the like even the word Uncle Tom today, you know, Uncle Tom, somebody may not have ever read Uncle Tom's Cabin, but they know what an Uncle Tom is.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh uh Uncle Tom today is is is such essentially a byword for uh an African American who's kind of sycophantic uh to uh to white people.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um and that does not do justice to the complexity of her characters.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think there was a a scholar in the 70s who famously said that it was romantic racialism, and what they meant by that is that Stowe does not promote racial hierarchy, but she does promote almost fixed racial differences.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and that that might be the most worthy critique.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it first of all, for instance, uh uh getting back to the complexity of their characters, it opens in a plantation in Kentucky, the Shelby's, and the complexity is from the beginning, you have this couple, a slave owner and his wife, and the wife is the one teaching the slaves the Bible.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um she she wants these people, she wants in in some parts that was illegal to allow them to convene and even learn the Bible.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but and then the complexity of the man himself, Arthur St.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_01: uh Arthur Shelby, I think, and uh he has to sell, he thinks he has to sell Tom and Eliza and Little Harry because he's running out of money.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so this moral complexity, uh, I think that to the beginning of the book starts out with um the fact that slavery doesn't just it doesn't just put people in bondage, it also creates a state of moral bondage where people are you know tearing apart families, they're making orphans of children.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um even the idea that at one point somebody's like, um, you know, well, what's Tom gonna do when he gets down there?
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_01: Where's his where's his wife?
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_01: And and somebody says something like, I think one of the traders says, Well, you can just find a new wife.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's like an entire new moral code.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's so it just makes it just laces both slave and slave owner with a with a degree of hypocrisy, and and and it's just abominable.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think to answer your question, Nadia, I think that to begin this book, it's it's it's Stowe telling the story of slavery through the eyes of slaves, which itself was somewhat revolutionary.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, not she wasn't the first to do it, but she was uh trying to tell a very moral story.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_01: And um I think that that's probably what draws in a reader, and especially a Christian, is um, you know, there's even the slave owners themselves believe in the Bible.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's this quote uh by Mrs.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_01: Shelby.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_01: Once Mr.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: Shelby tells her that he's selling Eliza downriver, so to speak, um, he she says, I've told Eliza to take care of her child.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_01: I've I've told uh her to preach the the Bible to her her baby, I've told her to raise uh him up in the fear of the Lord, and now I'm gonna tell her that I that we're just selling her child downriver to make a little money.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um so there is a um an angst and a real I I think that is why Uncle Tom's cabin is critiqued so much, is people don't it really takes a believer to see what Stowe is doing.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: She's she's not critiquing slavery in a way that an unbeliever did, she's not critiquing slavery in a way that William Lloyd Garrison did.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_01: She's trying to show the real evil of slavery, and it has it has it has to do with civil rights, but it has so much more to do than than that.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_01: The truest evil of slavery was that it robbed them of their faith in some ways.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but of course, we see that Tom, Tom doesn't run away.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: He is gentle, he is submissive, he is pure.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, some people thought that was stereotypical.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_01: I guess it was.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_01: I think a lot of people thought that she was saying that white people can't be those things that only black people can.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but ultimately I think she sets Uncle Tom above them all, and he does become a Christ figure.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's where the Christian reading this book will see that he he essentially dies at the end because he will not sin, he will not go, he will not give in, he will not slap other slaves, he will also not rat out other slaves.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and Simon Legree, who is a lot of ways like the devil, in fact, at one point he says, Join my church, I'm the church.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and uh Tom says something to the effect of uh, and this is down in southern Louisiana, he says something like, Um, you didn't make me, you don't own my soul.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_01: You can own my body, but you don't own my soul.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_01: And um he dies, and then by the end of the book, you have at least two slaves who come to Christ.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh there's there's conversion everywhere.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_01: And even even uh Augustine St.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_01: Clair, what a theologically loaded uh name, he is this kind of cynical, somewhat indifferent slave owner who at the very end he sees that he sees the beauty of of African Americans, and um he kind of renounces slavery.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_01: And there's there's there's conversions everywhere.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_01: George Shelby, that 13-year-old boy, he grows up and becomes uh he he frees his slaves.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh George and Eliza become missionaries to Africa.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Stowe was critiqued for that because it was they people thought she was promoting colonization.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um but I I think that's the real beauty of it all is that um Tom is so loving and so true that his ability to withstand evil and suffer uh ends up changing everyone around them.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um and also the the the young the young girl who um he becomes friends with who reads the Bible to him.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, her name is Evangeline.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, can you get more gospel loaded than that?
