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What Is Harriet Beecher Stoowe's Attitude To The Civil War

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The Civil War between the Union and Confederacy divided the country against itself and changed people’s attitudes towards slavery forever. One of the key influences of the Civil War was a widely known and best-selling 1852 novel written by Harriet Beecher Stowe called Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Harriet Beecher Stowe hated slavery and believed that it was an immoral and despicable act. To get people to realize the horrors of slavery during the Civil War, Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin about a man who suffers for refusing to obey his white masters. Even President Abraham Lincoln recognized Stowe as “the little lady who wrote a book that made the Civil War” (McPherson 90). Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin helped spark the fires between the Union …show more content…

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 called for any person, North or South, in contact with runaway slaves to help recapture them. This promoted slavery everywhere and Northerners, such as Stowe, were not happy. The Compromise of 1850 stated that if California was admitted as a free state causing the balance of power between the North and South to be destroyed, Congress would require anyone, anywhere to return runaway slaves under penalty of law. These acts infuriated Stowe, but at the same time, she felt powerless. Her sister-in-law encouraged her to express her feelings through a book by saying, "If I could use a pen as you can, Hatty, I would write something that would make this whole nation feel what an accursed thing slavery is" (McPherson 89). Stowe also unfortunately lost her child in infancy. This contributed to the writing of Uncle Tom’s Cabin because Stowe was able to connect the pain of losing her son, to the pain slave mothers suffered when their children were sold (Uncle Tom’s Cabin; Harriet Beecher Stowe-Uncle Tom’s Cabin; The Compromise of 1850; McPherson …show more content…

Henry James, a key figure in 19th-century literary realism, admired the book by stating, “That triumphant work, was much less a book than a state of vision” (McPherson 89). On the other hand, Southerners believed the book was one-sided in opinion, and aimed to have it permanently banned in the South. Also, some ferocious abolitionists believed that the book wasn’t strongly enough against slavery and that Tom was portrayed as too weak. But when President Lincoln read Stowe’s book, he totally disagreed. Later, in 1862, Lincoln met with Stowe and told her, “So you're the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war" (McPherson 90). Whether or not Lincoln really meant this literally, it tremendously shows the connection between Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the Civil War. Uncle Tom’s Cabin contributed to the Civil War’s outbreak because it individualized the political and jurisdictional arguments about slavery. The novel helped numerous Americans determine what kind of country they thought was worth fighting for, and it inspired many people to share their true feelings about slavery, which eventually led to the brutal four year Civil War (McPherson 89-90; Impact of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Slavery, and the Civil

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