March 20 (UPI) -- On this date in history:
In 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe's anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin was published.
In 1854, in what is considered the founding meeting of the Republican Party, former members of the Whig Party met in Ripon, Wis., to establish a new party to oppose the spread of slavery into the western territories.
In 1963, a volcano on the East Indies island of Bali began erupting. The death toll exceeded 1,500.
In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered the Alabama National Guard to provide security at a planned civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery the next day. Earlier marches turned violent and deadly, but the third march was considered more of a success both in terms of safety and in spreading the message of the right to vote for black Americans.
