Today in History, March 20, 1852: Harriet Beecher Stowe published ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’

Today is March 20. On this date in:

1815

Napoleon Bonaparte returned to Paris after escaping his exile on Elba, beginning his “Hundred Days” rule.

1852

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s influential novel about slavery, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” was first published in book form after being serialized. The novel was inspired by Stowe’s experiences living in Cincinnati.

1854

The Republican Party of the United States was founded by slavery opponents at a schoolhouse in Ripon, Wisconsin.

1864

Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman met in a parlor at the Burnet House in Cincinnati and made plans for how they hoped to end the Civil War. Grant was to engage Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Virginia, while Sherman was to disrupt supply lines in the south.

Grant and Sherman made plan that ended Civil War

1942

Army Gen. Douglas MacArthur, having evacuated the Philippines at the order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, told reporters in Terowie, Australia: “I came out of Bataan, and I shall return.”

1969

John Lennon married Yoko Ono in Gibraltar.

1976

Kidnapped newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst was convicted of armed robbery for her part in a San Francisco bank holdup carried out by the Symbionese Liberation Army.

1985

Libby Riddles of Teller, Alaska, became the first woman to win the Iditarod Trail Dog Sled Race.

1990

Singer Gloria Estefan suffered a broken back when a truck rear-ended her tour bus on a snow-covered highway in Pennsylvania. (Surgeons implanted titanium rods to stabilize her spine, and Estefan was able to make a comeback after months of intensive physical therapy.)

1995

In Tokyo, 12 people were killed, more than 5,500 others sickened when packages containing the deadly chemical sarin were leaked on five separate subway trains by Aum Shinrikyo cult members.

2003

U.S. and allied forces initiated the war on Iraq. (Because of the time difference, it was late March 19 in the United States.)

2004

The U.S. military charged six soldiers with abusing inmates at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.