When first published, Uncle Tom's Cabin brought with its huge success enormous attention to the depravity of slavery. Many people, however, questioned the basis of truth of the novel. In response, Ms. Stowe gathered her research materials and published them in this now rare book.
Great political influence of Uncle Tom's Cabin, novel against slavery of 1852 of Harriet Elizabeth Beecher Stowe, American writer, advanced the cause of abolition.
Harriet Elizabeth Beecher Stowe, an author, attacked the cruelty, and reached millions of persons as a play even in Britain. She made the tangible issues of the 1850s to millions and energized forces in the north. She angered and embittered the south. A commonly quoted statement, apocryphally attributed to Abraham Lincoln, sums up the effect. He met Stowe and then said, "So you're the little woman that started this great war!" or so people say.
When Harriet Beecher Stowe published "Uncle Tom's Cabin" in 1852, many people questioned whether the novel accurately and truthfully described the horrors and depravity of slavery. In response, she published "A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin," a nonfiction book "presenting the original facts and documents" upon which her novel was based -- letters, newspaper articles, classified ads and other documents.
I'm so grateful for Stowe's thoroughness, because this book proved invaluable in my own research for my historical novel "All Different Kinds of Free." I learned about the book during a trip visiting in-laws. Our cousin Donna took us to the Living History Farms in Urbandale, Iowa, at a point early in my book research. While perusing the wares of Schafer Drug Store (in the 1875 Town of Walnut Hill), I was beyond thrilled to discover the book on the shelf.
If you're researching slavery or the 1800s, buying a copy of this book is worth the investment (whether you buy it online or make the trip to Iowa's Living History Farms, which I also recommend! http://www.lhf.org/)
This book is important because it was written as a response to critics who argued that Stowe's original book was pure fantasy, and bore no relationship to what actually happened to slaves and others involved with slavery. By documenting her sources, Stowe didn't completely disarm the critics, but she created a way for her friends to defend the work.
Primary source documentation for Uncle Tom's Cabin. Groundbreaking in it's time, largely ignored today because everyone accepts Stowe's research and the narrative story line built upon it as realistic.