mar 20, 1852 - Uncle Tom's Cabin Published

Description:

Harriet Beecher Stowe, a white activist, wrote the book Uncle Tom's Cabin, which depicted the lives of black slaves in the south. It sold very well, and for once many white northerners were able to see the truth of how slaves were treated. Because many people in the north had no idea of the full impact of slavery upon African Americans, the book surprised them and provoked in them a new sense of the need to oppose slavery. It rallied many more people to the side of activists, making them despise what was going on and influencing them to do whatever to fix it. It angered slave owners who didn't believe the treatment was wrong, and they fought back, trying to justify their actions by saying the book was false or exaggerated the actual conditions. Northerners beginning to see the light of what slavery was also began to hate pro-slavery southerners, and likewise the southerners hated them back for being in such opposition. The hostility increased as the number of people joining the struggle increased, and they would come to such an impasse and not want to budge to the point of violence looking like the only way out.