SPEECHES & WRITINGS FILE
Review of Crusader in
Crinoline by Forrest Wilson

Written by Mary Church Terrell
1615 S St. N.W.
Washington, D.C.
Crusader in Crinoline 
by 
Forrest Wilson.
   It is hard to imagine a biography more interesting and enlightening 
than Forrest Wilson's "Crusader in Crinoline," which is the life of 
Harriet Beecher Stowe. The author has made a painstaking search for available 
material and has used it with telling effect.
   The pictures of Mrs. Stowe are strong and clear, whether as a frail 
mother of seven children she is helping to support herself and family by 
writing under the most discouraging circumstances imaginable, or whether 
as the author of one of the most powerful novels ever published she is 
being given a reception in England usually accorded only to royalty.
   Mrs. Stowe's hatred of slavery, her determination to accept her 
sister-in-law&s suggestion "to [do] write something which would make this whole 
nation feel what an accursed thing slavery is," and the phenominal 
success achieved in keeping her pledge are splendidly portrayed.
   The South's abuse of Mrs. Stowe for writing Uncle Tom's Cabin is 
mentioned, but not overdrawn. Several of her most successful books are 
briefly reviewed. Mrs. Stowe might have been one of the richest women in 
the world if she had secured the English and foreign copyrights to Uncle 
Tom's Cabin, not to mention the dramatic rights for which she received 
nothing at all, whereas at her death she left her family comparitively little
   Both the Henry Ward Beecher-Tilden scandal, which shook the religious 
and social foundations of the country for a long time, and Mrs. Stowe's 
"True Story of Lady Byron," for which she was severely criticized here and 
in England are candidly discussed. But the reader is allowed to draw his 
own conclusions. Mr. Wilson neither minimizes Mrs. Stowe's mistakes nor 
soft-pedals her faults. He impresses one as being absolutely just and fair. 
He takes special pains to prove Mrs. Atowe's interest in the race 
for whose emancipation she did so much, by citing her efforts to lift it

Written by 
Mary Church Terrell.
Crusader in Crinoline
by Forrest Wilson.
   It is hard to imagine a biography more interesting and enlightening 
than Forrest Wilson's "Crusader in Crinoline", which is the life of 
Harriet Beecher Stowe. The author has evidently made a painstaking search 
[of] for the available material, [he could find] and he has used it with telling effect.
   The pictures of Mrs. Stowe are strong and clear, whether as a 
frail mother of seven children she is helping to support herself and family, 
under the most discouraging circumstances imaginable, or whether as the 
author of one of the most powerful novels ever published she is being {ac???]
a reception in England usually accorded only to royalty

2
to a higher plane after it was free.
    Crusader in Crinoline proves Abraham Lincoln's estimate of Uncle 
Tom's Cabin was not too high.When Mrs. Stowe called at the White House 
the President seized her hand and exclaimed "Are you the little woman 
who made the great war?" Uncle Tom's Cabin "ranks fourth in point of circulation 
among all the books of the world."
   Mr. Wilson has rendered this generation a distinct service by 
writing the life of Harriet Beecher Stowe who not only stands "in the 
foremost rank of famous women of the world, but in shaping the destiny 
of the American people at a most critical period of their history, her 
influence was probably greater than that of any other individual. 
Charles Sumner said that if Uncle Tom's Cabin had not been written, 
Abrham Lincoln could not have been elected President of the United States."

Transcribed and reviewed by contributors participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.