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's a little girl in a broad-shouldered, strong African-American man.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and the the contrast between them, that these two demographics would have nothing in common, seemingly, and yet they have Christ in common.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think that's something a Christian reading this book can see.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_01: That someone who's just in an office somewhere who's going to critique the book and rip it to shreds because it's not feminist enough, or it's not, you know, it's not uh sensitive enough.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_01: I I think that's what they'll miss is the Christ-likeness of Tom and the conversions that are that take place because of his faith.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_02: That is really striking.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_02: I hadn't thought of it in those terms.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_02: Although you see all of the characters develop as they're thinking about the place of slavery in their society and their world.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_02: So, like for Mrs.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_02: Shelby, um, I read her this time around as someone who's almost like naive.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_02: She hadn't realized, like, oh, this is real.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_02: Until it happens to people she loves in her own household, it wasn't real.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_01: Hmm.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know what, that's true.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_01: And to piggyback on what you've said, I think Miss Ofelia is she has a little bit of that um dysphoria, but in the other way, she's against slavery all the way, but yet she didn't it wasn't real to her unless she um she she was against it in principle, but she didn't have the heart for the slave.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um and that's another thing, and and and we'd be remiss if we didn't mention this, but Simon Legree is from New England.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and Augustine St.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_01: Clair is from New England, and so she is pointing a big finger at her fellow New Englanders as if to say, hey, just don't think because of your pedigree or where you're from that you um that you're exempt from this critique.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_01: If you don't have the heart to desire the salvation and the freedom of these people, uh if you don't have that, then you're you're you're in need of reformation.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but that's a good point about Mrs.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_01: Shelby.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_01: She is a bit naive.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_02: So we have these two plot narratives that start at the Shelby plantation.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_02: So the slaves who are being sold away, uh, Tom, we have his story that we follow throughout, and then Eliza and her husband and child.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_02: So what does what does Harriet Beecher Stowe want us to do with these like contrasting narratives?
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think one thing is um that that slaves, regardless of whether they're heading north or south, each has their own story.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um there is a ton going on in Ohio uh with Eliza and Harry on the run, meeting back with George Harrison, her husband, in Ohio somewhere.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way, the Ohio River kind of, and you read it, um, kind of serves as like the Jordan River in some ways.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh can't can't Canada becomes Canaan uh in many ways.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and dare I say the Deep South becomes a kind of hell um for her in those terms.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you cannot read Simon Legree and think that there's any, I mean he he's he quotes the Bible, but in it misuses it.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, just like the devil and um and then you know, Canada is this idea of freedom, but to get across that river was you know, to get to the promised land.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_01: But I think they encounter one of the big one of the things I think she wants us to see is, you know, a lot of a lot of slaves, just because you got across the Ohio River didn't mean you were out.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_01: Because of the fugitive slave law, you had to keep trucking.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_01: And um, when they come across these Quakers, um, I think that's the the the there was a powerful scene where George sits down at their table and says, I've never sat down with white people as equals.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so um I must say the the I'm an evangelical pastor, um, and I don't see Quaker theology as sound or orthodox.