Harriet Beecher Stowe was an extremely influential woman in the shaping of beliefs commonly held in modern day American society. However, rather than fighting a war or obtaining a government office, Harriet took a much more modest approach. She peacefully protested with the help of her best selling novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. This novel was very influential for its time in because it exposed the true evils of slavery, shaping the ideals of Americans during a time when this was a hot button issue. With this controversial novel, Stowe created rifts between the North and the South that ultimately helped push toward an end to slavery.
Harriet Beecher Stowe was born on June 14, 1811 in Litchfield, Connecticut to a family of eleven children (Harriet…show more content… This led her to meet her husband Calvin Ellis Stowe, whom she married in 1836 (Biography.com Editors 1). Together, they had seven children. However, in 1849, their eighteenth month old son died of cholera. This was a very traumatic event in Stowe’s life and some believe that this sense of loss was a major influence in the writing of her novels later in life. Stowe found inspiration all around her. She lived her life with the idea of slavery constantly present. She experienced it first hand in the winters that she spent in Florida. While vacationing there, Stowe’s brother started a school for emancipated individuals and strongly urged Harriet and her husband to work with him (Harriet Beecher Stowe's Life 1). However, Harriet decided to approach the issue from a different angle and use her writing as a tool to speak out for abolition. Using her experience with fugitive slaves and the stories of many around her, she began writing Uncle Tom’s Cabin. It began as a series of stories that were featured in the National Era newspaper. In 1852 the novel was published and became a bestseller. This book was Harriet’s claim to fame. She became known all over the United States and even met with Abraham Lincoln in the midst of the Civil War to discuss the topic of slavery (Biography.com Editors
