In the September, 1869, issue of theAtlantic Monthly, Harriet Beecher Stowe published an article in which she claimed that Lord Byron, the poet, had committed incest with his half-sister. These charges had been made before and are generally accepted by Byron biographers today, but the publication of such a claim in a respectable literary journal in 1869 touched an exposed nerve of American consciousness. For weeks, Harriet Stowe was attacked in newspapers throughout the country as a liar and a fool who had sought money and notoriety by pandering to obscene and depraved tastes. The article was termed “startling in accusation, barren in proof, inaccurate in dates, infelicitous in style.” The author's literary reputation plummeted, and theAtlantic Monthlylost more than a third of its subscribers in a single year. The moral sensibilities of thousands of Americans had been outraged; this violation of a taboo unleashed resentments, which had apparently been smoldering since the end of the Civil War, against Stowe, the Beecher family, and the liberal causes with which both were identified.