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but historian, his the historian in me also sees that there were a great many Quakers um during that era who who showed compassion.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and I think that Stowe, historically speaking, I think in terms of this, the the book itself, Stowe does a good job of showing that um that there were different people who would have never worshipped together, who would have worked to who would have worked collectively, be at the Underground Railroad or elsewhere, um, for the freedom of the slave.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so um the the the the I I think I'd be also I don't want to leave out the fact that there's actually this scene, the birds, there's senator bird in the in this in Cincinnati, and the slaves come to his house and he's just he has voted for um the fugitive slave law.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and Mrs.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_01: Byrd's like, I'm gonna break it.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so you have this you have this dynamic between a husband and wife where the husband has just actually enacted the law, and his own wife is like, I'm gonna take, I'm gonna take them in.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so you see again the complexity.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think that's what people miss out on uh a lot when they look back at this era, is especially in Kentucky.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_01: I I remember being raised in the state of Kentucky, and I I think I have like a great great great grandfather who fought for the North, uh, Isaac Todd, I believe is his name.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_01: But he had brothers and nephews and cousins and who fought for the South.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um only the state of Kentucky could you have only the state of Kentucky could give you both Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis at the same time.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so even in my own upbringing, I I I remember kind of seeing the complexity of in just in your own family, you could divide along that issue.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you see it very vividly uh here in this book.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_01: I think that.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things uh Stowe wants us to see for Tom is that um one, there was a much there was it was very different.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_01: The the the state of slavery was much different from Kentucky to Louisiana.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so it was it was uh very you know not all slaves were treated the same.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think she does a good job there.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I think ultimately it's about each I think ultimately it's about each slave has to live out their own faith in their own way.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, Tom did not when Cassie and um forgot her name, but there's two slaves that it try to escape and do escape from Simon Legree's plantation, and Tom does not prevent them from doing that.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_01: Tom merely says, I'm not going to escape myself.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think that you know, just if we could put ourselves in their shoes and think that every every slave is having to make their own decisions.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_01: So you have not only the onus of trying to face slavery, but you also have interesting dynamics between the slaves themselves.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um the one of the inspirations, there's two, I would say there were two main inspirations for Uncle Tom's Cabin.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_01: One was um a work written by Timothy Dwight Weld, who was one of the leading agents for the American Anti-Slavery Society.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_01: He wrote American Slavery as It Is, uh, just stories about slavery and the evils uh of that institution, and Stowe ate it up.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_01: And then you had a work in 1849, which was a slave narrative, and it was written by a man named Josiah Henson, and he actually escaped to Canada.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_01: He escaped through my hometown of Owensboro, Kentucky, um, is said to have escaped in Davis County, and uh he is sometimes said to be the true Uncle Tom, um, even though he he did escape.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but she drew some of her material from uh that work.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, and I think that that's part of what Stowe is trying to tell, is that every slave is kind of experiencing slavery in their own way, and she does that very vividly through two contrasting narratives in the same book.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_02: So I have to ask now, um, considering the evang uh the evangelical influence like in her own uh life and how she brings it into the novel, how did her evangelical readers take it?
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_02: So you mentioned the book uniformly shaped public opinion, but what about evangelical specifically?
