Dinner with any Harriet Beecher Stowe by Anna

Dinner with any Harriet Beecher Stowe by Anna - February 2016 Scholarship Essay

If I could have dinner with an historical figure, I would have dinner with Harriet Beecher Stowe. I would want to have dinner with her because she was a woman who managed to become successful by writing a prominent novel about the horrors of being black in the 1800s in America. During this time in United State History Slavery was a huge debate. Many people still believed that slavery was a necessity and a way of life that was not to be tampered with while abolitionists were also gaining momentum in the United States. Americans were very tense and the years during which Harriet Beecher Stowe was alive were filled with momentous changes. Harriet Beecher Stowe was a woman living in a time before women had many rights. Somehow, she managed to become an adamant advocate for the abolitionist movement as well as writing a largely popular book that is still making an impact on the world today. If I was lucky enough to have dinner with her, I would ask her if she realized how much of an impact her writing would make on the world. I would want to discuss her experiences and if there was a specific event that she witnessed that gave her the inspiration for Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
But, her writing is not the only subject with which I am interested. Harriet Beecher Stowe was alive from 1811-1896 and during this time huge strides in policies and important historical events took place. Even in the beginning of her childhood, Harriet Beecher Stowe witnessed great events. Spain ceded Florida to the United States in 1819, and then the next year she witnessed the Missouri Compromise. The years leading up to the Civil War were filled with conflicts, including multiple skirmishes regarding slavery and slave verses free states. She saw Nat Turner’s slave uprising, and the first public railroad was built. She was also alive to see more than half of the states enter the Union. There were so many monumental events that took place during the eighty years that she was alive, and I would love to learn all about them in great detail. I took AP United States History in school because I wanted to learn as much as I could about our history, but there is only so much time and there are so many events that only so many can be covered. Harriet Beecher Stowe was alive during one of the most crucial time periods in United States history; she was alive during a time that could have seen the end of the United States altogether. I would want to hear about her entire life and all of the history she was submerged in during her lifetime. I would love to hear about how the world perceived the additions to the Union, and I would like to hear first-hand about what it was really like to be in the midst of such radical changes.
I know that most people don’t realize just how significant the events during their lives are while they are occurring, for example, when Barack Obama was elected President and became the first black president, I didn’t realize until later that this was a life-changing and monumental historical event. I would ask Harriet Beecher Stowe if she realized just how important her history was at the time or if she was like me. Along with this is the fact that most people can’t imagine what the world will be like in five years, much less ten or twenty. I certainly can’t guess what the United States will become when I am an adult. I would ask her if she ever imagined that women would gain the right to vote, that blacks would be treated equally, or that we would have a black president. There are so many great questions that I could ask her, and I think that if I actually got this chance, I wouldn’t know quite what to begin with.