Publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Also called: Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly
Harriet Beecher Stowe published her novel of the cruelties of slavery as a book; selling some 300,000 copies in the United States in its first year, it greatly strengthened anti-slavery feeling in the North.
Harriet Beecher Stowe · Public domain · Source
Angered by the Fugitive Slave Act, Stowe serialised the novel in the abolitionist paper The National Era from June 1851, and on 20 March 1852 the Boston publisher John P. Jewett issued it in two volumes. The story of old Tom, sold down the river, and of Eliza fleeing across the frozen Ohio with her child in her arms moved readers deeply.
It is said to have sold about 300,000 copies in America in its first year; it was widely read in Britain and in translation, and staged again and again. In the South it drew charges of distortion and a flood of rival novels. Lincoln is said to have greeted Stowe during the war as “the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war”, but the story is probably a later invention.