Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly, is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel had a profound effect on attitudes toward African Americans and slavery in the U.S. and is said to have "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War".Stowe, a Connecticut-born teacher at the Hartford Female Seminary and an active abolitionist, featured the character of Uncle Tom, a long-suffering black slave around whom the stories of other characters revolve. The sentimental novel depicts the reality of slavery while also asserting that Christian love can overcome something as destructive as enslavement of fellow human beings.Uncle Tom's Cabin was the best-selling novel of the 19th century and the second best-selling book of that century, following the Bible. It is credited with helping fuel the abolitionist cause in the 1850s. In the first year after it was published, 300,000 copies of the book were sold in the United States; one million copies in Great Britain. In 1855, three years after it was published, it was called "the most popular novel of our day." The impact attributed to the book is great, reinforced by a story that when Abraham Lincoln met Stowe at the start of the Civil War, Lincoln declared, "So this is the little lady who started this great war." The quote is
An atmosphere of sympathetic influence encircles every human being; and the man or woman who feels strongly, healthily and justly, on the great interests of humanity, is a constant benefactor to the human race. See, then, to your sympathies in this matter! Are they in harmony with the sympathies of Christ? or are they swayed and perverted by the sophistries of worldly policy?
Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Concluding Remarks
“A day of grace is yet held out to us.”
Final lines.
Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Concluding Remarks
Context: A day of grace is yet held out to us. Both North and South have been guilty before God; and the Christian church has a heavy account to answer. Not by combining together, to protect injustice and cruelty, and making a common capital of sin, is this Union to be saved, — but by repentance, justice and mercy; for, not surer is the eternal law by which the millstone sinks in the ocean, than that stronger law, by which injustice and cruelty shall bring on nations the wrath of Almighty God!
“Well, good-by, Uncle Tom; keep a stiff upper lip.”
Ch 10 The Property Is Carried Off
Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852)
Source: Uncle Tom's Cabin
Ch 36 Emmeline and Cassy
Source: Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852)
“Perhaps it is impossible for a person who does no good not to do harm.”
Source: Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Ch. 28.
“Any mind that is capable of a real sorrow is capable of good.”
Source: Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Ch. 28 Reunion
Source: Uncle Tom's Cabin
“… the heart has no tears to give,--it drops only blood, bleeding itself away in silence.”
Source: Uncle Tom's Cabin
“The longest way must have its close - the gloomiest night will wear on to a morning.”
Source: Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Ch. 40 The Martyr
Context: The longest day must have its close — the gloomiest night will wear on to a morning. An eternal, inexorable lapse of moments is ever hurrying the day of the evil to an eternal night, and the night of the just to an eternal day.
“Strange, what brings these past things so vividly back to us, sometimes!”
Source: Uncle Tom's Cabin
Ch 13 The Quaker Settlement
Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852)
“No one is so thoroughly superstitious as the godless man.”
Source: Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Ch. 39 The Stratagem
Source: Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Ch. 40.
