Plainly Harriet had made up her mind that color was never a fit basis for social distinctions. One could, perhaps, even further back in her life, find sources for the conviction that to hold any person in a subject state because of the color of his skin was the greatest injustice. She had in Litchfield heard her father preach sermons on the subject of slavery and offer prayers for the slaves that had made her heart throb and ache. And when her Aunt Mary, spoken of in an earlier chapter, came from San Domingo and told of the sufferings of slaves as she had witnessed them there, her feeling was deepened and intensified. As early as 1837 Catherine Beecher published a small book called “An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism with Reference to the Duty of American Females.” It was written in answer to a movement to induce women to join the Abolition Society. She opposed this movement strongly. She agreed with the members of the society in thinking slavery an evil, but she was most disinclined to any radical measures against it. Indeed she spent most of her time in criticizing the unwise and hasty measures of the abolitionists, their undue urgency and sledgehammer methods. Sister Catherine, however, showed some foresight when she said, “It is my full conviction that if insurrection does burst forth, and there be the least prospect to the cause of the slave, there will be men from the North and West,[11] standing breast to breast, with murderous weapons, in opposing ranks.” She counseled calm, rational Christian discussion as the only proper method of securing the ends of safety and peace. It seems that Catherine, with all her acumen, did not in the least realize that this was to be a case where benignity, urbanity, meekness and benevolence would not serve; and while she touches the idea of a possible “standing breast to breast with murderous weapons in opposing ranks,” the very fact that she can speak of it so calmly shows that it is now a matter of rhetoric with her rather than of shuddering prophecy. In her serene unconsciousness that the forces of war were even then forming, Catherine Beecher was not by any means alone. Almost to the last minute many, or perhaps most, of our great statesmen did not in the least imagine that sections of a people speaking one language, consecrated in their close relationship by like struggles in the past and united by like ideals and hopes for the future, could be separated by the sword over a mere difference of opinion as to the matter of holding slaves. We must try to remember that no one was really aware of this beforehand or we shall fail to understand why the formation of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s thought on this subject was so gradual. No doubt she was influenced by such a statement of views as her sister made in her book; as a result of this, and perhaps of other influences of like kind, she was for years trying to keep the subject of slavery as much as possible out of her mind. To her it was a horror