The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 led, among other things, to the writing of what can be called the most influential work of fiction in American history: Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. The novel's power comes from its portrayal of slaves as human beings. Even though Stowe had spent practically no time in the South, she had frequent contact with former slaves through her friendship with members of the abolitionist movement, of which her father, Lyman Beecher, was an important leader. She also had in her household an African-American woman who had been a slave.
Even though the book's characters—Tom, Eliza, Cassy, Little Eva, Augustine St. Clare,
Simon Legree and the others—do not come across as completely realistic, (this was the Romantic era, after all) they have sufficient human qualities and are drawn richly enough that they present the full range of human emotions. The emotions felt by the players can easily be understood. Though the book is not always accurate on slavery in its details, the impact of the work in the north was immediate and strong; the reaction in the South was predictably negative, and publication of the book heightened national tension. By 1857 the work had sold an astounding two million copies and was translated into many languages. It was praised by Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy.
Regardless of its romanticism, the novel presented the evils of slavery—its corrupting effect on whites and the pain it brought to African-Americans. Most noteworthy is that fact that as a white woman, Stowe nevertheless depicted the slaves as people. Her female characters were also strongly drawn, a fact noted by later feminist critics. Legends arose around her: when President Abraham Lincoln met Mrs. Stowe, he is supposed to have said, "So you're the little lady who wrote the book that started this big war." Whether true or not, the remark reflects the huge impact the book had on the slavery debate.
(The Showtime Film Uncle Tom's Cabin with Avery Brooks, Bruce Dern, Felicia Rashad, Samuel L. Jackson and Edward Woodward is worth seeing—a brief but faithful rendition of Mrs. Stowe's novel.)
World History
