Harriet Beecher Stowe: creator of America’s most influential novel
On the bicentenary of her birth, Paul Millward considers some Quaker influences on the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin
‘If I could use my pen as you can, I would write something that would make this whole nation feel what an accursed thing slavery is,’ Harriet Beecher Stowe’s sister wrote in a letter. These words proved prophetic when Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published in 1852. 
The impact this book had on the American people, indeed the whole world, cannot be overestimated. It helped to transform the public’s attitude towards slavery and its publication was a hugely influential event in the history of the abolitionist movement.
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I wonder whether the Quaker concern with slavery overshadowed what was going on in the Scottish Highlands at the same time and for a century earlier, ie the Clearances. Harriet Beecher Stowe is said to have visited the Scottish Highlands as a guest of the Duchess of Sutherland and signally failed to notice what was happening to the Highlanders at the time.