Harriet Beecher Stowe's impact on US History
Subject:
US History [1]
Impact of Uncle Tom's Cabin, Slavery,
and the Civil War
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 1950s, poet Langston Hughes called the book a "moral battle cry for freedom."
According to legend, Abraham Lincoln greeted Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1862 by saying "So you're the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war." Whether the story is true or not, the sentiment underscores the public connection between Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Civil War.