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Harriet Beecher Stowe's Mightier Than The Sword

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“So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that made this Great War! Sit down please,” President Abraham Lincoln said to Harriet Beecher Stowe when they first met in the White House. Harriet was invited there for moving the whole nation of America with her magnificent, bestselling masterpiece in the day – Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Years later, as a tribute to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s two hundred birthday, historian David S. Reynolds, also a professor of English and American Studies at the University of New York, wrote Mightier than the Sword: Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the Battle for America. The book, later became the New Yorker Favorite Book of the Year, explains how Stowe’s novel had an enormous impact on the American Civil War as well as the abolitionist. He also illustrates in detail the background of the story and reasons Stowe’s book were loved by so many people. Not only America, Reynolds claims the novel also has effects on events around the world, such as the end of serfdom in Russia. He makes it clear that Uncle Tom’s Cabin “was a central to redefining American democracy on a more egalitarian basis” (Reynolds 12). Reynolds believes, in the United States, as well as other countries, the book has put its power for fairness and empowerment, showing injustice in society at the current time. …show more content…

Reynolds introduces some background about Harriet Beecher Stowe’s life, from the time she was born to the time she wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin, in order to show the influences she gained to write the novel. He tells the readers that one of Stowe’s first inspiration appeared in her mind while she was living in Cincinnati between the 1830s and 1840s. Here, she saw a lot of slaves who escaped from Kentucky. According to Reynolds, this was also the place where she “loved spending time in the kitchen with servants like the African-American Zillah” (Reynolds 114). Harriet Beecher Stowe was different than other people, she did not care about the

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In 1914, the Harriet Beecher Stowe School was established. This school was organized by an African American school teacher. It was a segregated school for African Americans. The segregated school was a controversial issue for many African American leaders within the community, however, it remained an all-black school until it closed in 1962 (The Early History,

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The novel, Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs, is a powerful novel of a slave girl who would do anything for the freedom of herself and her two children. Jacobs wrote this novel to bring awareness of slavery to Northerner especially to women. Jacobs used the pen name Linda Brent to compiled her lives as a slave to bring and show the reality of slavery; the cruelty, the physical violence, the separation of families, the sexual relationship between master and slave, the psychological abuse, the danger of escaping from bondage.

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Jacobs decided to write her autobiography “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” in order to share the true life of enslaved women, since men wrote most autobiographies. She wanted a woman’s perspective and she thought she was obliged to write it because she was well educated for a black woman during the times of slavery. Her life and other people alike her had their lives greatly affected by Andrew Jackson and his political roles during the late 1920’s to early 1950’s. Jackson’s policies, politics, and societal roles during and after his presidency affected the lives of enslaved women in the United States between 1828 and 1850.

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In Mightier than the Sword, David S. Reynolds a historian and an American literacy argues for the worldwide influence of Harriet Beecher Stowe's writings in the novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, shaping America civilization and democracy. Originally published in 1852, enlightened Americans to a civilization of morality that "No book in American history molded public opinion more powerfully than Uncle Tom's Cabin," (Pg. 64). Reynolds impels his debate by introducing president Abraham Lincoln’s outlook of Stowe, "Is this the little woman who made this great war?"(pg. 48). This modern movement led on to a widespread northern cultural affinity of anti-slavery favoring a candidate like Lincoln, along with the nation-changing decisions he made during his

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Commentarymagazine.com writes about a letter that Stowe sent with, “Stowe herself wrote a friend a year-and-a-half after the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin saying, ‘The effects of the book so far have been, I think, these: 1t. To soften and moderate the bitterness of feeling in extreme abolitionists. 2nd. To convert to abolitionist view many whom the ame bitterness had repelled. 3rd. To inspire the free colored people with self-respect, hope, and confidence.

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Stowe shows us how they face these actions especially Eliza who will lose her son, and so on. Actually, this book published in 1852, before the Civil War to help the slaves to fight for their lives and for their future. "Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin specifically in order to illustrate the evil and inhumanity of slavery to her mid-19th century American readers, for whom slavery was a current and heated political issue" The book is interesting, the reason why is the writer focused on a big issue in the 19th century which is slavery. This novel helps us to understand how the 19th century was; in which thoughts they support.

