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Who Is Uncle Tom's Cabin?

Decent Essays

In early 1851, when Harriet Beecher Stowe first imagined writing "some sketches which should show the world slavery as she herself had seen it.She was already an established author.She had been writing and publishing domestic sketches and stories for many years, since 1834, and a small collection of these had been published as The Mayflower in 1843 over the imprint of Harper & Brothers. Slavery had not been a subject that she had dealt with in her writings, however, but the passage the preceding fall of the Fugitive Slave Act, which enjoined all American citizens.At least 50,000 people read Uncle Tom's Cabin in its first published form, the 41 weekly installments that appeared between 5 June 1851 and 1 April 1852 in the National Era, a Washington, …show more content…

When she sent in the final installment, almost a year later, the paper had 19,000 subscribers — many of whom had written Bailey to say how much they looked forward to Friday, when the mail brought the new Era and the whole family would gather together to hear the latest chapter in the story read aloud. There are significant differences between the Era text of Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Stowe not only uses the book as a whole to convince of slavery's evils. She uses individual characters and their journies (emotional, physical, etc.) to get into the reader's head and make everything believable to the point where one thinks that the book is non-fiction.. She doesn't use a very abrupt way of getting her message across. She tells things like they are. Not all southerners are evil, and northerners aren't angels either. Every scene that Stowe needs to, persuades the reader that slavery is evil and …show more content…

Christianity was what influenced her, and powered her abolitionist views. It led her to take abolitionism into her own hands, and “educate” the country (and in hopes, the world) of how negative slavery was. Being raised in a very strict Presbyterian home, she was taught all about the value of life through the gospel. Stowe’s religious views were imprinted into her mind and soul, and they set a path for her. Her path was to enlighten the southerners that agreed with slavery and were cruel to the people they held captive to do their bidding. Uncle Tom’s Cabin was written in response to the acts passed against slavery (e.g. Fugitive Slave Act). Each page of the story contains journey, experience, growth, development, and so much more with each and every character. With her characters, she uses them as her source of persuasion of the views opposite from the southern views. Stowe doesn’t come straight out and say, “Slavery is evil! Don’t agree with it!” She is very implicit with spreading her outlook on slavery (even though it is known that she is an

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