How to Teach Harriet Beecher Stowe
Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote the first million-seller in publishing history. The book was Uncle Tom's Cabin, and it became an international bestseller in 1852. According to its author, it was sent to her from God, so that she could help to end slavery in America.
Students of all ages will benefit from learning about this woman's place in history. To learn how to teach Harriet Beecher Stowe, simply plan lessons chronologically through her life experiences, from abolitionist to novelist to activist for the Emancipation Proclamation to grieving mother to leader of the Reconstruction effort after the war.
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Things You'll Need
- Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
- Palmetto Leaves by Harriet Beecher Stowe
- computer with internet connection
Instructions
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Introduce your students to The Fugitive Slave Act, assigning them to find out through online searches what year it was passed and what it would have meant to Harriet Beecher Stowe's household, which regularly harbored runaway slaves through the Underground Railroad's Ohio passages. Assign a report on the activities made illegal by the Fugitive Slave Act. What were the Stowes regularly doing in their household in Cincinnati that could have brought a punishment of harsh fines or imprisonment, or both, if they had been caught?
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Assign your students to read Uncle Tom's Cabin and imagine what it would feel like to be Harriet Beecher Stowe, praying for inspiration to write something that would help to end slavery in the United States. Ask them to follow up by finding, online or in the library, a copy of The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, in which Stowe documented all the cases of runaway slaves in her novel and what happened to them in real life. Talk about the difference between fiction and and nonfiction and why the President of the United States might read one but not the other.
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3
Teach a unit on the Emancipation Proclamation and the part that Harriet Beecher Stowe played in convincing President Lincoln to sign it into law. Where was she at Thanksgiving 1872, and where was she on January 1, 1873, when the word came that Lincoln had signed it? What did the Emancipation Proclamation mean to America?
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The Battle of Gettysburg - when was it and where? How many soldiers died, from the north and from the south? What member of Harriet Beecher Stowe's family was wounded there? Who gave the famous speech about it, and when? Explore with your students the symbolic and literal meaning of Gettysburg.
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Address the end of the Civil War: General Robert E. Lee's surrender of the Confederate Army and President Lincoln's assassination less than a week later. Ask your students to find out if the two events were related and if they had anything to do with Harriet Beecher Stowe. What might the country look like now, without Abraham Lincoln to "bind up its wounds?"
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Have your students read Palmetto Leaves and study the meaning of Reconstruction. Why did Harriet Beecher Stowe travel south to Florida every year, after the war, on mission trips to help build schools and churches? What did it have to do with Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address? Would Reconstruction succeed?
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Tips & Warnings
Any one of these tips on How to Teach Harriet Beecher Stowe could be expanded into a lesson of several weeks. Have fun with the questions your students come up with as a result of the questions you pose to them. Help them to learn why Ralph Waldo Emerson once said "There is no history. There is only biography."
If you are teaching young children, it may be upsetting for them to study the details of slavery and of the Civil War. Be sure to choose age-appropriate books and photos so that the violence and sorrow of this period of our history does not overwhelm them.
References
Resources
- Photo Credit civil war cannon 1 image by Jim Parkin from Fotolia.com
