50 Fun Facts About Uncle Tom's Cabin

Which famous author was Harriet Beecher Stowe's neighbour in Hartford's Nook Farm district?

Mark Twain built his Hartford house near Stowe's in 1874, but money troubles forced him to close it and move his family to Europe in 1891.

Why could British publishers reprint Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1852 without paying Stowe?

No international copyright law protected American books abroad, so for her next novel, Dred, Stowe went to England in 1856 to arrange a British edition herself.

What is the subtitle of Uncle Tom's Cabin?

Life Among the Lowly was the subtitle; Stowe began the book after her sister-in-law wrote urging her to show what an accursed thing slavery is.

The passage of which law prompted Stowe to write Uncle Tom's Cabin?

The Fugitive Slave Act commanded ordinary citizens to help catch people fleeing slavery, and anyone who sheltered a fugitive faced up to a $1,000 fine and six months in jail.

In which abolitionist newspaper was Uncle Tom's Cabin first published in instalments?

The National Era signed up a story Stowe expected to fill three or four instalments, but Uncle Tom's Cabin ran to more than 40 before it ended.

Where did Stowe say a vision of Uncle Tom's death first came to her?

At a church communion service, Stowe said, a vision of Tom's death passed before her, and it inspired her to write his story.

Which book alone is often said to have outsold Uncle Tom's Cabin in 19th-century America?

The Bible was the only book said to outsell it, and the novel's success brought Stowe financial security after years of struggling with poverty.

Who, in a likely apocryphal story, hailed Stowe as the little woman who started this great war?

Abraham Lincoln met Stowe in 1862, but historians are undecided whether he said it, and her letter written hours later doesn't mention the line.

Whose slave narrative is believed to have partly inspired the character of Uncle Tom?

Josiah Henson's memoir was reissued in expanded editions after the novel's success tied him to Tom, one of them titled Uncle Tom's Story of His Life.

Which 1853 book did Stowe publish to answer charges that Uncle Tom's Cabin misrepresented slavery?

A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin argued that real slavery was worse than the novel, since a book showing it strictly as it was could not be read.

In which state is the farm where Uncle Tom's Cabin opens?

Kentucky was where a young Stowe visited a plantation that later served as the model for the farm where the novel opens.

Which slave trader buys Tom and young Harry at the start of Uncle Tom's Cabin?

Mr. Haley calls himself a humane man, yet after Eliza escapes with Harry he hires the slave hunters Tom Loker and Marks to track her down.

Which river does Eliza cross on the ice to escape her pursuers?

The Ohio River crossing echoed a real 1838 escape across the ice by a woman carrying her baby, whom the abolitionist John Rankin helped.

What does little Harry do to entertain the slave trader in Uncle Tom's Cabin?

Harry sings, dances and mimics people so charmingly that the trader insists the boy be added to the deal, which drives Eliza to flee.

What is the name of Eliza's husband, who has already run away when she flees?

George Harris shoots the slave hunter Tom Loker during the escape, yet Loker, nursed back to health by Quakers, gives up slave-catching.

To which country do Eliza and her husband first escape with their son?

Canada was only their first refuge: the family later moved to France and finally settled in Liberia, in West Africa.

How does Tom first meet the little girl Eva?

He rescues her from drowning when she falls from a riverboat, and her grateful father buys him from the slave trader.

How does Tom's wife, Aunt Chloe, earn money to buy him back after he is sold?

By baking for a confectioner, Aunt Chloe saved her wages toward Tom's price, but he died before he could be bought back and brought home.

In which city does Tom live with the St. Clare family?

New Orleans was Tom's home as the St. Clares' head coachman, but after his master's death the widow sold him at auction instead of freeing him.

Who is St. Clare's Northern cousin, opposed to slavery yet prejudiced against black people?

Ophelia comes from Vermont to run St. Clare's household, and at the end she takes the girl she was asked to educate home with her.

What is the name of the young slave girl whom St. Clare buys for his cousin to educate?

Topsy, asked who made her, says nobody did and she expects she grew, a line that inspired the phrase grow like Topsy for something that grows fast without a plan.

What does Eva give to each of the slaves before she dies?

A lock of her hair goes to each slave, as the dying Eva tells them to become Christians so that they can all see each other again in heaven.

How does Augustine St. Clare die before he can free Tom?

He is stabbed stopping a fight between two drunken men in a café, and St. Clare, who never shared his daughter's faith, dies asking Tom to pray.

How do Sam and Andy help Eliza escape?

They delay the trader's pursuit, slipping something sharp under his saddle so his horse throws him, after their mistress hints they should not ride too fast.

In which state is Legree's plantation?

Louisiana is where Tom is taken to Legree's plantation, yet his cruel new master is no Southerner but a Northerner by birth.

What order from Legree does Tom refuse, earning the planter's hatred?

Tom refused to whip a fellow slave, so Legree beat him viciously and resolved to crush his faith, yet Tom kept comforting the others.

