Uncle Tom’s Cabin is one of the few books that can lay claim to having actually changed the world. Although the American anti-slavery movement had existed at least as long as the nation itself, Stowe’s novel of 1852 galvanized public opinion as nothing had before. The book sold 10,000 copies in its first week and 300,000 in its first year. Its vivid dramatization of slavery’s cruelties so aroused readers that it is said Abraham Lincoln told Stowe her work had been a catalyst for the Civil War.
