Uncle Tom's Cabin Abolitionism

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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 …show more content…

Shelby is uncomfortable with this idea as he stated, “’I would rather not sell him,’ said Mr. Shelby, thoughtfully; ‘the fact is, sir, I’m a humane man, and I hate to take the boy from his mother sir’” (Stowe 810). The novel also symbolized the many fears that slaves had to endure when trying to escape to freedom. Eliza’s husband George is the first to escape from their family to Canada. Eliza, in fear that Harry will be sold, soon decides to follow her husband’s path and escape to Canada for freedom. Eliza and Harry’s journey to freedom was long and full of fear, as they feared that slave catchers might catch them and have them returned or sold. As stated, “[they] went, leaving one familiar object after another, slacking not, pausing not, till reddening daylight found [them] many a long mile from all traces of any familiar objects” (Stowe 819). Eliza eventually meets back up with George at a Quaker facility where after that, they find their way to Canada and eventually escape to freedom. Most importantly though, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” symbolized a good slave, one who loved his master, and his master’s family, and a slave who was most definitely well respective to his master. The main character, a slave named Tom, was the symbol of all of these characteristics in the