100 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.

Which European capital has a subway station and a housing estate named after Uncle Tom's Cabin?

Berlin's Onkel Toms Hütte station takes its name from a nearby 1885 beer garden, where a landlord called Thomas put up huts to keep his drinkers dry.

Simon Legree, the brutal planter of Uncle Tom's Cabin, was born and raised in which part of America?

New England bred Legree, a pointed choice by Stowe: her cruellest slaveholder is a Northerner who ran off to sea as a boy, not a Southern-born planter.

Which future Pulp Fiction star had a supporting role in the 1987 TV film of Uncle Tom's Cabin?

Samuel L. Jackson played Eliza's runaway husband, alongside Avery Brooks as Tom and Bruce Dern as St. Clare.

Which child star's 1936 film Dimples recreates the opening night of a stage Uncle Tom's Cabin?

Shirley Temple plays a street entertainer picked for the show's lead, and the film closes with her fronting a minstrel number.

Which showman staged a softened, happy-ending Uncle Tom's Cabin at his American Museum in New York?

P. T. Barnum imported H. J. Conway's version, which freed Tom at the end and gave its criticism of slavery to a newly invented Yankee reporter.

Which religious group shelters Eliza and her family during their flight north in Uncle Tom's Cabin?

Quakers hide the family in their settlement, then nurse the slave catcher shot during the chase until he changes sides.

Which of the Great Lakes does Eliza's family cross by boat to reach freedom in Uncle Tom's Cabin?

Erie is the family's last barrier: they sail from Sandusky in disguise while a slave catcher watches the dock for them.

Stowe's hero in Uncle Tom's Cabin is a strong father in his prime; how did stage shows change him?

Stage shows aged him into a frail man: minstrel versions swapped the muscular father for a grey, shuffling figure, and the later insult grew from that character.

The law that provoked Uncle Tom's Cabin was part of which package of bills designed by Henry Clay?

The Compromise of 1850 also admitted California as a free state and ended the slave trade, though not slavery itself, in Washington, D.C.

Which notorious 1915 film set its climax in a besieged cabin that scholars liken to the one in Uncle Tom's Cabin?

The Birth of a Nation has white Southerners and Union veterans make their last stand in a cabin, an image scholars trace back to Stowe's story.

Which office does Mr. Bird hold in Uncle Tom's Cabin when he breaks his own new law to help Eliza?

Senator Bird has just pushed through a law against aiding runaways, yet one look at Eliza and her child has him driving them to a safe house by night.

In Uncle Tom's Cabin, which country does Eliza's reunited family finally leave France to settle in?

Liberia is their choice, an ending that critics such as Martin Delany attacked as support for sending freed people to Africa.

Which crop do Tom and his fellow workers pick on Simon Legree's plantation in Uncle Tom's Cabin?

Cotton is weighed every night at Legree's, and Tom first gets into trouble by slipping handfuls from his own sack into a weaker woman's.

In Uncle Tom's Cabin, Eliza's husband invents a factory machine for cleaning which crop?

Hemp it is, and the invention costs him dearly: his jealous owner pulls him out of the factory and sets him to hoeing and digging instead.

Little Eva in Uncle Tom's Cabin has which full first name, also the title of a Longfellow poem?

Evangeline St. Clare shares her name with the heroine of Longfellow's hit poem, published five years before the novel.

How does Eliza learn that her young son has been sold at the start of Uncle Tom's Cabin?

She overhears her owners talking it over at night, leaves a note of apology for her mistress, and is gone with the boy before morning.

After St. Clare buys him in Uncle Tom's Cabin, which job is Tom given in the family's household?

Coachman is his post, but Tom spends most of his days with the family's young daughter, who begged her father to buy him.

St. Clare brings a cousin south to run his home in Uncle Tom's Cabin; which state is she from?

Vermont shaped her: raised on a tidy farm there, she is appalled by the chaos of her cousin's kitchen and sets about putting it in order.

In Uncle Tom's Cabin, what do Legree's two overseers do after the dying Tom forgives them?

They become Christians at his side, the novel's clearest picture of Tom as a Christ-like figure who forgives his own killers.

After Tom's death in Uncle Tom's Cabin, what does his first owner's son do on returning to the farm?

He frees everyone he owns and asks them to think of Tom's sacrifice whenever they see his old cabin.

Which fifteen-year-old girl does Legree buy at the same auction as Tom in Uncle Tom's Cabin?

Emmeline is torn from her mother at the sale, and her arrival pushes Legree's older mistress into planning an escape for them both.

In Uncle Tom's Cabin, what is the name of St. Clare's wife, who pleads sick headaches and sends Tom to auction?

Marie ignores her late husband's promise of freedom, and the sale she orders delivers Tom to Legree.

Which slave hunter in Uncle Tom's Cabin is shot in the chase and ends up helping Eliza's family?

Tom Loker is abandoned by his own partners, nursed back to health by Eliza's protectors, and repays them with a warning that the ferry port is being watched.

In Uncle Tom's Cabin, where do the two women fleeing Legree hide while his men search the swamps?

In his own attic, a garret his workers believe is haunted; the women feed that fear with eerie noises so Legree never dares climb the stairs.

Which keepsake does the Shelbys' son hang round Tom's neck as he is sold in Uncle Tom's Cabin?

A dollar coin, holed and threaded on a string, comes with the boy's promise that he will one day come and bring Tom home.

