The Influential Uncle Tom

AS THE OBSOLESCENCE and even the demise of the book are widely foretold, it is all the more important—and comforting—to recognize how a book can change the world. It is hard to think of many that have done so more emphatically than Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Lincoln is famously said to have greeted its author, Harriet Beecher Stowe, in 1862 by inquiring, “So this is the little lady who started this great war?” And whether he actually ever made the remark or not, the very fact of her visit to the White House and the emergence of the legend of his respectful, if somewhat patronizing, salutation are sufficient evidence of the remarkable influence that Stowe’s words claimed in mid-nineteenth-century America.