~How Harriet Beecher Stowe helped Precipitate the Civil War and “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” Book Review~
“So you’re the little lady who wrote the book that started this great war.” – Former President Abraham Lincoln
And to think, one of the greatest wars in the western hemisphere was precipitated by a book and a heavy heart- remarkable. When Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel following the amiable slave “Uncle Tom” was published in 1852 and audiences couldn’t get enough of it she was carted around the states and treated like a beloved famed actor. Beloved, that is, by those in favor of the abolition movement, however, far from it to those still desperately clinging to their slave rights. Although Lincoln’s comment was presumably made in jest, in truth, Stowe’s writings helped give rise to the abolitionist cause, playing a major role in turning the nation against itself for four dreadful years.
Background on Stowe is this- she was born to an incredibly slave sympathetic family in Litchfeild, Conneticut, and as the daughter of the founder of the American Bible Society, her religion was at the very core of her souls foundation. Similarly, religion is the common thread one can find woven into the very seams of the novel, it is one of two major influences from the author’s personal life that cannot be disregarded. The second of those themes relates directly to an event in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s personal life. Upon moving to Cincinnati, only a stone toss away from the slave-state Kentuky, she witnessed the devastating splintering of families at a slave auction, wherein a prime goal is to seperate parent from progeny in an effort to abort potential “conflicts of interests,” to the slave owners. (Look for themes of families being torn apart in “Uncle Tom’s” many chapters.) This weighed so heavily on Stowe’s heart that she would ultimately write the novel that fired the first resounding shot at tearing down the institution of slavery.
Not dissimilar to the above, it was also during her residence in Cincinnati, that she discovered a mother who had traversed a frozen river, a young runaway with her infant child, in hopes of delivering her child to freedom. This scene might seem familiar, as it was later documented and immortalized in Stowe’s novel. When a hunting party of mounted men and provoked dogs reaches Eliza at the river she carries her baby across frozen chunks, “The huge green fragment of ice on which she alighted pitched and creaked as her weight came upon it, but she stayed there not a moment. With wild cries and desperate energy she leaped to another and still another cake; stumbling — leaping — slipping — springing upwards again! Her shoes are gone — her cut from her feet — while blood marked every step,” (Chapter 7.) This is undeniably one of the most lasting scenes in the book, as it was undying in the mind of Harriet Beecher Stowe from that time when she uncovered its tragic origin.
As for the rest of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” it is just as memorable as the scene above. Though it has faced numerous challenges to its many black stereotypes, Stowe’s undying work has been champion at every ring of the bell, standing over its downed opponents with triumphant hands raised high. There are many who critique this novel and there are many yet to come who will try to, in current terminology, “cancel,” Beecher Stowe and her work, however, try as they will- and they will- this work is nothing short of the most admired social novel to date, slapping audiences in the face with a snapshot of one of history’s greatest evils.