Lane Seminary in Cincinnati, where, on the border between the free soil
of Ohio and the slave soil of Kentucky, people were in a state of
constant excitement and upheaval. The old Blue Grass State exhibited
slavery in its very best condition and also in its worst form. The
harrowing tales and incidents that were afterwards worked up into
literary form by the gifted authoress were all matters of observation,
conversation and experience. One of the earliest incidents of the
Stowes' life in Cincinnati was an experience of Professor Stowe with one
of the Beecher boys. While travelling in Kentucky, the two young men
witnessed the flight of a negro woman, who was running away with her
little child, whom they helped across the Ohio River, to be sent on by
the Underground Railway to Oberlin, on the shore of Lake Erie. And the
similar incident, Eliza's flight across the ice, her son Charles[1]
writes in his recent story of her life, "was an actual occurrence. She
had known and had often talked with the very man who helped Eliza up the
bank of the river."

Later during their Cincinnati residence, Mrs. Stowe conducted a small
private school and made a practice of allowing a few coloured children
to attend it. One evening the mother of one of these coloured children
came to the Stowes' house in a frenzy of terror, saying that her little
girl had been seized and carried to the river, to be sold as a slave in
Kentucky. Mrs. Stowe raised the money to ransom the beautiful child.

It was during this period that the Kentucky editor, Bailey, moved across
the river and began to publish a paper in Cincinnati. One night the
editor knocked at the door of the Stowe home, seeking refuge from a mob
that had smashed in his doors and windows, looted his printing-office,
and flung his type into the river.