Original Cover of Uncle Tom’s Cabin Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel increased sympathy for slaves among northern whites. Ex-slave William Wells Brown proclaimed that the book “has come down upon the dark abodes of slavery like a morning sunlight, unfolding to view its enormities in a manner which has fastened all eyes upon the ‘peculiar situation,’ and awakening sympathy in hearts that never before felt for the slave.”
Newberry Library, Chicago, Illinois, USA/Bridgeman Images