Profile of the Day: Harriet Beecher Stowe

Harriet Beecher Stowe

On March 20, 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, was published.

The second best-selling novel of the 19th century, Stowe’s book is often credited with helping to change public opinion on slavery and fuel the abolitionist cause in the 1850s. It is said that after the start of the American Civil War, Stowe paid a visit to the White House. President Abraham Lincoln reportedly greeted her by saying, “so you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war?”

Stowe was born on June 14, 1811 in Litchfield, Connecticut. She was the seventh of thirteen children born to deeply religious parents. As a child, she received a traditionally “male” education in the classics, including study of languages and mathematics. In 1836, she married Calvin Ellis Stowe, a passionate critic of slavery. The couple were supporters of the Underground Railroad and even temporarily housed several fugitive slaves in their home. It was while living in Cincinnati that Stowe witnessed the brutality of slavery firsthand. Inspired to speak out against slavery, she began writing a weekly serial, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, in the antislavery periodical The National Era. The 40-week serial was then turned into a book and published on March 20, 1852. The book was translated into all the major languages and sold around the world.

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