Harriet Beecher Stowe

The Connecticut-born daughter of noted minister Lyman Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe is best known as author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, the 1852 antislavery novel that galvanized the abolitionist movement and outraged slavery's defenders. Stowe was also a schoolteacher and friend to many prominent abolitionists.

Because many Southerners attacked the widely popular novel's harsh depiction of slavery as unrealistic, in 1853 Stowe responded to her critics with a nonfiction followup called The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin that documented the cruelties of slavery on which she had based her novel. The Key also testifies to the dedication and self-sacrifice of many Quaker abolitionists who risked their livelihoods and liberty in order to assist runaway slaves. The following excerpt from The Key details such an example. A pious young Quaker man, Richard Dillingham, is charged, tried, and consequently convicted and sent...