The passage of the Fugitive Slave Law…

The passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850 stirs Harriet Beecher Stowe to the abolitionist side.

Her sister-in-law writes her saying, "Harriet, 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."

After reading this aloud to her children, Harriet dramatically crumples the paper in her hand and says, "I will write something if I live."

While at church, she is said to have had a vision of "Uncle Tom's death" and was reportedly moved to tears.

She goes immediately to her home and commences writing her book.

Stowe begins researching slavery, interviewing fugitive slaves and slave owners with all points of views, and reads several books.

Born in Litchfield, Connecticut, Harriet is the daughter of Lyman Beecher, an abolitionist Congregationalist preacher from Boston, and Roxana Foote Beecher, who died when Harriet was four.

The sister of the renowned minister Henry Ward Beecher, Harriet has two other prominent and activist siblings, a brother, Charles Beecher, and a sister, Isabella Beecher Hooker.

In 1832, her family had moved to Cincinnati, another hotbed of the abolitionist movement, where her father became the first president of Lane Theological Seminary.

There she gained second-hand knowledge of slavery and the Underground Railroad.

Following her marriage to Calvin Stowe and moved to Brunswick, Maine, where Calvin became a professor at Bowdoin College.

She bore twin girls named Hattie and Eliza in 1836 and, four years later, in 1840, a son Frederick William.

In 1848, the birth of Samuel Charles occurred, but in the following year, he died during a cholera epidemic.

Because of the pain Harriet felt when she lost her son Samuel, she attributed it to how a mother in slavery would have felt being sold away from her children at the selling block.