Uncle Tom's Cabin, or Life among the Lowly is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel had a significant effect on worldwide attitudes toward African-Americans and slavery. In the United States, it is widely thought to have helped deepen the sectional  conflict that led to civil war. Stowe, a Connecticut-born teacher at the Hartford Female Academy and an active abolitionist , focused the novel on the character of Uncle Tom, a long-suffering Black slave around whose life revolved  the stories of other characters--both fellow slaves and slave owners. Uncle Tom's Cabin was the best-selling novel, and the second best-selling book following the Bible, of the 19th century and is credited with helping to fuel the abolitionist cause in the 1850s. In the first year after it was published, 300,000 copies of the book were sold in the United States alone. The book's influence was so great that when Abraham Lincoln met Stowe at the start of the American Civil War, Lincoln is often quoted  as having declared, "So this is the little lady who made this big war." The book also helped create a number of common stereotypes about Blacks, many of which are still popular to this day. These include the affectionate, dark-skinned mother; the stereotype of black children and so on. The book opened with a Kentucky farmer named Arthur Shelby facing the loss of his farm because of debts. Even though he and his wife(Emily Shelby) believed that they had a good relationship with their slaves, Shelby decided to raise the needed funds by selling two of them--Uncle Tom, a middle-aged man with a wife and children, and Harry, the son of Emily Shelby's maid Eliza--to a slave trader. Why did Arthur Shelby decide to sell two of his slaves?
To develop a good relationship with slave traders. To support the American Civil War. To save more slaves. To collect money.