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Uncle Tom's Cabin is a novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe which has slavery as one of its main themes. Many writers have credited this novel with doing much to inflame the passions of Northerners to work for the abolition of slavery, although other writers dispute the novel's influence. Uncle Tom's Cabin was first published on March 20, 1852.

Before the novel was written, the story was an anti-slavery serial called Uncle Tom's Cabin or, Life Among the Lowly. It ran for ten-months starting on June 5, 1851 in the National Era abolitionist newspaper.

Stowe lived in Cincinnati, Ohio, and:

"she observed firsthand several incidents which galvanized her to write famous anti-slavery novel. Scenes she observed on the Ohio River, including seeing a husband and wife being sold apart, as well as newspaper and magazine accounts and interviews, contributed material to the emerging plot.

Famous characters:

• Simon LeGree, villainous slave owner whose name has become synonymous with greed
• Topsy, who "just growed"
• Uncle Tom, noble long suffering Christian slave, after whom the book is named. His name has become an epithet.
• Little Eva, saintly white girl whom Uncle Tom befriends.

The term Uncle Tom, a offensive slur directed at black people considered to be humiliatingly subservient to white people, is derived from this novel.

Uncle Tom's Cabin has been made into several movies.

Related articles

• Origins of the American Civil War
• Abolitionism
• Slavery
• History of slavery in the United States
• ISBN 0553212184

Besides all these technical facts about the book, this piece of literature had an outstanding effect of the North and South relations in the 1800's and on the American Civil War(1861-1865). As been pointed out already, this story shows the brutality and inhumanity of the slavery system through the effective use of powerful imagery. For the most part, Stowe's popular novel was inspired by the sentiments preached during the Second Great Awakening.

As a result from her success, Stowe was given the chance to meet Abraham Lincoln. The first words that Lincoln said were, "So you're the little woman who wrote the book that made this ." In fact, one can view it like this. Because of her use of imagery in the book, many Northerners were converted to the abolitionist thought and even began to ignore the Fugitive Slave Law (this law obligated the Northern states to capture and return run away slaves). The big result from the publication of this great work of literature was that the two sides diverge even more from each other. Eventually, the book did start the war the split the nation.

External links

• University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee special collections
• Project Gutenberg listing
• PBS Africans in America

• 1852 books
• U.S. history of slavery