Eliza's runaway husband in Uncle Tom's Cabin darkens his skin and hair to pass as which nationality?

Spanish is the look he chooses, and it works so well that he strolls into a tavern and calmly reads the notice advertising his own capture.

Why does Tom refuse to run away with Eliza on the night he learns of the sale in Uncle Tom's Cabin?

Others would be sold in his place, he reasons, and the whole farm broken up, so he stays and lets the trader take him.

On which river is the steamboat sailing when Tom first meets little Eva in Uncle Tom's Cabin?

Mississippi waters are carrying Tom south to a slave market when Eva begs her father to buy him from the trader.

Besides abolition, which reform cause of Stowe's day runs through Uncle Tom's Cabin as a subtheme?

Temperance runs under the plot: the fate of Eliza's son is haggled over wine, and drink figures in more than one death.

Which 19th-century genre, written largely by and for women, does Uncle Tom's Cabin represent?

Sentimental novel is the label: such books aimed at readers' sympathy, and one friend wrote to Stowe that she stayed up past one in the morning to finish it.

The author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe, was born in Litchfield in which state?

Connecticut drew her back in the end: she spent the last 23 years of her life in a Hartford house that is now a museum.

In which city did John P. Jewett first publish Uncle Tom's Cabin as a two-volume book?

Boston publisher Jewett took the book on at his wife's urging, then needed eight presses running nonstop to keep up with demand.

In which Southern state did the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin spend her winters after the Civil War?

Florida honoured her for it: she helped found an integrated school at Mandarin, and her book Palmetto Leaves drew Northern tourists and settlers.

Which magazine, launched in 1857, counts Harriet Beecher Stowe among its credited founders?

The Atlantic lists her as a founder even though she stayed away from its founding dinner because alcohol was being served.

Which English novelist, sent a copy of Uncle Tom's Cabin by Stowe, wrote back praising its power?

Charles Dickens told her he had read it with the deepest interest and sympathy; the historian Macaulay called it America's most valuable addition to English literature.

Which novel, set among runaways in the Great Dismal Swamp, did Stowe write after Uncle Tom's Cabin?

Dred sold faster at first than its famous predecessor, though it never matched that book's lasting popularity.

Which Southern-born siblings co-wrote American Slavery As It Is, a source for Uncle Tom's Cabin?

The Grimké sisters compiled it with Theodore Weld, partly from slaveholders' own newspaper notices, and Stowe is said to have slept with the book under her pillow.

Which future Gettysburg hero heard early chapters of Uncle Tom's Cabin read at Stowe's home?

Joshua Chamberlain, then at Bowdoin College, later recalled a chosen circle of friends gathering to hear and frankly discuss each new chapter.

In which state was free black minister Samuel Green jailed for owning a copy of Uncle Tom's Cabin?

Maryland sentenced him to ten years in 1857 after a search of his home turned up the novel; a new governor pardoned him five years later.

Which Romantic poet did Harriet Beecher Stowe accuse in print of an affair with his own half-sister?

Lord Byron was the target of her 1869 article telling his wife's side of the story, and the scandal cost Stowe much of her popularity in Britain.

T. D. Rice, a celebrated stage Uncle Tom, was already famous for creating which blackface character?

Jim Crow made Rice a star in the 1830s, and the character's name was later attached to the segregation laws of the Southern states.

Which studio released the lavish 1927 film of Uncle Tom's Cabin, among the costliest silent pictures made?

Universal spent more than a year and $1.8 million on it, making it one of the costliest pictures of the silent era.

Which country turned Uncle Tom's Cabin into a daily television soap opera in 1969?

Brazil's TV Globo made it as A Cabana do Pai Tomás, an early-evening telenovela that ran from July 1969 to February 1970.

Which English writer wrote in 1945 that Uncle Tom's Cabin was perhaps the supreme example of a good bad book?

George Orwell judged it melodramatic yet moving and essentially true, and predicted it would outlast far more literary writers.

Which novelist, born near Natchez, titled his 1938 debut collection Uncle Tom's Children?

Richard Wright, later the author of Native Son, borrowed Stowe's title, then judged the stories too easy to weep over and vowed his next book would allow no such comfort.

Which 1884 California novel tried to do for Native Americans what Uncle Tom's Cabin did for slaves?

Ramona followed its author's non-fiction study A Century of Dishonor by three years; this time she wanted a story that would move people's hearts.

Why did Charles Gilpin, first cast as Tom in the 1927 film of Uncle Tom's Cabin, leave the role?

His Tom was too aggressive for the studio's taste; whether he quit or was fired, the part went to James B. Lowe, who is on screen for under nine minutes.

Which Martin Scorsese film shows a rowdy crowd pelting the actors at a stage Uncle Tom's Cabin?

Gangs of New York stages it as a wartime riot, with an actor playing the president dangling in mid-air above the cast as objects fly.

Which comedy duo's 1945 film The Naughty Nineties ends with one of them in drag as Little Eva?

Abbott and Costello close the film on a showboat staging of Stowe's story, where the wire hoisting Costello up to heaven gets stuck.

Which cartoon star stages his own Uncle Tom's Cabin with friends in a 1933 Disney short?

Mickey Mouse takes two of the parts himself in Mickey's Mellerdrammer, with Minnie as Eva and Horace Horsecollar as Legree.