Samuel Ward's visit to London was, he considered, at a most fortunate time for his fund-raising endeavour, because: "of the twofold fact that Uncle Tom's Cabin was in every body's hands and heart, and its gifted authoress was the English people's guest. For anti-slavery purposes, a more favourable time could not have been chosen for visiting England." As he further explained, "When Mrs. Stowe arrived in England... the book from the one side of the Atlantic, the address (by James Sherman) from the other side... awakened more attention to the anti-slavery cause in England, in 1853, than had existed since the agitation of the emancipation question in 1832." Ward, having met Mrs. Stowe at the house of Rev. James Sherman, next door to his Surrey Chapel on Blackfriars Road, in May 1853, was invited to stay at the Surrey Chapel Parsonage along with Mrs Stowe's husband, the Rev. Dr. Calvin Stowe, and her brother Rev. Charles Beecher, for three weeks.
