What Is Harriet Beecher Stoowe's Legacy

Harriet Beecher Stowe: Life and Legacy
It is a common phenomenon that the trigger to an enormous event can be the smallest of insignificant things- a small snowfall can trigger a devastating avalanche. This is true even outside the realm of nature, and is in fact easily seen, especially with regard to literature. One book, even if not immediately popular, can eventually create an event of epic proportions. A prime example can be seen in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a novel first serialized in an anti-slavery newspaper. The themes, stories, and heartbreaking examples that Stowe sprinkled liberally throughout the novel served to widen the divide in the United States that would eventually lead to war. One of the most influential

Her father, Lyman Beecher, was a Methodist minister, who taught his children the idea of a strong conviction and a personal commitment to an idea. He was a respected anti-slavery speaker who taught religion at Sarah Pierce's Litchfield Female Academy in Connecticut-- Harriet would eventually attend the academy (“Harriet Beecher Stowe”). Beecher trained his children to debate skillfully and reason thoroughly; his ardent opposition to slavery, as well as the culture of the North, led Harriet to be fully aware of and skilled at anti-slavery debates. During her formative years, until she was twenty-one, she was raised in an fully anti-slavery atmosphere, partly due to her geographical location and partly due to her father’s views-- and it was during these years that she came to understand her obligation to end slavery and gained the tools to do

Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or Life Among the Lowly was published in 1852, chronicling the experiences of Uncle Tom, a virtuous slave who descends further and further south until he is brutally killed by a lawless plantation owner who sees slaves as property. The most important purpose of the novel was to awaken the seemingly indifferent Northerners to the horrors of slavery, and the means was largely emotional. Stowe drew on her own experiences with the death of her child and the stories she had heard from escaped slaves to create a compelling, emotional journey that was calculated to leave the reader ready to abolish slavery that