Harriet Beecher Stowe was a writer and abolitionist of the 19th century. Stowe had a major impact on the social opinion of slavery and worked to expose the horrors enslaved individuals faced. Her works inspired people all over the world to push for an end to slavery in the United States. She used her experiences in life to create some of the greatest pieces of the time.
B. Thesis
Harriet Beecher Stowe used her religious background and education to promote the abolition of slavery in the United States of America.
C. Early life, family, education
Harriet Elizbeth Beecher Stowe was born in Litchfield Connecticut in 1811 to Lyman and Roxana Beecher (hbsc). Her family is one of the most influential of the time. Her father was …show more content…
Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published in installments in the National Era, an abolitionist newspaper, from 1851 to 1852 (Wrldrels). It follows the story of Eliza and her son, Harry, escaping to Canada and Tom, a slave who is sold to a cruel owner. Uncle Tom’s Cabin encouraged readers to speak out against slavery and hoped to build empathy for those enslaved. Stowe sold ten thousand copies in the first week and three hundred thousand in the first year in the United States and it sold over one million copies in Great Britain in the first year. Stowe was praised by abolitionists for exposing reality while slavery supporters called her novel unrealistic and a one-sided story of slavery …show more content…
She was given The Stafford House Address, a petition signed by over half a million British women asking American women to fight for the abolition of slavery. Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin was the most sold book in the 19th century other than the Bible. She even got recognition from President Abraham Lincoln saying, “So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war” (hbsc).
G. Contributions and Death
Over the course of Stowe’s fifty-one-year writing career, she wrote thirty novels and countless short stories, poems, articles, and hymns (hbsc). In her lifetime Stowe witnessed the terrors of slavery, she fought against them, and she was able to see slavery outlawed with the 13th Amendment in 1865. In 1886, Calvin Stowe, her husband, died. Stowe died in 1886 in Hartford, Connecticut after a decade of deteriorating health (Wrldrels).
H. Conclusion
Harriet Beecher Stowe supported the abolition of slavery with works like Uncle Tom’s Cabin. She was able to reveal the realities of slavery through her writing and show why it must be stopped. Stowe used her education, the teachings from her family, and events of the time period as inspiration to write. She is remembered today, all over the world, by her novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Harriet Beecher Stowe aided the fight for the abolition of slavery and she influenced all of America in the