His sister Caroline married actor George C. Howard, a union that would leave an important mark on the history of American theater. In 1852 Howard commissioned his wife's cousin George L. Aiken to write a dramatization of the anti-slavery screed "Uncle Tom's Cabin". The original production spawned a sequel and then was merged into a six-act play that ran until the 1930s. The play had probably a greater impact than the novel by visually depicting the cruelties of slavery and was a boost to the abolitionist movement.