Uncle Tom's Cabin

On March 9, 1850, Harriet Beecher Stowe, a writer for The National Era, penned a letter to Gamaliel Bailey, who was the editor of the weekly anti-slavery journal. She told him that she planned to write a story about the problem of slavery. The result was Uncle Tom's Cabin, a story about a devout black slave, who generously saves the life of a white man only to be sold to a sadistic slave owner. The tale  graphically depicts the horrors of slavery.

The original inspiration for Uncle Tom's Cabin came from reading a pamphlet written by the runaway slave, Josiah Henson, describing the ignominy of a runaway slave's life. When kneeling at communion Stowe conceived the idea of Uncle Tom and soon afterwards, the Fugitive Slave bill persuaded her to put pen to paper. (This controversial bill granted Southerners the right to pursue fugitive slaves into free states and bring them back.)

Harriet gripped a pencil between her teeth whilst kneading dough so that in between times she could write Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

She earned $300 dollars when Uncle Tom was serialized in The National Era beginning June 5, 1851. When it was published in book form on March 20, 1852, Harriet started earning five figure sums.

Uncle Tom's Cabin, CLEVELAND, OHIO: JEWETT, PROCTOR & WORTHINGTON edition

Harriet's brother Henry Ward Beecher wrote to his sister about her masterpiece "If you write such another book, I will kill you. It has taken more out of me than a years preaching."

It wasn’t until Stowe made a journey to Europe in 1853 after the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin that she realized the length of her new-found fame.

After writing Uncle Tom's Cabin, Stowe was bombarded with hate male from the pro slavery south. One package she received contained the bloody ear of a slave pinned to a scrap of cardboard.
In the northern part of USA, Uncle Tom's Cabin did much to stir up anti slavery feelings and hatred for the way of life in the South. The differing reactions to Uncle Tom's Cabin between the North and South helping to polarize the two halves and it was one of the sparks which ignited the Civil War. When Stowe met Abraham Lincoln in 1862, he reportedly greeted her, "So this is the little lady who started this big war."

Three million copies of Uncle Tom's Cabin were sold before the start of the American Civil War and twenty years after its publication the book was still selling prodigious amounts. One and a half million pirated copies were sold in Britain alone and it has been translated into over 20 languages.

Uncle Tom's Cabin was the best-selling American novel of the nineteenth century, until it was surpassed by Lew Wallace's Ben Hur.

Uncle Tom's Cabin was steeped in Biblical values, which reflected the writer's Christian faith. A woman came up to Stowe and asked if she could clasp the hand of the woman who had written the great work. "I did not write it" said the author, "God wrote it, I merely did the dictation."

The American novelist Saul Bellow decided to be a writer after reading Uncle Tom's Cabin.