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_01: Well, depended well on where you lived and and what your parents did.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um like one thing that makes me laugh or made me laugh in the book when I was writing the um Beecher biography was reading what the sit the I think it's the Southern Literary Messenger.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh was just this fiery Southern newspaper.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's either in I don't know if it was Charleston, it might have been Virginia.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_01: I forgot where it was based out of, but they just lambasted Stowe.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but then again, you had other um periodicals like the New York Evangelist, uh, which was a very pro-revival.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was funded by the Tappins, uh, you know, just loved it.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_01: If you were new school Presbyterian congregationalist, you probably loved it.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh if you were a Southern Baptist, you probably hated it.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that's an indictment against my tribe there, but you know, we we we didn't at that time get slavery right.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it really depended.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_01: I I will say this.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um you revivalism and reform during that era, the 1850s, really yoked themselves together.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so if you were a temperance advocate in the Midwest who was part of an anti-Saloon league, you probably loved this book.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um but uh, you know, at the same time, I I actually wrote in my in my book, I came across a um a temperance advocate.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh she was a Methodist in North Carolina, and she wouldn't read the book.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I think it cut across regional lines.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um Charles Dickens liked it, but Charles Dickens, not an evangelical, but uh I think he he did not appreciate that Stowe suggested that Africa, and she says it outright.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_01: She says that Africa is essentially that the first will be last and the last will be first, that essentially Africa is going to be raised above them all.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that essentially Africa is being being refined.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um Dickens didn't like that.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and if you know anything about Charles Dickens, you would have it's no surprise that he would think that.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um you have uh the poet, uh not Whittier, but uh Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, uh, who really appreciated it.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um they understood that it had a moral effect.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_01: Garrison liked the message and knew that it was gonna hit hard, but Garrison did not like the idea that you know blacks were the ones who needed to be submissive and pure, and whites didn't need to be sub, you know, pure and honest.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_01: And he thought that's what she was saying, which of course she wasn't.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think that Douglas liked it.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_01: I think he would probably take exception with some of the stereotypes.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'm leaving out one, I forgot what it was.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_01: There was a lot, the reception was uh very if you had any kind of if you were a northern evangelical, you probably enjoyed it to some degree.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_01: Although I must say she makes reference in a footnote to Reverend Joel Parker, who was a northern evangelical who did not uh denounce slavery.
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um and there were many of those, I think I should include that.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and he actually was gonna he was trying to sue her.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he actually brought a live suit against her uh because she actually footnoted his own name.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and she makes reference to like a minister who thinks that institution of slavery is not that bad, and then she was like, like this guy.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um he didn't he didn't enjoy having his name plastered for hundreds of thousands of people to see.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um so yeah, I guess it's it's really hard to say how evangelicals received it.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but if you were a pro-revival evangelical, uh you were probably very sympathetic to it.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_02: I'm fascinated also that Dickens read it early.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_02: So how um how was it received in England?
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_02: And did other European countries like read it pretty early?
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_01: I think it eventually got over to England because she made a trip there.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um and as did uh Henry Ward Beecher.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_01: When Henry Ward Beecher eventually went over, this was during the Civil War, Henry Ward was called by some British newspaper Henry Ward Beecher Stowe.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um I bet he loved that.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_01: He couldn't get out of his uh sister's shadow.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_01: But you know what?
• 52:07
  SPEAKER_01: He probably didn't care because Henry and Harriet were were besties.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that I thought that was really cool when I was uh reading the book was um certain siblings kind of track together.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's just natural.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um they were right there in order uh in terms of the the birth chronology of of that that whole crew.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_01: And um I think you know I I think that they were pretty tight.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_01: But when she goes to to London, it's kind of like what we would today just call like a book tour.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um she is well received.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think that they they hail her for a few reasons.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_01: One, because of the what she had written on, you know, Britain always all being well before the United States in terms of abolishing the slave trade.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um there's this there's this it's a funny book.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uncle Tom's Cabin is a funny book.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_01: I know that we don't say that because it's very somber and we're talking about something that's evil, but humor is one of the devices that she uses to keep people in the book.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_01: It it's un undoubtedly does that.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Mr.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_01: Haley, who is the slave trader at the very beginning, he's probably the second most evil person in the book.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_01: And he he's saying all these just vile things, and he's so self-proud, self-important, you know.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_01: And he makes this quote, he he makes this statement, he says something like, I never want to split up the mom and the and the child, you know, that's that'd be inhumane.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_01: He goes, because once the mom is split up, you can't get anything out of her.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so so I just sell them together, you know.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_01: And she makes some statement, says, um, believing himself to be a second Wilberforce.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_01: Just she makes little pokes the whole time and kind of mocks them.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_01: And it's funny.
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and um I just noted that because she she was well aware of what was going on with England.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um the other reason I think they received her well is because there was a national print culture that was already kind of taking place by that time, and there were all there were other notable women authors.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_01: They none of them none of them kind of uh elevated to the level that she did.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but she was not the first woman on the scene to begin writing fiction.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, there were British authors, and I think they liked that she was a woman.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that was scandalous in itself.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't even mention that.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, in the South, you know, they would have just, you know, that was like, what in the world is this?
