Uncle Tom’s Cabin

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Presentation by Robert MartinezPrimary Source: War, Terrible War by Joy HakimImages as cited.

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Harriet was the smallest of the Beecher’s children. She never grew to be more than five feet tall. But size has nothing to do with ability.

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In fact, Harriet Beecher, who married Calvin Stowe, became the most famous American women of her day. And all because of a book she wrote, a book that changed history.

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Growing up in New England, slavery had seemed so far away. Now, while attending school in Ohio, a free state, Harriet stood on the banks of the river looking across at

Kentucky, a slave state.

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She watched boats filled with slaves in chains who were being shipped south to be

sold at slave markets.

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One day she saw a baby pulled from its chained mother’s arms. She saw a look of anguish on the mother’s face. She never

forgot that look.

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Once, Harriet, was invited to Kentucky to visit a friend who lived on a plantation and

owned slaves. The friend and her family were kind people, and she saw slavery at

its best.

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But when Harriet and her friend rode horses to a neighboring plantation, they

saw a cruel overseer abusing blacks. Harriet remembered the kindness and the

cruelty.

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Harriet was becoming a writer. She wrote stories and poems. Then, when she married and had babies, there never seemed to be enough money. So Harriet wrote stories to earn money.

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Harriet had learned a lot about slavery, and it made her very angry. Her brother Edward’s wife said to her, “If I could write as you do I would write something to make this whole nation feel what an accursed thing slavery is.”

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And that was just what Harriet Beecher Stowe did. She wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

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It was the most important American book written in the 19th century. It may be the most influential book ever written in America. Its chapters were first printed in a newspaper.

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Within a week of its publication as a book (in 1852), 10,000 copies had been sold, and Uncle Tom’s Cabin was just getting started.

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Before the Civil War began, two million copies were bought in the U.S., and it was translated into many languages and sold around the world.

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Anyone who reads Uncle Tom’s Cabin and doesn’t cry at the end has a hard heart. It was the first American novel to make real people of blacks, and it made people care.

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Harriet tried to be fair when she wrote the book. She made the horrible overseer, Simon Legree, a Northerner. Legree is the villain in the story.

Uncle Tom, a saintly black man, is strong and heroic, the finest person in the book.

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In the novel, the two black men who beat him are evil. Some white plantation owners

are good people. Harriet was trying to show that color has nothing to do with

whether a person is good or bad.

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What she showed very well was that the system of slavery was evil and that even

good people did evil things when they were part of the system.

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Uncle Tom’s Cabin changed people’s ideas about slavery. It made people in the North angry. It made them willing to fight a war to end slavery.

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In the South it was against the law to buy or sell this book. Why do you think that is?

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When President Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe during the Civil War he said to her, “So this is the little lady who wrote

the book that made this great war.”

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