Uncle+Tom's+Cabin

By: Trinity Infantino and Ben Cavaliere **What is it? Well...** //Uncle Tom's Cabin// is a book written by Harriet Beecher-Stowe that illustrates the life of slaves in the south and the brutality that they faced. It can be argued that it caused the Civil War because Harriet Beecher-Stowe was an abolitionist who was against slavery ; and perhaps wrote the novel in order to show the north how bad slavery really was. **Genre:** This book by Harriet Beecher Stowe, can be classified as Philosophical Literature mixed with Tragedy, Adventure, and Quest. **Summary:** (Courtesy of [|www.shmoop.com/uncle-toms-cabin/summary.html]) __//Uncle Tom’s Cabin//__ is about a slave named Eliza, who finds out her son Tom is being sold as a slave to a slave trader named Mr.Haley. She later overhears this and decides that she wants to take him away and escape to Canada with him. She goes as far as Ohio by crossing the river on a piece of floating ice. When Tom and his master Mr Haley go towards the south, Tom saves a little girl from drowning. The girl's father then decides to buy Tom as his daughter's personal servant. The girl's father Augustine St. Clare is a kind slave owner, and treats his slaves rather well. His little girl Eva is also a sweet devoted child who helps her servants and family. Eva though later dies of Tuberculosis and meanwhile, Eliza and her husband George Harris are reunited in a Quaker camp in Canada. Back at the St Clare household, Augustine promises Tom his freedom, but Augustine is then killed in a barroom brawl before he could finish the papers. Tom is then sold at an auction to a new master named Simon Legree. Simon ends up torturing and brutalizing Tom but Tom keeps his honest, kind persona, and refuses to change for Simon. Tom then encourages two female slaves Cassy and Emmeline to escape, in which Simon beats Tom to death. Tom's old master's son George Shelby then returns to free Tom, but once he sees Tom is dead, he buries him instead. As the two slaves Tom saved confess their stories on the ship to George Shelby, he finds out that one of the women is George Harris' sister, who was sold south to slavery many years ago. George traces back the ancestry and finds out that George Harris married Eliza and Cassy finds out that Eliza is her daughter that was taken from her many years ago. Both women then travel to Canada together and are reunited with their families.

__**Anti-Slavery Society**__ (http://www.anti-slaverysociety.addr.com/hus-utc.htm)

Although Harriet Beecher Stowe became a hated figure in the slave-owning States, her novel galvanized anti-slavery sentiment in the North. Many historians regard her novel as **a** **significant force in leading to the Civil War** which ended in the defeat of the Confederate States of America and the abolition of slavery in the USA.

 __**Abraham Lincoln to Harriet Beecher Stowe: “The author of this great war”**__ http://wraabe.wordpress.com/2008/06/26/abraham-lincoln-to-harriet-beecher-stowe-the-author-of-this-great-war/

President Lincoln greeted Stowe as the **“little woman who wrote the book that made this great war.”**

__American Fiction as Historical Evidence: Reflections on Uncle Tom's Cabin__
by: David Levin In her last direct address to the reader, she insists that "there is one thing" besides prayer "that every individual can do" to oppose slavery: "they can see to it that they feel right." She entreats her readers to "feel strongly, healthily, and justly, on the great interests of humanity" against "the sophistries of worldly policy." Her last warning is biblical, apocalyptic, but also worldly wise. Years of wrath were coming. (page 136)

**Analysis:** Harriet Beecher Stowe was an abolitionist, meaning she was against slavery. The book //Uncle Tom's Cabin// talks about slavery in the South and how badly the slaves were treated. She shows how brutal the slave owners were against their slaves. It made the South look bad and made the reader sympathize with the slaves. This book is a propaganda novel, meaning it is bias towards slavery and was written to point out the brutality of slavery in the South. The little character Eva in the story was used to demonstrate how slaves should really be treated. In the story, Eva teaches one slave how to read and gives another a strand of her hair to remember her by. Being an abolitionist, Stowe was showing her sympathy for the slaves while she wrote this novel. Her motive in writing the novel was to fuel the abolition movement and to give slavery a negative connotation. After the novel was written, it gave the North an idea on how bad slavery was and why it had be stopped. From the South however, it was taken as an attack and in that way played an important role in starting the Civil War.