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The Legacy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a seminal work by abolitionist author Harriet Beecher Stowe, was a game-changer in 1851.
It not only exposed the evils of slavery but also ignited the abolitionist cause, leaving the slaveholding South in a state of fury and inspiring pro-slavery copycat works in defence of the institution of slavery.
In the 1850s, her book was highly popular in the northern United States and across the Atlantic, particularly in Britain.
American abolitionists often went to Britain to get the British to end their dependency on American cotton, particularly from the southern United States.
The cotton trade in the south of the United States was heavily dependent upon slave labour, and the British had become addicted to getting cheaper cotton by importing it from the United States from 1775 to 1783, after the end of the American War of Independence.
Abolitionists believed they could get the support of the British Empire and that it could force the southern United States to abandon the institution of slavery, which is why Uncle Tom’s Cabin is also partly a pro-British novel.
Uncle Tom, the lead throughout the novel, eventually escapes to freedom in British Canada.
