Stowe was a pious daughter, sister, and wife of Congregationalist ministers and she epitomized the powerful religious underpinnings of the abolitionist movement. Her motivation for writing the novel was her disgust with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. By 1855, her novel was called “the most popular novel of our day.” It depicts a combination of unlikely saints and sinners, stereotypes, fugitive slaves, escapades, and the sad realities of slavery that was made real to readers. Many slaveholders were dissatisfied with her novel, and one mailed Stowe an anonymous parcel with a severed ear of a disobedient slave.…