Harriet Beecher Stowe

Uncle Tom's Cabin Harriet Beecher Stowe

Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly, is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War", according to Will Kaufman. Stowe, a Connecticut-born teacher at the Hartford Female Seminary and an active abolitionist, featured the character of Uncle Tom, a long-suffering black slave around whom the stories of other characters revolve. The sentimental novel depicts the reality of slavery while also asserting that Christian love can overcome something as destructive as enslavement of fellow human beings. Uncle Tom's Cabin was the best-selling novel of the 19th century and the second best-selling book of that century, following the Bible. It is credited with helping fuel the abolitionist cause in the 1850s. In the first year after it was published, 300,000 copies of the book were sold in the United States; one million copies in Great Britain. In 1855, three years after it was published, it was called "the most popular novel of our day." This Novel presents in a romanticized fashion the conflict between American slaves and wealthy landowners in the southern United States, showing how infamous slavery was. Uncle Tom's Cabin is a story of faith, courage, determination, perseverance and a struggle for freedom. Harriet Beecher Stowe, who has been closely acquainted with the reality of the scenario she narrates, gives the reader a sense of revulsion and indignation by presenting in detail the "legal" trade in human beings and the brutal and savage manner in which Lord's treated blacks in order to make more profit on their properties. This literary record contributed greatly to the abolition of slavery. Suffice it to note that, two years after its launch, the Republican Party emerged, which embraced the abolitionist cause.