Harriet Beecher Stowe

Harriet Beecher Stowe was the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a novel about the evils of slavery that stirred the conscience of Americans and helped to bring about the Civil War.

Stowe’s father and six of her brothers were ministers. All of them were strongly opposed to slavery. After the family moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1832, she met many other abolitionists. Visiting plantations in nearby Kentucky, she saw slavery in operation, and her hatred of the institution deepened.

Harriet Beecher had married Professor Calvin Stowe in 1832. They moved to Maine in 1850, the same year that the Fugitive Slave Act was passed. The law made it easier for runaway slaves to be returned to the South. Stowe was so angry about this, she wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly.

Published in 1852, it is the story of a slave named Uncle Tom who dies after he is beaten by a plantation owner named Simon Legree. The book’s powerful portrayal of the evils of slavery shocked its readers. Uncle Tom’s Cabin sold more than 300,000 copies in its first year and about two million copies before the start of the Civl War. When President Lincoln met Stowe during the Civil War, he said to her, “So this is the little lady who wrote the book that made this great war.”

Civil War, Literature, Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1832, 1850, Slavery, 1852, Important People