Living in Cincinnati when her husband was a professor at the Lane Seminary, Harriet Beecher Stowe came in contact with slaves escaping northward and learned about their lives in the South. After passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850, she began writing the manuscript that became Uncle Tom's Cabin, which was serialized in the National Era before it was published as a book in 1852. Its success was immediate; the book sold more than three hundred thousand copies during its first year of publication. When the story of Uncle Tom was adapted as a play in 1853, this portrait was commissioned by Alexander H. Purdy, owner of the National Theatre in New York, for display at the theater where the play was produced. Stowe's modest appearance was surprising to many. When she and Abraham Lincoln met at the White House in 1862, during the Civil War, he is reported to have said, "So you're the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war!"

Alanson Fisher (1807-1884)
Oil on canvas, 1853
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
NPG.NPG.68.1

Enlarged image

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