Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Blaming someone for causing a war sounds fictional, exaggerated, and cruel. But that’s exactly what Abraham Lincoln did. He blamed Harriet Beecher Stowe for causing the Civil War, just because she wrote a book about the horrors of slavery. Uncle Tom’s Cabin is about an enslaved man named Uncle Tom who is abused by his master. This book was aimed towards white, religious Christians, who believed in equality for all. Harriet Beecher Stowe was the daughter of Lyman Beecher, who was a Congregational minister who preached against slavery. In 1832 her family moved opposite of Kentucky, across the Ohio River. Her family never owned slaves. There, Harriet taught at a school to help educate former slave children, and she herself saw the terrified runaways, the bounty hunters chasing them, and the black people who were free, yet still suffering.
When Harriet returned to New England in 1850, she decided to write a book about the horrors of slavery. Due to the fact that she was a woman, she could not openly protest about slavery, so writing a book was one of the few ways she could express her views and expose the brutal treatments the South gave to their slaves. “My heart was bursting with the anguish excited by the cruelty and injustice our nation was showing to the slave, and praying to God to let me do a little and cause my cry for them to be heard." Harriet’s book moved many, and those who were indifferent about the outcomes of slavery were shocked to learn of the torture and pain the slaves went through. Many of those turned to the position of anti-slavery. Meanwhile, the south was outraged with the book, calling it “exaggerated fiction” or “propaganda” and soon prohibited Uncle Tom’s Cabin down there. They claimed that the lives of African-Americans were not as bad as they were being portrayed in the book.
The next year, Harriet Beecher Stowe published A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which contained a collection of slave narratives, newspaper clippings, and other facts that helped verify the details in her novel.
10 years after the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Abraham Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe. Our sixteenth president was a Republican, the party that was against slavery, so one would think that he would congratulate the female author. But no, instead the opposite happened. When he met her, he coldly greeted her with, “so you’re the little girl that started this big war.”
When Harriet returned to New England in 1850, she decided to write a book about the horrors of slavery. Due to the fact that she was a woman, she could not openly protest about slavery, so writing a book was one of the few ways she could express her views and expose the brutal treatments the South gave to their slaves. “My heart was bursting with the anguish excited by the cruelty and injustice our nation was showing to the slave, and praying to God to let me do a little and cause my cry for them to be heard." Harriet’s book moved many, and those who were indifferent about the outcomes of slavery were shocked to learn of the torture and pain the slaves went through. Many of those turned to the position of anti-slavery. Meanwhile, the south was outraged with the book, calling it “exaggerated fiction” or “propaganda” and soon prohibited Uncle Tom’s Cabin down there. They claimed that the lives of African-Americans were not as bad as they were being portrayed in the book.
The next year, Harriet Beecher Stowe published A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which contained a collection of slave narratives, newspaper clippings, and other facts that helped verify the details in her novel.
10 years after the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Abraham Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe. Our sixteenth president was a Republican, the party that was against slavery, so one would think that he would congratulate the female author. But no, instead the opposite happened. When he met her, he coldly greeted her with, “so you’re the little girl that started this big war.”