On this day in 1851 an abolitionist newspaper published the first installment of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. The following March, a Boston publisher issued the work in book form. It sold 50,000 copies in two months. That summer, while her book was fast becoming a phenomenon at home and abroad, Stowe and her family moved to Andover. They lived there for the next 12 years. An international celebrity, she made three speaking tours of Europe. The book's graphic depiction of the horrors of slavery, especially the severing of slave families, indisputably helped change attitudes in the North. However, the book also reflected how deeply ingrained racism was in American society, even among northern abolitionists like Harriet Beecher Stowe.