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How Did Uncle Tom's Cabin Change America

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Harriet Beecher Stowe's best known novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), changed forever how Americans viewed slavery, the system that treated people as property. It demanded that the United States deliver on the promise of freedom and equality, galvanized the abolition movement and contributed to the outbreak of the Civil War. The book calls on us to confront the legacy of race relations in the U.S. as the title itself became a racial slur. Uncle Tom's Cabin was a runaway best-seller, selling 10,000 copies in the United States in its first week; 300,000 in the first year; and in Great Britain, 1.5 million copies in one year. It resonates with an international audience as a protest novel and literary work. LEARN how Stowe encouraged President Lincoln …show more content…

Stowe enlisted friends and family to send her information and scoured freedom narratives and anti-slavery newspapers for first hand accounts as she composed her story. In 1852 the serial was published as a two volume book. Uncle Tom's Cabin was a best seller in the United States, Britain, Europe and Asia, and was translated into over 60 languages In 2012, Harriet Beecher Stowe Center Executive Director Katherine Kane lent expertise to a NEWS STORY about an archeological site related to former slave Josiah Henson. Harriet Beecher Stowe used Henson's story, along with that of other slaves, to develop the character of Uncle Tom in her famous antislavery novel.Synopsis of Uncle Tom's Cabin Uncle Tom's Cabin opens on the Shelby plantation in Kentucky as two enslaved people, Tom and 4-year old Harry, are sold to pay Shelby family debts. Developing two plot lines, the story focuses on Tom, a strong, religious man living with his wife and 3 young children, and Eliza, Harry's mother. When the novel begins, Eliza's husband George Harris, unaware of Harry's danger, has already escaped, planning to later purchase his family's

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