Causes of the Civil War: Uncle Tom's Cabin

In 1852, Uncle Tom's Cabin was written by Harriet Beecher Stowe. The book was an anti-slavery novel, and was later known to be a catalyst to spark the tensions between the northern free states and the southern slave states. The book allowed the readers to take a glimpse at the horrors of slavery, and it showed the brutality forced upon slaves. Once it was published, it quickly grew to fame. After the first year, 300,000 copies were sold, and it infuriated the Southerners, who fully supported slavery and tried to present a different approach, that the slaves were treated with care and that the mentally challenged would try to escape. When meeting Abraham Lincoln, he immediately addressed her as "the little lady who wrote the book that started the Civil War." The book introduced and popularized many stereotypes about slaves while also rejecting the idea of slavery as a whole. Today, it is seen to be a necessary tool for the abolitionist movement, and without it, the fuel to start the antislavery movement may have never began.