Uncle Tom's Cabin: Stowe Galvanizes Abolition
Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin began appearing in serial form in the abolitionist newspaper National Era on June 5, 1851, running for 40 weekly installments until April 1, 1852. Published as a book in March 1852, it sold 300,000 copies in its first year in the United States and 1.5 million copies in Britain, making it the best-selling novel of the 19th century. The story humanized enslaved people for Northern readers who had never witnessed slavery firsthand, generating intense emotional opposition to the Fugitive Slave Act. Southern critics denounced it as propaganda, and several authors published "anti-Tom" novels defending slavery. When Lincoln met Stowe in 1862, he allegedly said "So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war."
June 5, 1851
175 years ago
Key Figures & Places
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