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Uncle Tom's Cabin Literary Criticism

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The Civil War sharply interrupted American literary activity. No longer could Americans look to the future with optimism; the events surrounding the Civil War prompted them to assess their world directly and honestly. The attack on Fort Sumter didn’t start the Civil War in 1861; the war began 10 years earlier, with the publication of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” At least, that’s what Abraham Lincoln claimed, when he met Stowe in 1862 and reportedly greeted her as “the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.” Many scholars maintain that no book has ever had a more direct and powerful influence on American history than Stowe’s novel, which inflamed opposition to slavery in the North and
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