Harriet Beecher Stowe 's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) became not only a phenomenal best-seller but a moral instrument. Combining domesticity and sentiment with violence and realism, this novel was the target of vehement controversy upon publication and is still the subject of intense critical examination. Imbedded in fact, it was imbued by its author with moral fervor. Its influence on American attitudes toward slavery has become legendary.

Harriet Beecher Stowe was a product of New England, particularly of New England Calvinism. She was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, one of the eight children of Lyman and Roxanna Foote Beecher. When Harriet was four, her mother died, and two years later her father married Harriet Porter. The Beechers were a family driven to proselytize and convert, to teach and to preach. Lyman Beecher was a Congregational minister, and Harriet Beecher's brother, Henry Ward Beecher, later became well known as the pastor...