An appeal to help an enslaved minister purchase his freedom - photo 1
An appeal to help an enslaved minister purchase his freedom - photo 2

An appeal to help an enslaved minister purchase his freedom

Lot 60
15.06.2023 10:00UTC -05:00
Classic
Starting price
$ 15 000
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUSA, New York
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Archive
ID 967609
Lot 60 | An appeal to help an enslaved minister purchase his freedom
Estimate value
$ 15 000 – 25 000
An appeal to help an enslaved minister purchase his freedom

Harriet Beecher Stowe, ca. May 1852

STOWE, Harriet Beecher (1811-1896). Autograph letter signed ("H B Stowe") to Mrs. James Nourse, [New York, ca. late May 1852].



One page, bifolium (185 x 123mm) addressed in her hand on the integral leaf.



The author of Uncle Tom's Cabin assists an enslaved Methodist minister to purchase freedom for himself and his family. Stowe presents an introduction for Thomas Strother to Mrs. Nourse. "The bearer [Thomas Strother] is a minister — a delegate to the African Methodist convention now in session in this City & bears satisfactory credentials of his character & standing. He is a slave and unless he can raise money this summer for his ransom must be sold to settle an insolvent estate. the rest of his history will be unfolded by himself. I trust it will be in your heart to do all that you can for him."



Stowe was at the height of her fame when she offered her assistance to Strother—Uncle Tom’s Cabin had just completed its serial publication in the National Era and had just been published in book form which was a runaway best seller. The Rev. Thomas Strother (d. 1873) had been enslaved by Luke Whitcomb of St. Louis, who died insolvent in June 1850. Strother, a licensed and ordained Methodist minister since about 1845, sought to raise $1,600 to purchase the freedom for himself, his wife and child. By 1852, he found himself up against the impending liquidation of Whitcomb’s estate scheduled for September, and he travelled east in an attempt to raise additional funds, attending African Methodist Conferences in Baltimore and New York in the spring. It was in the latter city he met Rev. Henry Ward Beecher and his sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe, who offered to assist by writing letters of introduction to their friends to obtain their assistance. In early June Strother arrived in Boston, carrying "commendatory letters from Rev. Henry Ward Beecher and Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe," and it is presumed he also travelled as far north as Bath, Maine to present his credentials in the present letter to Mrs. Nourse. By early August, after 18 months of campaigning, he had raised $1,350, enough to purchase the freedom of his wife and child and required only $250 more to secure his own. It is not known whether Strother was successful in his bid, but it appears that he may have served as a soldier in the Union Army during Civil War. He settled in Cairo, Illinois after the war continuing as a preacher and a prominent advocate for Black suffrage until his death in 1873. (See, [Death Notice] Daily Missouri Republican, St. Louis, 22 June 1850, p. 2; "To the Benevolent." The Liberator, Boston, 4 June 1852, p. 91; "Help the Man!" Cleveland Leader, 4 August 1852, p.3; Christopher K. Hays, "The African American Struggle for Equality and Justice in Cairo, Illinois, 1865-1900," Illinois Historical Journal, (Winter 1997), 4:273-274; Alexander W. Wayman, My Recollections of African M.E. Ministers, or Forty Years' Experience in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Philadelphia, 1881, p. 190.) Provenance: James S. Copley Library (sale, Sotheby's, New York, 20 May 2011, lot 1009, but not identifying the subject of the letter).

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