Elmir Begic
Professor Pitelka
US History to 1877
9 November 2014
Uncle toms cabin
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, was a controversial book at its best at the time. Being published in 1852 at the height of slavery this novel caused uproar in the North and havoc among the southerners. Stowe a Connecticut teacher and a huge activist for the abolitionist was a seen as a controversial figure by many southerners in her own time. So much so that the future confederate states banned the book in total even possessing it was illegal and treason. Uncle Tom’s Cabin came to become one of the best selling novels of the 19th century and the second best selling book of all time following the bible.
The story reflects around a slave named
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The book was a insight into the lives of slaves and their misery. Harriet Beecher Stowe did a great job of using people’s emotions against them and invoking the cause even more its like adding fuel to the fire. Today you can walk on to any campus or coffee shop in the United States and ask someone if they have read Uncle Tom's Cabin and more than likely you would have more than one person say yes. This book was just as popular when it was first published in 1862 it sold over 300,000 copies. People across the seas in Europe and Britain wanted to get their hand on it. This book had a profound impact on both the south and north it opened people’s eyes to the wrongs of slavery and the struggle of the African Americans. The novel helped widen the circle of abolitionists from just the crazy extremists to the everyday man. Many historians wonder what would've happened if Harriet Beecher Stowe never put these words to paper. This book was unique in a way that it was both compassionate to southern slave owners, yet Stowe decided to play to the southerners emotions by making some of her southern characters reject slavery . This book was Controversy from the start; It did not surprise me to learn that the some southern states banned the book and made Stowe look like a traitor and criminal. Abraham Lincoln was quoted as saying “ Is this the