Harriet Beecher Stowe was born June 14, 1811 in Litchfield, Connecticut. She was the sixth of 11 children. All of her seven brothers became ministers, however, Stowe believed her purpose in life was to write. Her mother died when Stowe was at the young age of five. She then pursued drawing and painting to honor her mother’s talents. When she was seven, she won a school essay contest and earned great praise from her father. Stowe began her education at Sarah Pierce's academy: she was one of the earliest to encourage girls to study academic subjects and not simply the arts. She became an American abolitionist, author, and social reformer. She also became one of America’s best paid and well-known authors. Stowe once stated, "I wrote what I did …show more content…
The tearing apart of families and harsh forced labor was devastating the African American race. Women and men were beaten mercilessly and treated as animals. This abuse and torture was labeled as slavery. In the 1850s, slavery was becoming a leading controversy. While some supported this movement and others silently opposed, their voices lost in the raging support of slavery, Stowe held strong to her belief. She felt empowered and obligated to share an insider's view of slavery and the brutality of it. She says that it was not her that wrote it, but God. She says that she was merely his hands. One of her biographers wrote: "It was a powerful novel, filled with memorable characters and incidents drawn from life, and, unlike any novel before, its hero, Uncle Tom, was a black man — a courageous slave, moreover, whose dignity and strength grew not out of resignation but from a profound Christian faith." (Crouse 2006) Tolstoy considered the book to be a "great work of literature." Alfred Kazin wrote that the book "is the most powerful and most enduring work of art ever written about American slavery." Elizabeth Barrett Browning declared that Harriet’s powerful writing had, more than any other man or woman of her era, "moved the world for good." (Crouse 2006) When the book was finally published, it broke a sales record. In just the first day, she had sold 3,000 copies. Her novel not only broke records,