Harriet Beecher Stowe: Uncle Tom’s
Cabin, 1852
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) is best known today as the
author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which helped galvanize
the abolitionist cause and contributed to the outbreak of the
Civil War. Uncle Tom’s Cabin sold over 10,000
copies in the first week and was a best seller of its day.
After the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin,
Stowe became an internationally acclaimed celebrity and an
extremely popular author. In addition to novels, poetry and
essays, she wrote non-fiction books on a wide range of subjects
including homemaking and the raising of children, and religion.
Cincinnati was just across the river
from Kentucky, a slave state. It was in Cincinnati that Harriet
first became aware of the horrors of slavery. Cincinnati
was one of the largest cities in the country, twice the size
of Hartford at that time. When Harriet and Calvin learned
that their servant, Zillah, was actually a runaway slave,
Calvin and Henry Ward drove her to the next station on the
Underground Railroad. One night, Harriet’s friend, Mr. Rankin, saw a young woman run across
the river over the ice with a baby in her arms. This story
moved Harriet deeply and would later become one of the most
famous scenes in Uncle Tom’s Cabin.#
