Do you have dreams? Do you think that dreams that manifest into actions can change the status quo? Do you think one person can change the world? Robin Williams once said: "No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world. “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. Its selling record was second to only the Bible. In 1855 it was credited with being "the most popular novel of our day." In the colonial era tobacco was the number one produced cash crop in the New World. Virginia and Maryland had the largest producing plantations and the biggest importers of slave labor. In 1783 the inventor of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney introduced a whole new cash crop to America. Cotton became the dominant cash crop of America. Then need for slave labor greatly increased. More than ever the imports of slave were on high demand. Slave produced cotton between 1800-1860 spread from South Carolina to Georgia then to Mississippi."After the abolition of the slave trade in 1808, the principal source of the expansion of slavery into the lower South was the domestic slave trade from the upper South. By 1850, 1.8 million of the 2.5 million enslaved Afri...
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...imes . N.p., 26 Jun 2011. Web. 6 Jan 2014.
Beecher Stowe, Harriet (1852). Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly I. Boston: John P. Jewitt. Retrieved 4 Jan 2014.
Beecher Stowe, Harriet (1852). Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly II. Boston: John P. Jewitt. Retrieved 4 Jan 2014.
The Civil War in American Culture by Will Kaufman, Edinburgh University Press, 2006, page 18.
Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Spark Publishers, 2002, p. 19, states the novel is about the "destructive power of slavery and the
ability of Christian love to overcome it..."
Playing the Race Card: Melodramas of Black and White from Uncle Tom to O. J. Simpson by Linda Williams, Princeton Univ. Press, 2001, page 113.
Whitewashing Uncle Tom's Cabin: nineteenth-century women novelists respond to Stowe by Joy Jordan-Lake, Vanderbilt University Press, 2005.
Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia. “Stowe, Harriet Beecher”. Date of Last Revision Unknown. 6 Jan 2002. <http://www.encyclopedia.com/printablenew/12373.html>.
McPherson, James M.; The Atlas of the Civil War. Macmillan: 15 Columbus Circle New York, NY. 1994.
Tom's Cabin: A Norton Critical Edition by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Ed. Elizabeth Ammons. New York: Norton, 1994.
I never thought that I would read a book over the summer, but over the course of these past two months, that changed. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” forever changed how I view slavery. I loved reading it. Throughout the whole novel, Stowe uses her experience and knowledge to portray the terrible hardships and struggles that slaves endured everyday. Not only does this book express the thoughts of the slaves and their faith in God, but also of the people around them. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” wanted so badly for America to give freedom and equality for all people, and that is what I enjoyed most while reading.
Heidler, David S. and Jeanne T., Encyclopedia of the American Civil War: A Political, Social, And Military History Volume 2 D-I, ABC-CLIO Inc, 2000.
Harriet Beecher Stowe publishes “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” in 1852. This anti-slavery book was the most popular book of the 19th century, and the 2nd most sold book in the century, following only the Bible. It was said that this novel “led to the civil war”, or “the straw that broke the camel’s back”. After one year, 300,000 copies were sold in the U.S., and over 1 million were sold in Britain.
Harriet Beecher Stowe is perhaps best known for her work entitled Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a heart-wrenching story about the treatment and oppression of slaves. Uncle Tom’s Cabin brings to life the evils of slavery and questions the moral and religious values of those who condoned or participated in such a lifestyle. While the factual accuracy of this work has been criticized by advocators of both slavery and abolition it is widely believed that the information contained was drawn from Stowe’s own life experiences (Adams 62). She was the seventh child and youngest daughter in her family. She was only four years old when her mother died, which left the young Harriet Beecher little protection from her "Fatherâs rugged character and doctrinal strictness" (Adams 19). To further complicate matters she was aware that her father preferred she had been a boy. According to Adams, although Stoweâs childhood was not entirely unhappy she would never forget...
Book Title: The American Civil War: A Handbook of Literature and Research. Contributors: Robin Higham - editor, Steven E. Woodworth - editor. Publisher: Greenwood Press. Place of Publication: Westport, CT. Publication Year: 1996
Uncle Tom’s cabin was written by Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1852. It is an anti-slavery book that shows the reader the many sufferings endured by slaves in the period before the civil war. To the people of the modern day generation, these acts of slavery are unbelievable but the reader has to realize the fact that in those years, people suffered, to the point where they were just treated as property, where owners can do whatever they like and be disposed of or traded as if they were just material possessions and not even human. The book talks about the relationship between slaves and their masters as well as the role of women. As slavery was practiced during such times, Stowe tries to expose the difficult life people had in the past and how their faith in God helped them to endure all there hardships.
Schultz, S. (1999) American History 102: Civil War to the Present. Retrieved April 10, 2005 from http://us.history.wisc.edu/hist102/lectures/lecture25.html.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Uncle Tom's Cabin or, Life Among the Lowly. New York: Penguin Books, 1981.
Stowe and her siblings were involved in various reform movements and even “...reformed Puritanism itself by challenging some of its harshest creeds” (Reynolds, 2011, p.6). Stowe was uninterested in the political issue created by slavery, she wanted to bring light upon the emotional and religious problems caused by it. Stowe was able to receive testimony from former slaves because of the close interaction she had with them. One of her housekeepers, Eliza Buck, was a fugitive slave and was able to tell her story. Eliza Buck, along with Stowe’s mother’s sister, were able to influence Stowe in her creation of the characters for Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The immense cultural importance produced by Uncle Tom’s Cabin is created through its emotional appeal. Stowe’s book aid “...rectify
Overall Uncle Tom’s Cabin is filled with religious overtones of martyrdom, imposed religion, and genuine piety of the slaves in bondage. Harriet Beecher Stowe shows the divide between how the slaveholders see religion as a whip to keep slaves in line and how slaves see the same religion as a balm for the wounds inflicted on them by the whites.
It also teaches Christian values as well as family values. At the time of its publication, Uncle Tom’s Cabin was an immediate success and one of biggest sellers of all time. Despite the fact that Stowe induces her own personal opinions, with the very little experience she has had with slaves, she delivers a magnificent novel which is still enjoyed by many modern readers today. The time of her novel’s publication was very important. It was published at the peak of the abolitionist movement, in the 1850’s.
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, has had a tremendous impact on American culture, both then and now. It is still considered a controversial novel, and many secondary schools have banned it from their libraries. What makes it such a controversial novel? One reason would have been that the novel is full of melodrama, and many people considered it a caricature of the truth. Others said that she did not show the horror of slavery enough, that she showed the softer side of it throughout most of her novel. Regardless of the varying opinions of its readers, it is obvious that its impact was large.