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. When Eliza, Harry’s mother, overhears Mr. Shelby discussing the issue with his wife, Eliza decides to run away. Eliza takes off, with hopes of meeting up with her husband in Canada who also decided to run away from his master earlier that day. . In the morning, when Haley discovers that Eliza had run away, he chases her until Eliza makes a daring escape across the Ohio River by running across chunks of floating ice. After employing a group of men to track down Eliza, Tom and Haley leave for New Orleans. On the way down the river in a steamer boat, Tom befriends a young girl named Eva and saves her from drowning when she falls overboard. Eva’s father, St. Clare, buys Tom to be Eva’s personal servant. Over time, the Tom and Eva grow very close. Eva, like her father, is very kind and devoted to her slaves. She even transforms the life of a hardened, young slave girl named Topsy. When it becomes clear that Eva, now quite ill, is going to die, she calls all of the servants together and gives them each one of her golden curls so they can remember her. Eva dies peacefully, but her family... ... middle of paper ... ...Print. Clendenning, John. "Uncle Tom's Cabin." World Book. 2002. Print. Donald, David Herbert. "Aboltion Movement in the United States." World Book. 2002. Print. Donald, David Herbert. "Underground Railroad." World Book. 2002. Print. "Impact of Uncle Tom's Cabin, Slavery, and the Civil War." The National and International Impact of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Harriet Beecher Stowe Center, n.d. Web. 24 Sept. 2013. . "North America Review." Rev. of Uncle Tom's Cabin. North American Review [Boston] Oct. 1853: 467-93. Stephen Railton, 1998. Web. 24 Sept. 2013. Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Uncle Tom's Cabin, Or Life Among the Lowly. New York: Sterling, 2012. Print Walpole. "Southern Slavery. A Glance at Uncle Tom's Cabin." Rev. of Uncle Tom's Cabin. New York Times 22 June 1853: n. pag. Stephen Railton, 2004. Web. 24 Sept. 2013
Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia. “Stowe, Harriet Beecher”. Date of Last Revision Unknown. 6 Jan 2002. <http://www.encyclopedia.com/printablenew/12373.html>.
When Abraham Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe, he said, “So, this is the little lady who made this big war”(“History.com Staff”2). After Stowe published Uncle Tom’s Cabin, there was a rumor that this book led to the Civil War. Uncle Tom’s Cabin turned a lot of people in the North against slavery. The people in the North wanted slavery to end which caused them to fight the South. The most important topic of Uncle Tom’s Cabin is that slavery was worse in the South than in the North. Slavery was worse in the South than in the North because of the hard labor, the freedom policy, and the treatment of the slaves.
Sand, George. "Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin." La Presse 17 Dec. 1852. Rpt. in Uncle
Uncle Tom's Cabin is one of the most famous and popular pieces of Civil War literature. It was drawn from selected pieces of a real life memoir done by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Uncle Tom's Cabin was a book that drew many people into the fight over the institution of slavery. Northerners hailed the book saying it exposed the truth, while southern slaveholders and plantation owners claimed that it had many falsehoods in it. President Lincoln, when he met Stowe called her, "the little lady who started this big war."
"Uncle Tom's Cabin." Harriet Beecher Stowe Center. Harriet Beecher Stowe Center, 2011. Web. 25 Feb. 2014. .
“As it is, we have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is on one scale, and self-preservation in the other.” This quote said by Thomas Jefferson accurately depicted the political, economic, and social issues that were presented in the 1800s. The novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin written by Harriet Beecher Stowe created a massive awareness politically and socially for the abolitionist movement. Throughout Uncle Tom’s Cabin Stowe paints the picture of the cruel and unjust treatment of slaves on large plantations in the 1850s. Although Uncle Tom’s Cabin shows that large scale plantations showed empathy towards their slaves after the 1830s; however, Uncle Tom’s Cabin accurately depicts the lives of slaves after
Impact of Uncle Tom's Cabin, Slavery, and the Civil War. (n.d.). The National and International Impact of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Retrieved May 5, 2014, from https://www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org
...away slaves. Harriet Beecher Stowe published a book called Uncle Tom’s Cabin. It was the most influential document of the abolitionist literature. The book showed emotions of slaves that were treated cruelly by Uncle Tom. Although abolitionism was dividing both sides knew the amount of damage slavery was doing by dividing America. They knew slavery had to be extinguished.
Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, for centuries to come will be seen as a huge contributing factor to the occurrence of the U.S. Civil War when it happened. As people’s views change about things over long periods of time, what people believe about the moral rightness of the institution called slavery may also change. It is possible that slavery could one day be counted by the majority as proper. Uncle Tom’s Cabin could find itself on center stage in importance again in a debate over slavery. Until then, it is safe to say that its impact on society was massive in its time and will now be studied as a great contribution to our history.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe is a classic novel that some people claimed evoked the American Civil War. Stowe motivated people to take sides over the issue of slavery by discussing the issue and showing the cruel aspects of it. The main focus of the novel was to show whites that African American’s have souls and feelings like any other human; it was common for whites at the time to view blacks as cattle. Families were separated, and the white people’s reasoning was that blacks did not feel the loss the same way a white person would. Stowe’s basic argument is that it is wrong to mistreat blacks because they suffer just as much as whites.
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.
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.
Harriet Beecher Stowe, a northern abolitionist, published her best-selling novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852. Uncle Tom’s Cabin contracts the many different attitudes that southerners as well as northerners shared towards slavery. Generally, it shows the evils of slavery and the cruelty and inhumanity of the peculiar institution, in particular how masters treat their slaves and how families are torn apart because of slavery.
Even today, with literature constantly crossing more lines and becoming more shocking, Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin remains one of the most scandalous, controversial, and powerful literary works ever spilled onto a set of blank pages. Not only does this novel examine the attitudes of white nineteenth-century society toward slavery, but it introduces us to the hearts, minds and souls of several remarkable and unprecedented characters.
2Library of Congress, . "Religion and the Founding of the American Republic." Religion in Eighteenth-Century America. (2003): n. page. Web. 3 Apr. 2014. .