As the answer above well expresses, Uncle Tom's Cabin's most direct importance was its contribution to the Civil War. The book was a sensation in this country, a runaway bestseller that led to cries for the immediate abolition of slavery. Abraham Lincoln supposedly said that Stowe was the "little lady" who started a great war. That was an exaggeration, but her novel's contribution to an increased clamor for abolition is not disputed.
Before...
As the answer above well expresses, Uncle Tom's Cabin's most direct importance was its contribution to the Civil War. The book was a sensation in this country, a runaway bestseller that led to cries for the immediate abolition of slavery. Abraham Lincoln supposedly said that Stowe was the "little lady" who started a great war. That was an exaggeration, but her novel's contribution to an increased clamor for abolition is not disputed.
Before the novel, many sympathetic whites had supported the gradual withering away of slavery over time, thinking its demise inevitable. Most whites didn't engage imaginatively enough with the institution of slavery to put themselves in the place of a slave. Part of Stowe's genius, however, was to show how cruel the system could be even under well-intentioned masters. Only gradually does her novel arrive at the barbarism of Simon Legree. Stowe, therefore, was so successful at depicting slavery's inherent inhumanity that any delay in ending it began to feel intolerable. This contributed to the polarization that led to war.
Less well known is the book's impact in Europe. According to David S. Reynolds in Mightier Than the Sword, not only was Uncle Tom's Cabin the most influential novel ever published in America, it was also the best-selling novel across Europe during the nineteenth century. Initially it was banned in Russia out of fear it would inflame passions about serfdom, although French and German translations were smuggled in. Later, according to Reynolds, it contributed to the Tsar's decision to free the serfs.
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