People, Locations, Episodes

Sun, 04.11.1852

Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a story

Uncle Tom's Cabin, an antislavery novel written in 1852, is celebrated on this date. The story was about a faithful Black slave killed by a cruel white enslaver.

The book was popular, selling over 300,000 copies within a year; Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote it. By delivering a passionate indictment of slavery, the story intensified antagonism between the North and the South before the  American Civil War era. While meeting Stowe at the White House in 1863, President Lincoln greeted her as the “little woman who wrote the book that made this Great War.”

Uncle Tom's Cabin is linked to one of Washington D. C.'s greatest historical secrets. The model for the lead charter was Josiah Henson, a slave who lived for more than 30 years on a 500-acre plantation in what is now Bethesda, MD. All that remains of the plantation is a log cabin (shown) attached to a small, colonial-style house off Old Georgetown Road just north of Tilden Lane.

Since 1963, Marcel and Hildegarde Mallet-Prevost have owned the 1.25-acre property. This includes one of the few late 18th-century frame homes in Montgomery County.  Last renovated in the 1930s, the house and cabin are one of the county’s Historic Preservation Master Plans.