Stowe and her husband both shared a belief in abolition (Bio.com). While living in Maine, Harriet Beecher Stowe began to write her most famous novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The first installment of this novel was published in the National Era in 1851. It was eventually published as a novel in 1852. This novel quickly became a bestseller, capturing the Nation’s attention, with more than three-hundred-thousand copies sold within the first year of publication.
He treated him so bad that when George invented a machine for cleaning up the hemp, his master got upset about it and took him back to his plantation. Slaves basically had a fifty percent chance of getting a master who treated them nicely and getting a master who treated them horribly. Uncle Tom's Cabin is said to have been a book that tells the truths of slavery. It does this by telling the actual things that happened to many slaves. By publishing this book, Stowe made those who knew nothing of the evils of slavery realize how cruel it really was, and by doing this she made the South angry.
“Is this the little woman who made this great war?” Lincoln said as he greeted the renowned author, Harriet Beecher Stowe. This abolitionist writer created her famous novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, in response to the Fugitive Slave Law and the politics about slavery in the South. Some Americans even believed that Stowe and her book brought on The Civil War (Reynolds). Because of this, Harriet needed a way to attract more citizens into the anti-slavery cause. With her book, Stowe showed everyone the truth about slavery, even though not everyone agreed with her.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe was a catalyst for the Civil War due to its depiction of slavery as harsh and brutal. The main character, a slave named Uncle Tom, and one of the slave owners, Simon Legree were used to attack the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and the institution of slavery that it protected. Throughout the novel, characters, scenes and plots were Stowe’s persuasions to the reader that slavery is evil, un-Christian, and should not be tolerated. She illustrates the fact that slavery and Christian values oppose each other and are not in any way compatible. Uncle Tom’s Cabin outraged the southerners and made the northerners more aware of the brutality of slavery.
Harriet drew on her passionate anger at this unjust law, the death of her child and the personal accounts of former slaves to write her novel. The first installment of Uncle Tom 's Cabin appeared on June 5, 1851 in the anti-slavery newspaper, The National Era. “Stowe enlisted friends and family to send her information and she scoured freedom narratives and anti-slavery newspapers for first hand accounts as she composed her story” (Harriet Beecher Stowe Center, 2015). In 1852, the series was published as a two volume book. Uncle Tom 's Cabin was a best seller in the United States, Britain, Europe, Asia, and translated into over 60 languages.
It is in opinions and historical movements that the impact of this novel can be justified and shows how its publication was a turning point which helped bring about the Civil War. When Abraham Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1852 after the beginning of the American Civil War, he supposedly said to her, “ So you’re the little woman that wrote the book that started this Great War.” Lincoln was referring to Stowe's novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. It recounts the struggles of several African American slaves to preserve their families and survive the experience for slavery. This quote immediately implies that even the President of America had recognised and emphasised the impact of the novel on American Society as being the key cause to something as important as the Civil War. When Stowe began working on her fictional account of slavery, it was published in 1851 in weekly instalments in an anti-slavery newspaper.
The passage of the fugitive slave law proved a powerful catalyst. She began working on Uncle Toms Cabin and published it first in serial form in the abolitionist magazine The National Era. The first installment appeared on June 5, 1851, but before the serial could be completed, the novel come out in a two-volume set in 1852. The book became an immediate and extraordinary success, selling over one million copies in America and England before the year was out. Thus, Stowe became the most famous American female writer of her day.
“This quote in many ways illustrates what Harriet Beecher Stowe wanted to accomplish with her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. The anti-slavery novel was published in 1852 and according to Will Kaufman “helped lay the groundwork for the civil war. "Stowe was an active abolitionist but her true profession was a being a teacher in Connecticut, where she was born and raised. The novel's main character is Tom, a slave who has gone through much suffering during his life and whose story the other characters revolve around. Stowe's novel was a bestseller and sold over 300, 000 copies in its first year and over 1 million copies in Great Britain.
Uncle Tom's Cabin was the best-selling novel of the nineteenth century and the second best-selling book of the century, after the Bible (Smith 221). The book helped to feed the abolitionist cause in the 1850s. In the first year after publication, it sold 300,000 copies in the United States. The book is structured in many layers that are combined, creating a surprising novel that can be read at any age. The first layer is the story itself, perhaps the one most often followed by the child in a summer vacation.
All seven sons became minister, the oldest daughter pioneered women’s education, and the youngest daughter founded the National Women’s Suffrage Association. It's very appropriate to say that Stowe was born into a family of innovators. Primarily, one of Stowe's largest influence in her abolitionist ideas was her brother, Henry Ward Beecher, who was "already an outspoken abolitionist"; by the 1850s, he would become the "driving force" for Free Soil movement in banning slavery in Kansas. Although this was a significant influence, Stowe decided to write the novel after visiting Cincinnati; she wrote several short stories of all the monstrosities and mistreatments of slaves she witnessed and heard of. She finally combined these short stories and published Uncle... ... middle of paper ... ...1854. http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/plantation.htm (accessed December 12, 2013).