Women in the 19C United States of America: Pro-Slavery - Caroline Lee Whiting Heintz 1800-1856

Monday, June 4, 2018

Pro-Slavery - Caroline Lee Whiting Heintz 1800-1856

Born in 1800 – Caroline Lee Whiting Hentz, American author, known for opposing the abolitionist movement & her rebuttal to Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the pro-slavery novel The Planter’s Northern Bride.

American writer Caroline Lee Hentz The Female Prose Writers of America Published by E.H. Butler, Philadelphia, 1852

Caroline Lee Hentz (1800-1856) was Alabama's 1st best-selling writer & one of the most popular women writers in antebellum America, who specialized women's domestic, romantic fiction. Although she was born in the North & lived in 7 different states, Hentz spent 14 years in Alabama (1834-1848) with her husband & 4 children. Most of her fiction is set in the South, the region she adopted as home & fiercely defended from northern criticism.

Born Caroline Lee Whiting in Lancaster, Massachusetts, Hentz was the youngest of John & Orpah Whiting's 8 children. At age 17, she began teaching at the Lancaster Common School. In 1824, Caroline married Nicholas Marcellus Hentz, a native of France, who had immigrated to America in 1816. An entomologist, novelist, & artist, Hentz was intellectually gifted but prone to depression & uncontrollable fits of jealousy.

At the time of their marriage, Nicholas was teaching French at George Bancroft's Round Hill School in Northampton, Massachusetts. After the family's initial move to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in 1826, Caroline began writing drama. In 1830, the Hentzes moved to Covington, Kentucky, where Nicholas served as headmaster at a female academy & where Caroline completed De Lara, which won a prize offered by Boston actor & manager William Pelby. De Lara was produced, to favorable reviews, at the Tremont Theater in Boston & the Arch Street Theater in Philadelphia. The following year, 2 more of her plays were produced, Constance of Werdenberg, or The Forest League, at the Park Theater in New York, & Lamorah, or the Western Wild, in Cincinnati, where the couple had moved in 1832, to oversee another school for girls.

Caroline Lee Hentz (1800-1856)

In Cincinnati, Caroline joined a literary & social group to which Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) also belonged. Twenty years later, Stowe's enormously popular antislavery novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), would inspire Hentz to defend slavery & the South by writing a pro-slavery novel, The Planter's Northern Bride (1854). While in Ohio, Hentz published her 1st novel, Lovell's Folly (1833), which included unfavorable portraits of recognizable northern citizens. Fearing libel charges, the publisher quickly withdrew the book from circulation.

In 1834, the couple left Cincinnati following an incident in which Nicholas slapped a man who had sent Caroline a note after a party. The Hentzes moved to the frontier town of Florence, Alabama, where they established the Locust Dell Academy. During the next 14 years, the Hentzes operated girls' schools in Florence (1834-43), Tuscaloosa (1843-45), & Tuskegee (1845-48). Caroline continued to publish, but most of her time was spent assisting her husband at school, cooking meals for the students, & tending to her own children.

In 1848, the Hentzes moved to Columbus, Georgia, to open yet another school, but Nicholas's rapidly deteriorating mental state prompted them to close the school in 1849. Two years later, the Hentzes moved to Marianna, Florida, where Caroline spent her remaining years caring for her husband & writing at a feverish pace to support her family. She rapidly became one of America's most popular writers. Between 1850 & 1853, Hentz's books sold more than 93,000 copies; & as late as 1872, the Boston Public Library listed her as one of the 3 most popular authors of the day.

The Hentzes did not live long to enjoy her success, however. When Nicholas's health grew worse, he moved to St. Andrews, Florida, to live with their daughter Julia. Caroline stayed in Marianna, traveling to St. Andrews occasionally to tend to her husband. She contracted pneumonia & died on February 11, 1856. Her husband died 9 months later, in November. Both are buried in Marianna, Florida.

Selected Works by Caroline Lee Hentz

Lamorah; or, the Western Wild (play, 1832)

Constance of Werdenberg., or, The Forest League (play, 1832)

Lovell's Folly (1833)

De Lara; or, The Moorish Bride (1843)

Human and Divine Philosophy: A Poem Written for the Erosophic Society of the University of Alabama (1844)

Linda; or, The Young Pilot of the Belle Creole (1850)

Rena; or, The Snow Bird (1851)

Eoline; or, Magnolia Vale; or, The Heiress of Glenmore (1852)

Marcus Warland; or, The Long Moss Spring (1852)

The Banished Son and Other Stories of the Heart (1852)

The Victim of Excitement, The Bosom Serpent, etc. (1853)

Wild Jack; or, The Stolen Child, and Other Stories (1853)

The Planter's Northern Bride (1854)

Courtship and Marriage; or, The Joys and Sorrows of American Life (1856)

The Lost Daughter and Other Stories of the Heart (1857)

Information in this posting from the Encyclopedia of Alabama

About this blog

In colonial America, men were considered superior to woman in all ways. In a strict patriarchal hierarchy, men controlled not only wealth & political power but also how their children were raised, religious questions, & all matters of right & wrong.

In the early part of the 19Cy, however, many Americans experienced a revolution in gender. The doctrine of “separate spheres” maintained that woman’s sphere was the world of privacy, family, & morality while man’s sphere was the public world -– economic striving, political maneuvering, & social competition. But women were interested in equality.

In 1848, New York passed the Married Woman’s Property Act. Now a woman wasn’t automatically liable for her husband’s debts; she could enter contracts on her own; she could collect rents or receive an inheritance in her own right; she could file a lawsuit on her own behalf. She became for economic purposes, an individual. By 1900, every state has passed legislation modeled after this, granting married women some control over their property and earnings.

In 1870 after the Civi War, the 15th Amendment was ratified, saying, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” African-Americans could vote, but women could not.

But it was not until 1920, that the 19th Amendment was ratified granting women the right to vote. “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”