Uncle Tom's Cabin Was an Instant Bestseller
Story Helped Anti-Slavery Movement
Uncle Tom’s Cabin was Harriet Beecher Stowe’s first novel and the one she is still remembered for.
Stowe was married to a clergyman and professor. To help her husband support his family of seven children, Stowe wrote for local and religious periodicals.
Writing Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Uncle Tom’s Cabin began as a serial in the National Era, a Washington anti-slavery newspaper from 1851-1852. Dr. Bailey, the editor of the newspaper sent Stowe $100 and asked her write a story worth that amount.
Stowe drew on her personal experiences with slavery, abolitionists and the Underground Railroad. She began writing Uncle Tom’s Cabin and sending Bailey chapters as she finished them. As the story progressed, interest in it increased.
“It became so popular, and the Doctor was so well pleased with it, that he sent her two hundred dollars more,” reported the Fort Wayne (Ind.) Times upon the publication of the book.
Publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Published as a two-volume book. Within a week of its release in the U.S., Uncle Tom's Cabin sold 10,000 copies, and 300,000 the first year. Sales were even higher in Britain. By 1854, the book had been translated into 60 different languages.
“The accuracy of the lineation of the character, language, customs, and manner of life of the Southern slave, is wonderful, and is only equaled by the fidelity to nature of the characters who are introduced as holding any relations towards that unfortunate race. If anything were wanting to prove the truth of this it would be found in the fact that various southern papers have testified to it, reluctantly, but frankly,” reported the Milwaukee Daily Sentinel.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin sought to humanize slavery. Stowe wanted people to know how brutal it could be. She wanted readers to become abolitionists against it and demand change.
Response to Uncle Tom’s Cabin
“Here it has been read by everybody in every section ;—and even those who complain most of its unfairness and exaggeration, concede the ability by which it is marked and the interest which pervades it. It is bought and read almost as freely at the South as at the North ; and cannot fail to make a profound impression upon the: public mind there as well as here,” wrote the New York Daily Times.
The year following the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, she wrote A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin. This book talked about the facts that the original book was based on. The purpose was to refute critics who argued that Uncle Tom’s Cabin was just a novel.
Stowe became an instant celebrity because of the book. In 1862, she met President Abraham Lincoln while she was visiting Washington, D.C. Lincoln is reported to have said to her, "So you're the little woman who wrote the book that started this Great War!"
Stowe would write and publish more than 30 books before her death in 1893, but none so noteworthy as Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
A title page from Uncle Tom's Cabin
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