The Two Harriets: Tubman and Beecher Stowe with Dr. Richard Bell
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Explore the lives and legacies of two great American icons, Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin and Harriet Tubman as historian Dr. Bell’s go in-depth into the events during their lifetimes.
“So you’re the little lady who started this great war!” said President Abraham Lincoln in the fall of 1862 when he finally met Harriet Beecher Stowe. This “little lady” was the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin a roller-coaster anti-slavery novel that had become a huge best-seller after its publication in 1852. Lincoln and many other people at the time believed that Stowe’s novel had caused the Civil War by intensifying public sentiment against slavery in the North and by spurring a reactionary surge of proslavery feeling in the states that would later secede from the United States to form the Confederate States of America.
But Lincoln might just have well have been talking to and about Harriet Tubman. Like Stowe, Tubman’s activism advanced the fight against slavery and edged this country closer to Civil War. As the most famous conductor on the Underground Railroad, Tubman and her allies built an antislavery escape network that stretched from the bowels of the slave South all the way into British Canada. Richard Bell, a professor of history at the University of Maryland, explores the lives and impacts of these two American icons.
Richard Bell is Professor of History at the University of Maryland and author of the new book Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and their Astonishing Odyssey Home which is shortlisted for the George Washington Prize and the Harriet Tubman Prize. He has held major research fellowships at Yale, Cambridge, and the Library of Congress and is the recipient of the National Endowment of the Humanities Public Scholar award. He serves as a Trustee of the Maryland Center for History and Culture, as an elected member of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, and as a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
This conversation is suitable for all ages
90 minutes, including a 30 minute Q&A.
Wow! Dr. Bell has what it takes to pack so much information into one hour yet make it all comprehensible, exciting, and not overwhelming. This was a fascinating exploration of how HBS came to write Uncle Tom's Cabin and the impact it had across America, and a gripping history of Harriet Tubman's extraordinary history and achievements. I know I was hanging onto my seat taking it all in. It was a tour de force by Dr. Bell.