Home > West's Encyclopedia of American Law > Stowe, Harriet Beecher

Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of one of America's most famous and popular books, helped to strengthen the ABOLITION movement by bringing white Americans and people around the world to the realization of the cruelties and misery endured by black slaves in the 1850s. Her book, Uncle Tom's Cabin, was one of the biggest sellers of the nineteenth century, second only to sales of the Bible. Since its publication, the book has never been out of print.

Stowe was born June 14, 1811, in Litchfield, Connecticut. She was the seventh child of prominent Congregationalist minister Lyman Beecher and his wife Roxana Foote Beecher, who died when Harriet was five. The Stowes grew up in an environment steeped in a Protestant tradition that demanded living a pious and moral life. Stowe's younger brother, HENRY...