RSS Feed
News
Today in History: Harriet Beecher Stowe Publishes Uncle Tom’s Cabin
03/20/10
One of the most influential works in American literature, Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life among the Lowly by abolitionist author Harriet Beecher Stowe, was first published in book form on March 20, 1852. Stowe’s sentimental novel about a long-suffering African-American slave helped raise awareness of the injustice of slavery and generate support for the abolitionist cause in the North. (We are unable to display the text of the document at this time. To view the text of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, please visit this website: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/203/203-h/203-h.htm.) It was widely reviled in the South, however, and contributed to the sectional conflict that eventually resulted in the Civil War.
Stowe was inspired to write Uncle Tom’s Cabin by the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which required citizens of free states and territories to actively assist slave owners in capturing escaped slaves. As an ardent abolitionist who lived in Cincinnati—a city whose location across the Ohio River from the slave state of Kentucky made it a hub of the Underground Railroad—the new law held personal meaning for Stowe. In her novel, the author presents blacks as sympathetic characters and includes many incidents that demonstrate the cruelty and immorality of slavery. Uncle Tom’s Cabin sold 300,000 copies the first year and went on to become the best-selling novel of the nineteenth century. It also ignited fierce protests in the South and inspired indignant responses from pro-slavery writers.