Uncle Tom's Cabin By Harriet Beecher Stowe

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During the 19th century, Harriet Beecher Stowe decided to do something about the evil of slavery after the Fugitive Slave Act was passed. The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 was the nail in the coffin that she needed. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote a story that elaborated heavily upon the horrors of slavery by telling the story of slavery that shocked the country where slavery was normal.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin started out as a melodrama in the Free Soil newspaper but she went on to publish the novel during March of 1852. The book sold the most copies of any type of literature and surpassed even the bible at a point. It was truly shocking what a little woman like Harriet Beecher Stowe could write such a graphical story about slavery and it’s hidden sins. During the book she tells the story of slaves who have gone well beyond stereotypes and shows their true emotions and pain. As an abolitionist work this may be embezzled but it is believable as truth if someone was not made aware of it’s melodramatic beginnings.

The story is a novel of the battle between slave owners and slaves. Harriet knew exactly what she was selling these books for and too. She sold them so that the anti-slavery movement could grow in such a way that the pro-slavery movement would be destroyed. Throughout the book, Stowe shows the tool of accepting slavery into your home and how domestic stability in communities was disestablished. She showed the influence that men are in a way the cause of why slavery is so violent and prevalent. Haley the slave trader was looking to buy slaves from Mr. Shelby shows how slavery invaded homes and set the tone that money preludes human life. Dinah (a slave) refers to the history of her family where slavery might as well be a birth given trait. This attributes to not being able to have her own way of thinking.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin is not just an abolitionist work. Some regard the novel as a feminist piece of work in some ways. In all the examples of a woman character in the book, they are shown to be figuratively less than men in the symbolism. At the beginning of the book, Mrs. Shelby is in the kitchen while the men talk business. The contrast of her “being in the kitchen” is prevalent throughout the book and also shows what was on Harriet Beecher Stowe’s mind other than slavery.

As a white woman Harriet Beecher Stowe was afraid that her writings would come under fire but truth be told as the flow of rebuttals came in? They just weren’t good enough. Slavery was making headlines and the country was being made aware of the horrors. In the first year over 300,000 copies were sold. That’s 300,000 people at least that read about the horrors of slavery. Everyone had a copy close to their homes because that’s how much area it gained through being sold. The overall success of this book was of course due to the fact that slavery was so prevalent and that due to the Missouri Compromise, some people wanted to learn what slavery was doing to this country.

In some ways this book started the Civil War. A story has been told about Abraham Lincoln meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe and said, “So you’re the little woman that started this great war.” This shows the amount of power that she exuded with this book. She restarted peoples minds and threw them on the right tracks towards fighting for the rights of all human beings. Harriet Beecher Stowe was an incredible human being that sought after the rights of men like Frederick Douglass, and wanted to give their voices clarity. Harriet Beecher Stowe knew exactly what she was doing when it came to writing about anti-slavery
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