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People have written letters to Harriet her good works that she has done in life one of them is Frederick Douglass. Frederick Douglass said "The difference between us is very marked. Most that I have done and suffered in the service of our cause has been in public, and I have received much encouragement at every step of the way. You, on the other hand, have labored in a private way. I have wrought in the day – you in the night.

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‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ wisely depicts a dreadful image of the brutal torture of slaves, which evokes emotions within the reader to prevent the horrible treatment from continuing to occur. For this section of the book, Harriet Beecher Stowe begins the story with the image of a nurturing mother. She is a slave named Eliza who has had everything taken away from her. Eliza only has one thing in her possession –her son Harry. Eliza continues to run with her son in her arms and hopes of escaping the enslavement she was forcefully carried into.

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A woman named Harriet Beecher Stowe published her anti-slavery novel titled,"Uncle Tom's Cabin" in 1852. She met with fugitive slaves to learn about the cruelties of slavery before writing her book, and when the Fugitive Slave Act came out she was greatly angered. Her novel was intended to educate northerners about the horrible realities of slavery. Its main character was a fictional named Tom who was separated from his family and sold to a cruel master named Simon Legree. Legree had Tom beaten to death in his fury, and withing ten years more than 2 million copies were sold in the U.S. alone.

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The 18th century French writer Voltaire once said, “To hold a pen is to be at war.” Being a writer, Voltaire understood the power and everlastingness that the written word carries upon the pages it is written on. Books have the power to enlighten the ignorant, shape opinions, challenge consensus, and effect change over the topics they cover. No such book is more evidence of this fact than Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Published in 1852, Uncle Tom’s Cabin would sell close to half a million copies only shortly after its release in March of that year; growing into a national phenomenon many credit with polarizing the discussion over slavery.

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Uncle Tom's Cabin, written by Harriet Beecher Stowe, has had a huge impact on American literature, both when it was published in 1852 and to this day. This novel, the second-best selling book just after the Bible, had over 300,000 copies sold after the first year. The impact of this book on the issue of slavery was so powerful that when President Lincoln met Stowe, it was rumored that he said, "So this is the little lady who made this big war. " Uncle Tom's Cabin caused so much controversy when it was published because of its anti-slavery views. Today, however, some think Stowe's attempts to expose the horrors of slavery ended up romanticizing it and was seemingly racist through the use of many racial slurs.

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No slave narrative had such a profound effect on the abolitionist movement in American literature as Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Harriet Beecher Stowe, a prominent abolitionist, wrote “the novel [to help] push abolitionism from the margins to the mainstream” (Baym and Levine 806), and it did, as the novel “thus moved the nation closer to Civil War” (Baym and Levine 806). Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” symbolized the many aspects that was wrong with slavery through a heart-warming nature. In the beginning of the novel, it symbolized the bribery, but also heartless nature of slave traders. In the beginning Mr. Haley, a slave trader, bribes Mr. Shelby, a slaveholder, to sell him a young enslaved boy named Harry and part him away

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Benjamin Franklin, Pinkerton, and Stowe they were famous for what they have done and set a goal for themselves. Pinkerton made his own Agency it is called ' 'Pinkerton`s National Detective Agency ' ' they are a group of detectives that solve crimes and too finds some clues for evidence. Benjamin Fraklin was our founding fathers and he had a goal to become an inventor he was the first ever person who discover a lightning bolt and he was the first person who discover electricity. Harriet Elisabeth Beecher was born in Litchfield, Connecticut on June 14, 1811 she had a goal and that goal was to stop slavery and send a message to people that slavery is wrong and they should be free.

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During the years in her grandmother’s garret, Harriet Jacobs’s unique struggles provided her with a distinct perspective on her society. Jacobs’ marginalization granted her the ability to turn the weapon of her oppression into a tool to better herself. Her “Loophole of retreat” was a way in which she viewed the power dynamic in the south from outside of the role of a slave. These factors played integral roles in Jacobs ' survival by providing her with the resources necessary to control her environment. ` .

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Those characterizations of Uncle Tom did not come from Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom 's Cabin. They in fact came from the images shown in minstrelsy. In Beecher’s book Uncle Tom was somewhat intelligent, however not educated, and was an example of Christian morality. On stage in the minstrel show he became the sniveling black man who was really a coward and was ignorant and somewhat witty in his connection to the all of the slave masters. So that image came totally from minstrelsy, and if we could go down the line and we can surely note other ways in which those images pervaded the society at that time, those were the images, that was the sense of what black people were like”

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