Harriet Beecher Stowe Writes the Book That Changed America

Little ones, close your eyes and listen. Tonight we travel to a small, cozy house in Maine, a long, long time ago. Harriet Beecher Stowe sat at her kitchen table. The fire crackled softly. The children were asleep upstairs. Harriet dipped her pen into the ink. She had something very important to say. Harriet knew that far to the south, families were being torn apart. Mothers were separated from their children. Fathers were taken from their homes. These families had done nothing wrong. They were enslaved, and that was terribly, terribly unfair. Harriet felt a burning feeling in her heart. She called it a fire of truth. She wrote one page. Then another. Then another. Her sister came to the kitchen door. "Harriet, it is late. Come to bed." "I cannot stop," Harriet said softly. "These people need a voice." She kept writing through the quiet nights. She wrote about a man named Uncle Tom. She wrote about a mother named Eliza who ran across the icy river to save her baby. She wrote about courage. She wrote about love. She called her book Uncle Tom's Cabin. When the book was finished, Harriet held it in her hands. It was small and light. But it carried something enormous inside. The book traveled across America. People read it and wept. People read it and felt the fire of truth too. More and more Americans said the same words Harriet believed: this is wrong, and it must end. Years later, when Harriet met President Lincoln, he smiled at her and said, "So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war." Harriet smiled right back. She had used her pen, not a sword. And love, she knew, was the strongest weapon of all. Now close your eyes, little one. Words can change the world. And so can you.