especially from slaveholders, who insisted that she had no real knowledge of plantation life and that she had exaggerated the darker side of slavery. These protests she undertook to meet in A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853), in which she made public the facts and the documents on which her previous book had been founded. A second slavery novel, Dred, A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp (1856), in spite of its merit, did not duplicate the success of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Mrs. Stowe continued to write until she was past seventy, but never scored another notable literary triumph. The best of her later novels are those dealing with the passing town life of New England.

6. Henry Ward Beecher.-Of Mrs. Stowe's six brothers who became ministers, the most famous was Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887). He assumed the pastorate of Plymouth Church in Brooklyn when it was organized in 1847, and held that charge until his death. Previous to the Civil War he was a most zealous and aggressive leader in the antislavery group. During the war he visited England and boldly proclaimed the cause of the North to audiences that were usually in sympathy with the South, because England needed Southern cotton to keep her mills going. More than once he was threatened with violence, but he refused to let the mob spirit deter him. On October 16, 1863, he addressed in Liverpool one of the most unruly audiences that any orator was ever called upon to face. Many of those present did not expect him to leave the meeting alive. For three hours he was interrupted by hisses, laughter, and jeers, but he kept his temper and finished his speech. Four days later at Exeter Hall, in London, he declared:

We believe that the war is a test of our institutions; that it is a lifeand-death struggle between the two principles of liberty and slavery— that it is the cause of the common people all the world over. We believe that every struggling nationality on the globe will be the stronger if we conquer this odious oligarchy of slavery, and that every oppressed people in the world will be the weaker if we fail. . . . Standing by my cradle, standing by my hearth, standing by the altar of the church, standing by all the places that mark the name and memory of heroic men who poured out their blood and lives for principle, I declare that in ten or twenty years of war we will sacrifice everything we have for principle. If the love of popular liberty is dead in Great Britain, you will not understand us; but if the love of liberty lives as it once lived, and has worthy successors of those renowned men that were our ancestors as much as yours, and whose example and principles we inherit as so much seed-corn in a new and fertile land, then you will understand our firm, invincible determination—to fight this war through, at all hazards and at every cost.

After the war few men were more earnest in their efforts to bring about complete reconciliation and exchange of goodwill between North and South. The spirit in which Henry Ward Beecher went about that noble work was well expressed by Charles Sumner in the Senate when (in 1868) the Southern States were readmitted to representation in Congress:

High above States, as high above men, are those commanding principles which cannot be denied with impunity. They will be found in the Declaration of Independence expressed so clearly that all can read them. Though few, they are mighty. There is no humility in bending to their behests. As man rises in the scale of being while walking in obedience to the Divine Will, so is a State elevated by obedience to these everlasting truths. Nor can we look for harmony in our country until these principles bear unquestioned sway, without any interdict from the States. That unity for which the Nation longs, with peace and reconciliation in its train, can be assured only through the

Equal rights of All, proclaimed by the Nation everywhere within its limits, and maintained by the national arm. Then will the Constitution be filled and inspired by the Declaration of Independence, so that the two shall be one with a common life, a common authority, and a common glory.

CHAPTER VI

THE GLORY THAT WAS BOSTON

The Pride of Leadership-Nathaniel Hawthorne-A Sombre Puritan Background-The Prose Laureate of New England-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow-A Child of Good Fortune-John Greenleaf Whittier-A Lover of Freedom-James Russell Lowell—An Independent ScholarOliver Wendell Holmes-A Joyful Puritan―Prose Writers-New England Historians.

1. The Pride of Leadership.-About 1835 there began in New England a literary ascendancy that gradually made its way to undisputed pre-eminence. As the writers of the Knickerbocker school in New York passed middle age they produced books that added but little to their fame. No high quality of inspiration marked the later works of Irving, Cooper, or Bryant. Meanwhile a small group of younger men were establishing an aristocracy of intellect about Harvard College, in Boston, and in the near-by village of Concord. In clubs, lyceums, and in less formal gatherings they discussed philosophy, religion, and literature. The latest publications by British writers were eagerly read and Continental literature received much attention. Several of the leaders studied abroad and brought back the inspiration they had gained in foreign universities or from contact with notable men. Possibly these writers were too exclusive and too self-conscious of their intellectual leadership, but for at least half a century they controlled the literary destinies of America. The publishing house of Ticknor & Fields in

Boston brought out most of their books, and in due time The Atlantic Monthly became their most notable magazine. Nowhere else in the country was there at that period any intellectual group to compare with them in importance.

The fame of literary New England reached its culmination in the work of Hawthorne, Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, and Holmes. About these distinguished leaders were gathered a host of minor writers who made interesting contributions to our literature. Most of the representative historians of the period were likewise New Englanders; in fact, Bancroft, Prescott, Motley, and Parkman were all natives of Massachusetts, although only Parkman was born in Boston. Moreover, most of these New England authors lived to be old men and were active during their later years, thus maintaining for a longer period the literary supremacy of their clan. With the passing of the more eminent “Brahmins” between 1880 and 1890, the influence of New England began to wane. Viewed in the light of our later literary achievements, we are now inclined to attach less value to most of their writings.

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)

2. A Sombre Puritan Background.-Among the notable Pilgrims who came to New England on the Arbella in 1630 was a Major William Hathorne, as the name was then spelled. He and his son after him were long famous in the bustling little shipping town of Salem, Mass., as Indian fighters and as faithful persecutors of witches and Quakers. His descendants, lapsing into a kind of social obscurity as