Uncle Tom's Cabin

The book, Uncle Tom's Cabin, was released on March 20, 1852. From the very first, it drew a controversy, and the South soon banned it.The sentimental novel depicted some of the horrors of slavery. Most Southerns hated it, because it showed plantation owners and overseers in a bad light. African Americans later came to dislike it, because they thought Uncle Tom was portrayed as too docile and too subservient. The plays based on the book often heavily stereotyped the slaves also. Some critics even discredited the novel as too emotional, because it had been written by a woman.

Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote this novel, credited with laying part of the groundwork leading to the Civil War. She'd been born in Connecticut and taught at the Hartford Female Seminary. Most of the book was written in Brunswick, Maine, where her husband taught at Bowdoin College. She was a staunch abolitionist and wanted to aid their cause.

Uncle Tom's Cabin was first printed as a series in The National Era starting in June 1851 and was published in book form the following year. It quickly sold 300,000 copies, but then went out of print for a while. Still, it ended up being the best-selling book of the 19th century, and only came in second to the Bible in the 20th century.

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