March 20
UNCLE TOM’S CABIN DAY
It was on this day in 1852 that Harriet Beecher Stowe’s classic book was published. Uncle Tom’s Cabin, subtitled Life Among the Lowly became an instant success, selling 300,000 copies in its first year. It has since been translated into twenty languages and performed as a play the world over.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin was even spotlighted in the Broadway musical and film, The King and I. Maybe you remember the haunting chant from the show, “Run Eliza, Run!” Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel remains a must-read for school children -- and a reminder to all of us of an ugly time in the history of the United States.
The antislavery novel and the adapted plays all feature the elderly, kind slave, Uncle Tom; the slave child, Topsy; Little Eva, the daughter of Tom’s owner; Eliza, a young mulatto woman and the cruel, northern-born overseer who beat Tom to death, Simon LeGree.
The book brought much sympathy from around the world toward the American “peculiar institution” of slavery. In fact, Abraham Lincoln told Harriet Beecher Stowe she was “the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war,” referring of course, to the Civil War.
’Til this day, we refer to an employer or any other with slave-driving tendencies as a ‘Simon LeGree’.
Those Were the Days, the Today in History service from 440 International
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