Uncle Tom's Cabin And The Immorality Of Slavery Essay
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Uncle Tom’s Cabin and The Immorality of Slavery
Kirk Thomas
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, is influential yet controversial. President Abraham Lincoln famously referred to Harriet Beecher Stowe as “The little woman who wrote the book that started this great war”. She described slavery in a way that helped sway the public opinion against it before the civil war began. The novel expresses the immorality of slavery and the hardships African Americans were forced to face in the mid 1800’s. The tearing apart of families, gruesome beatings, and the inability to find freedom was a daily struggle for African Americans in the wretched south during this time. Uncle Tom’s character seems to represent every ounce of hope that every African American has instilled within them. Although the hardships of everyday life continuously drop heavy weights on Uncle Tom’s shoulders, he never loses his hope to find freedom for himself and his enslaved companions.…show more content… Slaves were sold for a number of reasons, often to settle a debt. In the first chapter the tearing apart of families quickly becomes a problem when Arthur Shelby is forced to sell Uncle Tom and another young slave named Harry Harris to save his plantation from bankruptcy. Eliza Harris, Harry’s mother, refuses to lose her beloved son to anyone and decides to run for freedom. Uncle Tom, being quite close with Mr. Shelby agrees to be sold in order to save his plantation and the wellbeing of his wife Chloe whom is the cook on the Shelby plantation, knowing she will be safe there. Can you imagine being 10 years old and having no one to care for you except a big white man with a whip in his hand? George Harris, Eliza’s husband who is now a free man, talks about his struggles as a young boy to Mr.