Awareness of the plight of enslaved people in the United States of America was greatly increased by the publication in 1852 of Uncle Tom’s Cabin by the American abolitionist and writer Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-96). Both Stowe and her husband Calvin Ellis Stowe were critics of enslavement, they participated in the Underground Railroad, assisting self-liberated slaves by providing temporary accommodation in their own home. When Congress attempted to end the practice by outlawing it with the introduction of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850, Stowe demonstrated her opposition to the bill by writing to the editor of the anti-slavery journal National Era, declaring: ‘I feel now that the time is come when even a woman or a child who can speak a word for freedom and humanity is bound to speak … I hope every woman who can write will not be silent.’ The National Era published Uncle Tom’s Cabin in weekly instalments from 5 June 1851 to 1 April 1852.

Stowe’s novel is often credited with increasing tensions between the Northern and Southern States of America regarding attitudes to enslavement. Indeed, on the publication of the first complete edition in March 1852, pro-slavery critics accused her story, particularly its main character, the titular Uncle Tom, as being fanciful. Stowe responded in 1853 by publishing The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, in which she revealed her sources, declaring that the Methodist minister Josiah Henson (1789-1883) was her inspiration for the character.

Henson was a former slave who had fled the United States in 1830 with his wife and children, walking over 600 miles from Maryland to Canada. He settled at Dresden in Upper Canada (now Ontario) where he established a settlement, Dawn, for other people who had managed to cross the border. At Dawn, Henson aimed to establish a self-sufficient community, and the town became one of the final stops on the Underground Railroad. He served as a Methodist preacher and spiritual leader for the community and travelled extensively to talk about his experiences. 

Prior to the American Civil War, Henson had often travelled from Dawn to Boston, where he preached on the subject of abolition. During one of these visits, he had met the abolitionist and former mayor of Boston, Samuel Atkins Eliot, who offered to pen his life story as a memoir. The Life of Josiah Henson, formerly a slave, now an inhabitant of Canada, narrated by himself was published at Boston by Arthur D Phelps in 1849. It sold tolerably well but until the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, it was little known to the general reader.

On finding that he had influenced Stowe’s novel, Henson was proud of the connection and used the popularity of the book to push further for abolition. In 1858, he republished his biography as Truth Stranger than Fiction. Father Henson's Story of His Life, the profits of which helped him to secure the freedom of his brother. A London edition, printed in 1876 by the Christian Age Office, bore the title, Uncle Tom's Story of his life, more directly capitalising on the link to the novel, perhaps to help publicise the then 87-year-old Henson's tour of Britain, during which he was scheduled to speak in over 100 towns.

The first edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin was hugely popular and sold 300,000 copies in the United States alone in a single year. In December 1852 Queen Victoria’s mother (the Duchess of Kent) gave her a copy of one of the first London editions (see RCIN 1128775).

While she had been concerned with the immorality of the enslavement of people by others from a young age, regularly discussing the matter with her second Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne (see RCIN 1125515), the book had a lasting impression on Victoria. On 23 March 1853, two days after her finishing it, she began to read The Key, reporting that Stowe’s source material was ‘enough to make one’s hair stand on end’. Four days later, she gave her consort, Prince Albert, a copy of the newest London edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (see RCIN 1083613), having also given him this copy of the first illustrated American edition immediately on finishing the book on 21 March. Albert shared the same concerns as Victoria and supported abolitionist endeavours to end the slave trade in Africa.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin was the most popular book in the nineteenth century and following the outbreak of the American Civil War, Stowe paid a visit to Washington, DC on 25 November 1862 to meet President Abraham Lincoln. An apocryphal tale then emerged which stated that upon meeting her Lincoln said: "so you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war." However, due to the book’s popularity, it was satirised in music halls and 'minstrel' shows across the United States, where white actors would don 'blackface' to caricature the main character of Uncle Tom as an excessively subservient Black man. The term 'Uncle Tom' has since become a slur in North America, and for many African Americans in the United States, the book has a damaged reputation, far removed from Stowe's original intentions.