Harriet Beecher Stowe

Following the passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, which made it a crime to aid in the escape or protection of escaped slaves, Stowe lent her actions and her words to the effort to help slaves and put an end to slavery. She actively aided fugitive slaves and, with the publication of the anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, focused the nation's consciousness on the inhumanity of slavery.