Uncletom’scabin

History changer• In 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or Life Among the Lowly.

History changer•Stowe was an ardent abolitionist, who hoped that she could convince her largely Northern readers that slavery needed to be ended.

History changer• It was her response to the Fugitive Slave Law and tried to expose slavery for the evil that it was.

History changer• In its time it sold hundreds of thousands of copies and was translated into many languages.

History changer• It was also continued to divide the nation, as more Northerners believed that slavery needed to be ended and Southerners held on more tightly to their “peculiar institution.”

History changer•When Abraham Lincoln met Stowe during the Civil War, he said “So you’re the little woman that wrote the book that started this great war!”

History changer• The book tells the story of a slave

man who is sold from his relatively kind, but debt ridden master to a slave trader to another family with a little girl, Eva, whom he saves from drowning in the Mississippi River.

History changer•Two years after this, Eva dies, and he is sold again, this time to an evil slave master named Simon Legree.

History changer•Because Tom is unwillingly to tell Legree about where runaway slaves have gone, Legree orders him beaten until he talks.

History changer•Just as Tom is about to die, the son of his original owner comes to buy him back, but he is too late.

History changer•The son returns to his own plantation and frees all of his slaves in honor of Tom.