Uncle Tom's Cabin

About Harriet Beecher Stowe

About Uncle Tom's Cabin

Uncle Tom's Cabin is Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 anti-slavery novel — the bestselling novel of the 19th century and credited with helping to galvanize Northern sentiment against slavery in the lead-up to the American Civil War. Abraham Lincoln reportedly called Stowe 'the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.' The novel follows the noble enslaved man Uncle Tom and the desperate enslaved woman Eliza, who flees north with her child to escape being sold. Note: the term 'Uncle Tom' has since taken on negative meaning the original novel did not intend.