Josiah Henson

A key part of the antislavery movement was that African Americans began to speak for themselves, providing direct testimony about life under slavery. With his wife and four children, Josiah Henson was able to escape from bondage in 1830, settling in Canada. He became a minister, was active in the Underground Railroad, and published a memoir, The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Narrated by Himself (1849). Harriet Beecher Stowe drew on the memoir for Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and her saintly character Uncle Tom may have been modeled on Henson; during a tour of England, where this portrait was taken, Henson was called “Uncle Tom” by the newspapers.