Editing Uncle Tom's Cabin (section)

===Contemporary reaction in United States and around the world===
[[File:Uncle Tom's Cabin cover.jpg|thumb|upright|Stowe responded to criticism by writing ''[[A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin]]'' (1853), documenting the veracity of her novel's depiction of slavery.]]
''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' had an "incalculable"{{sfn|Tompkins|1985|p=124}} impact on the 19th-century world and captured the imagination of many Americans. In a likely [[wikt:apocryphal|apocryphal]] story that alludes to the novel's impact, when [[Abraham Lincoln]] met Stowe in 1862 he supposedly commented, "So this is the little lady who started this great war."{{sfn|Stowe|1911|p=203}}{{sfn|Vollaro|2009}}{{sfn|Painter|2000|pp= 245–246}} Historians are undecided if Lincoln actually said this line, and in a letter that Stowe wrote to her husband a few hours after meeting with Lincoln no mention of this comment was made.{{sfn|Claybaugh|2003|p=xvii}} Many writers have also credited the novel with focusing Northern anger at the injustices of slavery and the Fugitive Slave Law{{sfn|Claybaugh|2003|p=xvii}} and helping to fuel the abolitionist movement.{{sfn|Goldner|2001|p= 82}}{{sfn|DeLombard|2012}} [[Union (American Civil War)|Union]] [[General officer|general]] and politician [[James Baird Weaver]] said that the book convinced him to become active in the abolitionist movement.{{sfn|Arnett|1920|pp=154–157}}

[[Frederick Douglass]] was "convinced both of the social uses of the novel and of Stowe's humanitarianism" and heavily promoted the novel in his newspaper during the book's initial release.<ref name="FrederickDouglass">{{cite web |url=https://daily.jstor.org/frederick-douglass-feud-over-uncle-toms-cabin/ |title= Frederick Douglass's Feud Over Uncle Tom's Cabin |first= Grant |last= Shreve |publisher= JSTOR Daily |date= January 29, 2018|access-date= March 10, 2022}}</ref> Though Douglass said ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' was "a work of marvelous depth and power," he also published criticism of the novel, most prominently by [[Martin Delany]]. In a series of letters in the paper, Delany accused Stowe of "borrowing (and thus profiting) from the work of black writers to compose her novel" and chastised Stowe for her "apparent support of black colonization to Africa."<ref name="FrederickDouglass"/> Martin was "one of the most out-spoken black critics" of ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' at the time and later wrote ''[[Blake; or the Huts of America]],'' a novel where an African American "chooses violent rebellion over Tom's resignation."<ref>{{cite web |url=http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/africam/blakehp.html |title= Stand still and see the salvation|work= Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture, a Multi-Media Archive |publisher= Department of English, University of Virginia |access-date= February 20, 2022}}</ref>

White people in the [[Southern United States|American South]] were outraged at the novel's release,<ref name=pbs-4p2958>{{cite web |url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2958.html |title=Slave narratives and ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' |work=Africans in America |publisher= PBS |access-date= February 16, 2007}}</ref> with the book also roundly criticized by slavery supporters.<ref name="ReactionKey"/> Southern novelist [[William Gilmore Simms]] declared the work utterly false{{sfn|Watson|1976|pp=365–368}} while also calling it slanderous.{{sfn|Brophy|1995–1996|p= 496}} Reactions ranged from a bookseller in [[Mobile, Alabama]], being forced to leave town for selling the novel<ref name=pbs-4p2958/> to threatening letters sent to Stowe (including a package containing a slave's severed ear).<ref name=pbs-4p2958/> Many Southern writers, like Simms, soon wrote their own books in opposition to Stowe's novel.{{sfn|Ridgely|1960}}