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I think it's worth including by the time the Civil War begins and England takes a an officially neutral stance, does not side with the North or the South.
• 55:10
  SPEAKER_01: Harriet Beecher Stowe has some very harsh words for the women and the men of England, saying something like, Hey, you like this book and you denounce slavery, and you loved how we came down on slave owners, but yet you can't muster enough will to side with the north.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um so she has she has some beef with uh with British women and she has a uh a published work or a letter.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but yes, her book is well received in England.
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_01: I can't speak to how she was received on the continent.
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_01: I am almost positive that it was translated.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure that it had taken some time.
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_01: Whether that was by the Civil War or not, I'm not sure.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um you you and your mentioning of Soviet Russia makes me wonder just how far uh that influence went, but but I don't know.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_01: I I'm sure that I included maybe something in the book, but um that's something I've been convicted of as of late.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh American religious historians, we we we it takes a lot sometimes for us to peer across the pond.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think uh ancient classical historians such as yourself, you keep us honest and you remind us that uh there's much more going on than in the United States.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_02: So well, I'm guilty of the other extreme of not looking enough at my own backyard.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_02: Ovi, thank you so much.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_02: You've given us wonderful reasons to pick up this book and also your book, uh, which would go really well in explaining kind of the complexities of Harriet Beecher Stowe's work and world um in the year of America's 250th.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_02: But I want to conclude with a question we always ask: what is a classic you wish you had written and why?
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_02: And it can be American or any other.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_01: As I said, I'm reading Edward Gibbons' Fallen or Decline and Fall of Roman Empire.
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_01: The book is not, as you well know, is not kind to Christians or the Christian faith.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so I'm gonna take a little bit of a different approach.
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_01: I I wish I would have written that work so that I could have recorded with as much incisive knowledge and that I wish that I could have written exactly what he wrote because it the book is really compelling.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_01: He I right now, uh for instance, I love how he can tell little anecdotes but also keep a 10,000-foot view of what's going on.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_01: I just think it's great.
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_01: But I wish I would have written it so that I could have written what he wrote without this animus toward the Christian faith somehow helping to contribute to the demise of the the greatest, you know, civilization that ever existed.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_01: I I just think that's unfair.
• 58:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I wish I would have written it so that I could write what he wrote, but without the hostility toward uh Christianity.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_02: So I like that.
• 58:16
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I do have good news for you.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_02: There is a historian who has kind of done that in his career, and that's Peter Brown.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_02: So Peter Brown so essentially the Peter Brown.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_02: Well, so his entire career, so what um he's credited with establishing the field of late antiquity, and it's essentially a response to Gibbon's view that, and Gibbon very much guided by his animus against Christianity.
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_02: He says, Well, there's a decline and fall of the Roman Empire.
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_02: Like once Christians arrived, everything goes like downhill.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_02: But Peter Brown argues once Christians arrived, there's no decline and fall.
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_02: There's a very different world.
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_02: We call it late antiquity.
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_01: I like that.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 58:57
  SPEAKER_01: I I thank you for mentioning that.
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's something that see, this is why this is why ancient historians and American historians need to hang out.
• 59:05
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I married once, so I get to hang out with him.
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_02: And although actually he started out as an ancient historian and he decided, yeah, a year into his PhD program in ancient history, he decided he wanted archives that he could actually like look at and touch.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_02: So he apostatized.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_01: He defected.
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_01: Defected to uh American history.
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_01: That's uh that's interesting.
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_01: I did not know that about your husband.
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_01: That's uh you all are fascinating people.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um but Nadia, I I thank you so much for inviting me on this on this podcast.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_01: I I I really took it seriously and had to keep myself abreast uh uh once again of this work, which was a a profit to me um because I had even forgotten some some golden nuggets that that are in Uncle Tom's cabin.
• 59:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um but I really did enjoy this show.
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for inviting me.
• 1:00:01
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much, Ubby.
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm so grateful for your work.