As the auther of "Uncle Tom's Cabin", she helped to dramatize and personalize some of the issues that were to erupt in the Civil War. Born to the remarkable Beecher family in Connecticut, Harriet's father, Henry Ward Beecher was a minister of strong Calvinistic veiws, while her mother - "who never spoke in company without blushing" - died when Harriet was only four. The family had black servents, and it was the washerwoman, Candace, who was one of the young girls' especial influences. Another was an uncle, Samuel Foote, a seafaring man who would visit and provide somewhat more sophisticated glimpses of the world.
In 1832, her father took the family to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he was to head a new theological seminary, and in 1836 Harriet married Calvin Stowe, a professor of Biblical literature at this school. She had tried a little writing before this, and her husband encouraged her to continue, but she devoted herself during the next 14 years to raising their six children.
The seminary, meanwhile, was a center of the anti-slavery movement in that area: once, Harriet visited a plantation in nearby Kentucky and caught a glimpse of the life of the slaves. In 1850, she went with her husband to Maine where he took on a position at Bowdoin College, and now she gave in to the urgings of the family to write something about the slavery issue that was bothering so many of her circle. The result was "Uncle Tom's Cabin, or Life Among the Lowly", which began to appear as a serial in the "National Era", an abolitionist periodical, in Washington, D. C., on June 5, 1851.
By the time the last installment had appeared on April 1, 1852, a Boston publisher had brought the completed novel out in two volumes; within a week, 10,000 copies were sold, and within a year, 3000,000; it was published in Europe were 1, 500,000 copies were soon sold. Adapted for the stage, it became one of the most popular plays of all time, yet Stowe did not profit from all these dramatic versions, and many other editions were soon pirated. Literary critics pointed out that the book lacked the esthetic values of important works, and the South condemned it foir what it insisted were distortions, but the fact remained that Harriet Beecher Stowe had written the first American novel to portray the Blacks as serious protagonists.
She was treated as a celebrity in the North, in England and on the contintent, and her second anti-slavery novel, "Dred, A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp", was widely read. After the war, she continued to publish, but she never matched the success of "Uncle Tom's Cabin". Then again, very few books coiuld match that work's impact on history.
"The Civil War Almanac", World Almanac Publications, page 382-3
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