Carl Sandburg was paid ten cents to hand out printed bills advertising a performance of “Uncle Tom's Cabin” at the Auditorium Theater on North Broad Street. He was also given a free ticket to the performance. The intriguing words on the handbill stated there would be two of everything: two Uncle Toms, two Little Evas, two Simon Legrees, two Elizas crossing the Ohio River and two packs of bloodhounds. This curiosity attracted a good crowd to the theater. Needless to say, there was only one of each. The audience felt more than a little cheated.

The performance took place in the early 1890s, more than forty years after the book by Harriet Beecher Stowe had been published on March 20, 1852. She originally wrote the story as a forty-installment serialization in an abolitionist publication.

 Mrs. Stowe was the daughter of Lyman Beecher, a well-known Congregational clergyman. Her brothers, Henry Ward Beecher and Edward Beecher, were also ministers. Edward was pastor of the Brick Church on South Broad Street in Galesburg during the 1860s. Harriet married Calvin E. Stowe, another clergyman, who taught at Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati, and later at Bowdoin College in Maine.

 The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 was one of the inspirations for the book. The law required the return of runaway slaves to their owners. Mrs. Stowe had learned about the Underground Railroad while living in Cincinnati. Kentucky, a slave state just across the Ohio River, was a continuing source of runaway slaves.

 Her goal in writing the serialization was to depict slavery as a uniquely depraved institution. She wanted to show the ugly separation of slave families. Adults and children could be sold individually to another slave owner on a distant plantation, forever dividing families. The ill treatment of slaves brought out the worst characteristics of white owners. The book was written almost as a sermon might have been in those days. It was dramatic and sensational.

The book sold 300,000 copies in the first year. Before the serialization ended, promoters were preparing stage performances of the story. There were even musical versions presented in theaters across the country. The dramatic versions played in theaters until after the turn of the twentieth century. A silent film was produced in 1903. Members of the public flocked to see it. They knew the characters and the story so well, there was no need for spoken dialogue.

Most readers have probably seen the movie “The King and I” by Rogers and Hammerstein, starring Yul Brynner and Deborah Kerr. “The Small Cabin of Uncle Thomas” is presented before the King of Siam by his children and several of his wives. One of his concubines uses the performance as an opportunity to escape.

 “Uncle Tom's Cabin” still provokes arguments among historians, writers and women's rights advocates. It created stereotypes of African-Americans which still exist today. Henry Lewis Gates, Jr., a Harvard University professor, has called the story “the central document in American race relations and a significant moral and political explanation of the character of those relations.”