Inspiring Stowe: The Real Josiah Henson

On this tour, we explore how Harriet Beecher Stowe came to author Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), a complex and controversial anti-slavery novel with a massive impact on U.S. history and culture. We’ll discover what Stowe learned, read, and witnessed that made her want to speak out against enslavement in her own time, with special attention to the life of Josiah Henson, the real-life Black abolitionist who inspired the character of Tom in Stowe’s novel.