On another occasion a Kentuckian named Van Zandt freed his slaves and
carried them across the river into Ohio. His old friends counted him a
traitor, and charges were trumped up that he had used his new home in
Ohio as an underground station for the receiving of runaway slaves.
Professor Stowe was asked to assist in Van Zandt's defense. When other
lawyers were afraid of the mob spirit, a young attorney named Salmon P.
Chase volunteered his services without pay. As the courts were then
entirely under the influence of the Fugitive Slave law, young Chase lost
his case; but that no dramatic note might be wanting, this young
attorney later became chief justice of the United States Supreme Court
and wrote a decision that reversed the former action. All these and many
other facts and events went into Mrs. Stowe's mind as raw silk, and came
out tapestry and brocade. The fuel of events fed the flames of
enthusiasm. It was a great age, when men had to speak. The time was
ripe, the soil was ready, God gave the good seed of liberty, and the
sower went forth to sow.

Mrs. Stowe tells us how she came to write the last chapter of the book,
the death of "Uncle Tom." She had a coloured woman in her family whose
husband was a slave, living in Kentucky. This black man had invented a
simple tool, was a good salesman, and was permitted to travel from town
to town, and even to cross the river into the Ohio, under no bond save
his solemn pledge to his master not to run away. Mrs. Stowe wrote the
letters for her servant, to this black man in Covington, Ky. One day,
while visiting his wife, in the Stowe home, he said that he would rather
cut off his right hand than break the word he had given to his master.
What white man could boast a more delicate sense of truth? How keen and
delicate the conscience! What weight of manhood in a slave! What
reserves of morality! What latent heroism! The slave's story captured
the imagination of the authoress, and kindled her mind into a creative