In 1962, Abraham Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe. According to legend, he said, “So you’re the little lady who wrote the book that started this Great War” (Harriet Beecher Stowe Center). Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a controversial novel written about slavery during the 1800s, sparked many of the feelings that would eventually escalate into causing the bloodiest war America had ever seen. At the start of the novel, Mr. Shelby, a Kentucky plantation owner, must sell two of his slaves in order to settle his debt with Haley, a slave trader. Going against his conscience, he decides to sell Tom, an old religious and faithful slave, and Harry, a bright toddler.
Mr. Haley does not give up though. He then hired two slave-catchers to try and capture Eliza and Harry. Before leaving Kentucky for New Orleans with Tom, Mr. Haley then purchased more slaves. While on a ship headed for New Orleans one of these slaves commits suicide because Mr. Haley sold her infant. Some time later, Eliza's husband, George Harris, who escaped slavery when his master told him he must marry another woman and never see Eliza again, discovers of his wife's escape.
Eliza overhears the men talking and flees the plantation with her son. With Haley not far behind, she starts her dangerous journey to Canada, where she hopes to meet up with her husband, George, who is also a runaway. Haley is unable to catch Eliza, so he returns to the farm and collects Tom. With plans of taking Tom to be sold in the South, Haley boards a steamboat with several other slaves. On the boat Tom meets and makes a great impression on a little girl, Evangeline St. Clare, or Eva.
The two runaways team up and Jim explains to Huck that he ran away because he overheard Widow Douglas telling her sister that she was going to sell Jim to a plantation in New Orleans. Huck promises to not tell anyone that he ran away but is nervous about helping an escaped slave. After a big storm the river floods and Jim and Huck find a floating house and raft and decide to loot the house and take the raft. Inside the house Jim finds a dead man but decides to keep the identity of the man a secret from Huck. Huck disguises himself as a girl and goes to the mainland for information and learns that the townspeople think that Jim is hiding on Jackson Island.
While under the rule of Master Legree, Tom sometimes doubts there is a God and his Christian beliefs. After spending a year of torture at the plantation, his old master, George Shelby, finds him in order to buy him and take him home. Each of these masters signify another stage in Tom's life. Unfortunately, Tom dies after his reunion with George shortly after he claims he died a content man. When George returns home, he tells Tom's wife what happened and sets up papers to free all of his slaves.
The movie Uncle Tom's Cabin is a movie that moves many people. This is a movie that displays Harriet Beecher Stowe's immortal classic of an American literature. Also Uncle Tom's Cabin is a book that Abraham Lincoln credited with the starting of the civil war. Uncle Tom's Cabin is the eyewitness story about the slavery in the Deep South. Although Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote the book in 1852 the release of this book and later the movie were one of the few that told of the hardships crossed with the old ways of slavery.
A tight knit group of slaves are separated, some escapes and some sold, and encounter hardships and pain that all lead to the salvation of freedom or the salvation of heaven. In the state of Kentucky, a transaction takes place selling 2 slaves to a cruel man in order to save a slaveholder named Mr. Shelby from debt. He sells a devout Christian slave named Uncle Tom and a boy named Harry to Mr. Haley (the buyer). Eliza, Harry’s mother, hears of the transaction just after her husband George had run away to get to Canada and his freedom. Eliza decides to run away with Harry in order to protect her child.
Shelby arrives with money to buy Tom’s freedom, but is too late. He can only watch as Tom dies as a scapegoat. As George was leaving the plantation, the two women tried to make a break for freedom, only to hitch a ride with him after they had explained their story. On a boat to freedom, Shelby and the girls meet Harris’s sister and had travel with her, where Cassy realizes that Eliza is her daughter. They decide to travel to France when Harris’s sister had claimed to be rich, from there they decided to move to Africa where many former African slaves return too.
The four year war opposed one section of the country against each other and nearly rescinded the United States of America. It is no wonder why when Abraham Lincoln met Stowe, he responded that she was “the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war” and I would agree with that statement of his. Whether this is true or not, the gush highlights the public linking between Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Civil War. In the novel, Harriet Beecher Stowe introduces a housemaid slave, Eliza, who was promised her son would not be sold, however, when the poor economic conditions had hit her slave owners, they did not keep up with the promise of keeping Eliza’s son. One night she overheard them planning to sell her son, so Eliza escaped to help her son.
This novel changed the public opinion of forced servitude which ultimately had a significant effect on the already sectionalist nation. Although most southern slave owners disagreed with her opinion, Harriet Beecher Stowe accurately represented the practice of slavery in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Known by Abraham Lincoln as “the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war”, Harriet Elizabeth Beecher was born on June 14, 1811 in Litchfield, Connecticut. She was the sixth of eleven children whom all grew to become important public figures. All seven sons became minister, the oldest daughter pioneered women’s education, and the youngest daughter founded the National Women’s Suffrage Association.