Origin:
This passage was written by Harriet Beecher Stowe who, as a northern abolitionist, proceeded to elaborate or even belabor over Tom’s brave trials of resistance under the conditions of his cruel master, Legree. Stowe also based this book as a response to several key compromises that provoke a self-explanatory problem: a compromise as opposed to a solution. The novel is a fictional response to slavery, especially to the Fugitive Slave Law. Along with the Wilmot Proviso and the Compromise of 1850 a few years before, Stowe’s book took reign in the 1850s and continued the buildup to the Civil War. Stowe’s book was a primary source, specifically a book that created new emotions in the minds of the North—emotions contrary …show more content…
Stowe also added another purpose in the novel through religious morals and Biblical allusions: “. . . ‘my soul an’t yours, Mas’r! You haven’t bought it – ye can’t buy it! It’s been bought and paid for, by one that is able to keep it’. . .” Tom is speaking to Legree here referring the “one that is able to keep it” as God. It also shows that Legree cannot force them against their will even with obsessive abuse, physically and mentally with dehumanizing names such as ‘dog’, ‘critter’, and ‘beast’. This instance of slave resistance shows that slaves should remain strong in hope for the day slavery will be …show more content…
It was the best-selling novel of the 19th century, after the Bible, and gave support to the abolitionist’s cause in the 1850s (300,000 copies were sold in the US; one million copies, in Great Britain). It had such an impact that when she met with Abraham Lincoln, even the President of the United States was impacted and basically said to her that she is the little lady who started this Great War. After Lincoln’s words were made public, the novel had become out of print for many years causing Jewitt to go out of business. Until Ticknor and Fields put the work back into print in 1862, the book lost all of its demand. It not only was poignant in our hearts but also inspirational. Stowe’s book was the basis for several other anti-slavery novels, plays, or simply the countless newspaper editorials. It is obvious to historians that Uncle Tom’s Cabin was one of the most influential pieces of literature in the United States and was a landmark for the abolitionist’s cause that establishes how terrible slavery was in great detail by giving a perspective inside the corrupt