The book Uncle Tom's Cabin has been often labeled as the kindling wood of the Civil War. Written in 1852 by Harriet Beecher Stowe, a child of a protestant preacher, it was originally penned as a set of articles for the Washington anti-slavery weekly, the National Era.

The mother of seven children, and a teacher, Stowe wrote to support her family. This included poetry, travel guides, biographies, children's books and adult novels. Yet, Her name is forever etched in the annals of those who spoke against slavery during the pre Civil War period.

Uncle Tom's Cabin peaked public interest on the subject of slavery, but it was also based on Stowe's life experiences growing up next to the slave state Kentucky. She had firsthand knowledge about slavery, the anti-slavery movement, and the underground railroad, a network to help slaves escape to the north.

The book aroused intense controversy and made Stowe a national celebrity. To help dispel the attacks on her work, she published A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin the following year documenting the book's truths. She followed up with another anti-slavery novel, Dred in 1856. When meeting President Lincoln in 1862, he is reported to have greeted her as "the little lady who made this big war."

The first public performance of Uncle Tom's Cabin occurred in Troy on September 27, 1852, on the stage of Peale's Museum, corner of Fulton and River. It was a family production, mostly relatives of actor George C. Howard, the museum manager. His wife Caroline, four year old daughter Cordelia, and George himself played major characters. George Aiken, Howard's cousin penned the dramatic version. Another of the actors was William J. Le Moyne, who later went on to become a national stage star specializing in Dicken's works.

The script ran three hours and fifteen minutes, but only took the story up through little Eva's death. In November, Aiken rewrote and ended it with Stowe's finale. The two scripts were combined that month into a drama of six acts which became the standard acting version of the play. It was so popular in Troy, it ran for 150 consecutive nights.

The play was performed continuously in the United States for eighty years. The Howards appeared in Uncle Tom'S Cabin until 1857 when Howard undertook the management of the Troy Adelphi Theater, but the season failed and George, Caroline, and Cordelia went on the road eventually managing a New York theater. Cordelia retired at age 13.

Twenty years before Stowe's book was published and the play performed, the anti slavery sentiment was in full swing in Troy. Slavery was no stranger to residents of Troy, but was abolished in New York in 1827. By1830, there were no slaves living in Rensselaer County.

In November, 1834, the Liberty Street Presbyterian Church at Liberty Street between Third and Fourth gained a new paster, Rev. Henry Highland Garnet. Garnet was a leading abolitionist. His "Call to Rebellion" at the National Negro Convention in Buffalo, New York, in 1843, encouraged African Americans to resist slavery by means of armed rebellion. It gained him national attention.

The abolitionist movement took off in the 1830's, partly as a result of the evangelical movement that swept the north during the previous decade. It called for the end of slavery and promoted women's rights. By 1838, more than 1,350 antislavery societies existed with almost 250,000 members, including many women.

Captured runaways were taken before a Federal court or commissioner and denied a jury trial. Only the statement of the master, even if absent, was taken as the main evidence. Many people did not like this injustice and some participated in the underground railroad movement.

Not only was the underground railroad alive and well in Troy, it wasn't always underground. Our famous example is the case of Charles Nalle, a coachman for Uri Gilbert, Troy businessman and Mayor.

On October 19th, 1848, the 28 year old Nalle escaped from his plantation master Blucher W. Hasbrough of Culpepper County, Virginia. He worked for William Scram at Sand Lake as a teamster, but told his secret to Horace F. Averill, a lawyer in Sand Lake who notified Hasbrough.

Nalle was arrested on April 27, 1860, and brought to the U.S. Commissioners office on the second floor of a bank at the northeast corner of First and State. Several hundred people, including Harriet Tubman who was on her way to Boston, waited for Nalle to be brought out and rescued him. His freedom was purchased for $650 and returned to Troy a free man.