Some critics highlighted Stowe's paucity of life-experience relating to Southern life, saying that it led her to create inaccurate descriptions of the region. For instance, she had never been to a Southern plantation. Stowe always said she based the characters of her book on stories she was told by runaway slaves in Cincinnati. It is reported that "She observed firsthand several incidents which galvanized her to write [the] famous anti-slavery novel. Scenes she observed on the Ohio River, including seeing a husband and wife being sold apart, as well as newspaper and magazine accounts and interviews, contributed material to the emerging plot."<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.uwm.edu/Dept/Library/special/exhibits/clastext/clspg149.htm |title= The Classic Text: Harriett Beecher Stowe |publisher= University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Library |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080516041527/http://www.uwm.edu/Dept/Library/special/exhibits/clastext/clspg149.htm |archive-date=May 16, 2008 |access-date= March 10, 2022}}</ref>

In response to these criticisms, in 1853 Stowe published ''[[A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin]]'', an attempt to document the veracity of the novel's depiction of slavery.{{sfn|Ashland|2020}} In the book, Stowe discusses each of the major characters in ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' and cites "real life equivalents" to them while also mounting a more "aggressive attack on slavery in the South than the novel itself had".{{sfn|Stowe|1854}} Like the novel, ''A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin'' was a best-seller, but although Stowe claimed ''A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin'' documented her previously consulted sources, she actually read many of the cited works only after the publication of her novel.{{sfn|Stowe|1854}}

[[File:Wikibruz24.jpg|thumb|left|A sculpture after an 1869 design by [[Louis Samain]] was installed in 1895 on [[Avenue Louise]] in [[Brussels]]. The scene—a runaway black slave and child attacked by dogs—was inspired by ''Uncle Tom's Cabin''.]]

''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' also created great interest in the United Kingdom. The first London edition appeared in May 1852 and sold 200,000 copies.<ref name=pbs-4p2958/> Some of this interest was due to [[anti-Americanism]] in Britain. As English lawyer [[Nassau William Senior]] argued, "The evil passions which ''Uncle Tom'' gratified in England were not hatred or vengeance, but national jealousy and national vanity. We have long been smarting under the conceit of America—we are tired of hearing her boast that she is the freest and the most enlightened country that the world has ever seen. Our clergy hate her voluntary system—our [[Tories (British political party)|Tories]] hate her democrats—our [[Whigs (British political party)|Whigs]] hate her [[parvenu]]s—our [[Radicals (UK)|Radicals]] hate her litigiousness, her insolence, and her ambition. All parties hailed Mrs. Stowe as a revolter from the enemy... She taught us how to prove that democrats may be tyrants, that an aristocracy of caste is more oppressive than an aristocracy of station... Our pity for the victim is swallowed up by our hatred of the tyrant."{{sfn|Adams|2008|loc= quoting [[Nassau William Senior|Nassau Senior]] on p. 33}}

Stowe sent a copy of the book to [[Charles Dickens]], who wrote her in response: "I have read your book with the deepest interest and sympathy, and admire, more than I can express to you, both the generous feeling which inspired it, and the admirable power with which it is executed."{{sfn|Stone|1957|p= 188}} The historian and politician [[Thomas Babington Macaulay]] wrote in 1852 that "it is the most valuable addition that America has made to English literature."{{sfn|Rubinstein|2011|p=140}} [[Charles Francis Adams Sr.]], the American ambassador to Britain during the Civil War, argued later that "''Uncle Tom's Cabin''; or ''Life among the Lowly'', published in 1852, exercised, largely from fortuitous circumstances, a more immediate, considerable and dramatic world-influence than any other book ever printed."{{sfn|Adams|2018|p=79}}

[[Leo Tolstoy]] claimed that ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' was a greater work than any play written by [[Shakespeare]] because it flowed from the love of God and man.<ref>{{cite book |last=MacFarquhar |first=Larissa |author-link=Larissa MacFarquhar |date=2015 |title=Strangers Drowning : Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Urge to Help |publisher=[[Penguin Books]] |page=278 |isbn=9780143109785}}</ref>