Scenes of blood and cruelty are shocking to our ears and our hearts. What man has courage to do, man has not courage to hear” (Stowe 349). This quote, written by Harriet Beecher Stowe in her novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, is found right after Southern slaveholder, Simon Legree, killed his slave and main character of the novel, Uncle Tom. Stowe, who had learned from former fugitive slaves, wrote his novel about the atrocities they suffered. Many argue that this controversial novel aided the abolitionist cause and started the American Civil War before it even began. Stowe's mid-19th century novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, changed the way many Americans thought about slavery and its evils through its use of background and its adaptation of the stories of free slaves. Harriet Beecher Stowe was born on June 14 in the year 1811 in Litchfield, Connecticut. Stowe was one of thirteen children born to his parents, Lyman Beecher took a very strong abolitionist position after the Cincinnati pro-slavery riots in 1836. His views were widely emulated throughout all thirteen of his children's opinions (Bio.com). While living in Cincinnati, Stowe joined the Semi-Colon Club, a literary association, where she met her husband, Calvin Ellis Stowe, a seminary teacher. The couple married on January 6, 1836, and moved to Brunswick, Maine. Stowe and her husband both shared a belief in abolition (Bio.com). While living in Maine, Harriet Beecher Stowe began writing her most famous novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin. The first installment of this novel was published in National Era in 1851. It was eventually published as a novel in 1852. This novel quickly became a bestseller, capturing the nation's attention, with more than three hundred thousand copies sold in the first year of publication. Uncle Tom's Cabin also aroused hostility in the South