"Stowe, a teacher from Connecticut who worked at the Hartford Female Seminary and was actively involved in the abolitionist movement, penned the novel in reaction to the enactment of the second Fugitive Slave Act in 1850. A significant portion of the book was written at her residence in Brunswick, Maine, where her husband, Calvin Ellis Stowe, served as a professor at Bowdoin College, his alma mater.
The creation of Uncle Tom's Cabin was partly inspired by the slave narrative "The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, as Narrated by Himself" (1849). Henson, an African American who had once been enslaved, recounted his experiences on a 3,700-acre plantation in North Bethesda, Maryland, owned by Isaac Riley. He successfully escaped slavery in 1830, finding refuge in the Province of Upper Canada (now Ontario), where he assisted other runaway slaves in settling and achieving self-sufficiency.
Additionally, Stowe drew inspiration from the posthumous biography of Phebe Ann Jacobs, a devout Congregationalist from Brunswick, Maine. Jacobs, born into slavery on a plantation in Lake Hiawatha, New Jersey, spent most of her life enslaved, including a period under the ownership of the president of Bowdoin College. Despite her circumstances, Jacobs lived her final years as a free woman, earning respect from her community for her unwavering religious faith and her work laundering clothes for Bowdoin students. Her funeral garnered widespread attendance.
Stowe's research for "Uncle Tom's Cabin" also included consulting "American Slavery as It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses," a volume co-authored by Theodore Dwight Weld and the Grimké sisters. Additionally, she conducted interviews with individuals who had escaped slavery. Stowe documented many of these influences and sources in her non-fiction work "A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin" (1853), aiming to substantiate her portrayal of slavery while directing readers to various publicly available accounts detailing its horrors.
This novel depicts the harsh realities of slavery and its impact on individuals and families, particularly through the character of Uncle Tom, who endures various forms of abuse and cruelty. It's one of the most influential works of American literature and played a significant role in shaping public opinion about slavery in the United States before the Civil War."
