Harriet Beecher Stowe

When she was a young teenager, Harriet Beecher Stowe, made the greatest decision of her life. Her father, Rev. Lyman Beecher, preached from John 15:15 about Jesus as our friend. Harriet later said, “I sat intent and absorbed. Oh! how much I needed just such a friend. . . . Like a flash it came over me . . . I would trust Him . . . As I left the church to walk home, it seemed to me as if Nature herself were hushing her breath to hear the music of heaven.” In 1832, Harriet, twenty-one, moved to Cincinnati and married a seminary professor, Calvin Ellis Stowe, and the two became involved in aiding fugitive slaves escaping from Kentucky. Harriet also began writing, and her devotional materials, Bible studies, and fiction became popular throughout the nation. When family friend, newspaper publisher Elijah Lovejoy, was murdered for his abolitionist views, the Beecher family reacted in horror. Harriet’s brother, Edward, wrote her, saying, “Now, Hattie, if I could use a pen as you can, I would write something that would make this whole nation feel what an accursed thing slavery is.” Reading the letter, Harriet said, “I will write something. I will if I live.” Shortly afterward, as she attended a communion service at church, scenes for a book unfolded in her mind. Returning home, she began working on Uncle Tom’s Cabin. On this day, On June 5, 1851, the first segment of her book was published in the National Era as part of a forty-week serial. The story seized the nation’s heart, and Harriet credited its success to the Lord. “I was but the humblest of instruments in His hand,” she said. “To Him alone should be given all the praise.” On March 13, 1852, a Boston publisher turned the serial into a book. In its first year, three hundred thousand copies were sold in America and over a million copies in Great Britain. People stayed up all night reading the story, and Harriet became “the most talked-of woman in the world.” Uncle Tom’s Cabin became the best-selling book of the century, apart from the Bible, and inflamed the nation against slavery.