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                                                 Harriet Beecher Stowe:  Uncle Tom's Cabin 

"I wrote what I did because as a woman, as a mother, I was oppressed and broken-hearted with the sorrows and injustice I saw, because as a Christian I felt the dishonor to Christianity - because as a lover of my country, I trembled at the coming day of wrath."    

          

                                                                                      Harriet Beecher Stowe



Uncle Tom's Cabin is one of the most influential novels ever written by an American.  The American imagination was primed for Stowe's novel in the 1850's.  Harriet Beecher Stowe created a text that would advocate on behalf of the oppressed and pave the way for a more egalitarian democracy.  She illustrated the evils of slavery with a moving, character-driven story, inspired by her own divine visions.  Uncle Tom's Cabin accelerated the rise of abolitionism in the North.  When Abraham Lincoln met her in 1862 he made the comment:  "So you're the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war!"  Uncle Tom's Cabin was the single most influential book that fueled the Civil War [http://www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org/hbs/].

Uncle Tom's Cabin contributed to the outbreak of war by personalizing the political and economic arguments about slavery.  Stowe's informal, conversational writing style inspired people in a way that political speeches, tracts and newspaper accounts could not.  Uncle Tom's Cabin helped many 19th century Americans determine what kind of country they wanted.  In Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe has one goal:  to convince her northern audience that slavery was evil and could no longer be tolerated.  This was not an easy task in the 1850s.  Her novel hit the country like a bombshell.  Perhaps no other work of literature has influenced history as powerfully as Stowe's landmark antislavery novel.  It was largely responsible for alerting the reading public to the evils of slavery.  The novel's portrayal of the warmth and human dignity of Uncle Tom and his fellow slaves, made to suffer at the hands of their owners, put a face on the abstract notion of slavery and ignited unprecedented interest from the reading public [http://www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org/hbs/].

Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin and Frederick Douglass' Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass provided insight into the anti-slavery movement and the abolitionist movement from 1820-1860.  These texts discuss slavery as a social and economic system in the nineteenth century.  No institution had greater influence on race relations than slavery.  We can't understand race in America today without understanding slavery.  Frederick Douglass and Harriet Beecher Stowe were two very different authors of classic works.  Douglass escaped bondage to become the most influential black abolitionist.  Stowe wrote the novel that was the most influential in American history.  As a former slave, Douglass knew this subject well and in his powerful autobiography, he brings out slavery's corrupting influence - its brutalization of both the owner and the owned [http://www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org/utc/impact.shtml].

Stowe organized her material according to rhetorical principles much as Mary Rowlandson in A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson.  Uncle Tom's Cabin contains incidents that embody the heroic spirit found in the captivity narratives.  Stowe's text does not depend on the land and the spirit of a Western hero.  The most visible character, Uncle Tom, does not fight, does not dominate anyone, and conveys his message through his refusal to act.  In Uncle Tom's Cabin, the active, courageous heroine, Eliza appears intermittently, but the story follows Uncle Tom.  Both texts deal with a Christian woman that thinks of those around her.  The title character is no "Uncle Tom" in the submissive sense the name has come to connote but rather a heroic, nonviolent resister who anticipates modern-day political dissidents [http://web.mit.edu/wgs/prize/sm01.html].

Mark Twain wrote The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn after the Civil War, in part as a response to Stowe's pre-Civil War novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin.  Twain supported many of Stowe's claims and motives and agreed with her anti-slavery comments.  In both texts the question lurking throughout:  How is it that we can be tolerating slavery? [http://marklerch.com/thoughts/literature/HuckFinn.html]     
     





Uncle Tom's Cabin is a valuable piece of writing worthy of literary consideration because it engages in serious, universal themes such as the meaning of life, which ends in death and involves meaningless suffering.  These themes are developed to a level of intelligence, sophistication, and complexity that does not provide easy answers.  Great literature expands the moral imagination.  Masterpiece literature also often provides a rich variety and depth of characterization.  The central issue in the novel is slavery, but Stowe views slavery as a manifestation of evil.  Through her characters, Stowe presents a series of possible responses to the moral issue of the existence of evil.  Each character in the book is fully developed from every class and from several regions.  The strength of Uncle Tom's Cabin is its ability to illustrate slavery's effect on families, and to help readers empathize with enslaved characters.  Stowe's characters freely debated the causes of slavery, the Fugitive Slave Law, the future of freed people, what an individual could do, and racism.  Writing in the 1950's, poet Langston Hughes called the book a "moral battle cry for freedom." [http://www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org/utc/impact.shtml]

In the Civil Wars wake, Uncle Tom's Cabin influenced emancipation causes worldwide, during that century and the next.  It has spun off into traveling shows, silent films, advertising campaigns, cartoons, and merchandise ranging from figurines to card games.  The Southern backlash to it also spawned such works as The Clansman; its film version, The Birth of a Nation; and even Gone With the Wind [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Tom's_Cabin_(movie)].

Racism lingers, human trafficking is growing, and with abortion, human lives are still radically subject to the will of another.  Slavery continues to exist even in today's society.  Slavery still exists in Mauritania, Africa with the horrible abuse of slaves by both black and white slave owners.  May we never find ourselves fighting on the wrong side of such basic issues of good and evil [http://www.ncregister.com/site/print_article/25909/] [http://blog.cleveland.com/opinion_impact/print.html?entry=/2010/04/taking_on_sex_slavery][http://www.npr.org/programs/specials/racism/010828.mauritania.html]

Uncle Tom's Cabin struck a nerve and found a permanent place in American culture.  Translated into more than sixty languages, it is known throughout the world.  After a century and a half, this classic anti-slavery novel remains an engaging and powerful work, read in college and high school courses dealing with literature, history, and issues of race and gender.  Stowe's words changed the world and she inspired us to believe in our own ability to effect positive change.  Uncle Tom's Cabin, with its compelling story, challenges us to confront America's complicated past and connect it to today's issues [http://www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org/utc/impact.shtml].

Today it remains a best-seller, a masterpiece with relevance not just to its own period but also to the pressing moral issues of our time.