Which enslaved woman on Legree's plantation turns out to be Eliza's long-lost mother?

Cassy drugs Legree's brandy and urges Tom to kill him with an axe as he sleeps, but Tom refuses to fight wickedness with wickedness.

Why does Legree finally order Tom killed?

He won't say where two runaways went, so Legree has his overseers beat him to death, yet Tom forgives both men and they become Christians.

Who arrives to buy Tom's freedom just before he dies?

George Shelby comes too late to save Tom, then goes home, frees all his slaves and tells them to remember Tom whenever they see his cabin.

What did Tom's name eventually come to mean as an insult?

An excessively subservient person is what the insult came to mean, yet Stowe wrote Tom as a pious but strong-willed hero who stands up for his beliefs.

Why does Mr. Shelby agree to sell Tom to a slave trader?

He is deep in debt, and though Tom could flee with Eliza, he refuses, saying he has never broken trust and it is better he go alone than everyone be sold.

Which black abolitionist promoted the novel in his newspaper while also publishing criticism of it?

Frederick Douglass promoted the novel in his paper, yet also printed Martin Delany's letters attacking Stowe for seeming to back the colonisation of Africa by black Americans.

What gruesome item was reportedly mailed to Stowe after Uncle Tom's Cabin came out?

A severed human ear came in a package among threatening letters, and a bookseller in Mobile, Alabama, was forced out of town for selling the novel.

What name is given to the pro-slavery novels written to rebut Stowe's book?

Anti-Tom literature pictured slaves as happy and often claimed Northern white workers lived far more miserable lives than they did.

Which disease killed Stowe's 18-month-old son during an 1849 epidemic in Cincinnati?

Cholera killed baby Samuel Charles, and Stowe later said the grief helped her understand enslaved mothers whose children were sold away from them.

What were the hugely popular stage adaptations of the novel known as?

Tom shows kept drawing big crowds through the end of the century, long after the Civil War had ended slavery.

Why did Stowe refuse to authorize any stage version of Uncle Tom's Cabin?

She distrusted the theatre, which her strict religious upbringing forbade, yet touring companies staged their own versions anyway, without her consent.

Which songwriter's tunes were often played in stage versions of Uncle Tom's Cabin?

Stephen Foster drafted one of his best-known songs in his sketchbook under the title Poor Uncle Tom, Good Night, before renaming it.

Which famous inventor's company made a 1903 film of Uncle Tom's Cabin, one of the earliest full-length movies?

Thomas Edison's company made it, and like the stage versions it copied, the antislavery story still showed slaves dancing joyously.

Why was Uncle Tom's Cabin an easy story to tell in silent films?

Audiences already knew the plot from the book and the stage, and film-makers could hire touring stage troupes whose actors, sets and costumes were ready to hand.

Which organisation's protests led MGM to abandon a planned film of Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1946?

The NAACP led the protest campaign, yet Stowe's characters still turned up in cameos in many Hollywood movies and cartoons of the sound era.

Which musical adapts Uncle Tom's Cabin as the ballet 'The Small House of Uncle Thomas'?

The King and I grew from the memoirs of Anna Leonowens, who really did bring Uncle Tom's Cabin to the attention of the Siamese royal household.

In 1853, Stowe was handed an address signed by over half a million British women calling for what?

An end to slavery was the plea of the Stafford House Address, which drew a published reply from former First Lady Julia Tyler claiming slaves lived better than England's workers.

Which later protest novel is said to owe a large debt to Uncle Tom's Cabin?

The Jungle exposed filthy Chicago meatpacking plants, and within months President Theodore Roosevelt signed the Pure Food and Drug Act.

In Uncle Tom's Cabin, how is Eliza's son Harry disguised for the family's escape by boat?

As a little girl, while Eliza cut her hair and dressed as a young man, because slave catchers watching the boats had her description.

Which Russian novelist called Uncle Tom's Cabin an example of the highest art, flowing from love of God and man?

Leo Tolstoy praised it in What Is Art?, a book in which he also dismissed Shakespeare, Beethoven and the bulk of his own writings.

What was the profession of Stowe's father, Lyman Beecher?

A preacher, Lyman Beecher saw all seven of his sons become ministers too, then the most effective way to influence society.

In which state did Stowe write much of Uncle Tom's Cabin, while her husband taught at Bowdoin College?

Maine was home while Calvin taught at Bowdoin, and the Stowes, backers of the Underground Railroad, briefly sheltered people fleeing slavery there.

How did Lin Shu produce the first Chinese translation of Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1901?

A helper interpreted it aloud while Lin, who knew no foreign languages, wrote it down, and his preface likened enslaved African Americans to Chinese migrants mistreated in America.

Which writer's essay Everybody's Protest Novel dismissed Uncle Tom's Cabin as a bad novel?

James Baldwin, only 24 when it came out, attacked its sentimentality and turned the same attack on his mentor Richard Wright's Native Son.