1. The book that started the Civil War

2. Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Northern teacher and very religious abolitionist.

3. Josiah Henson, runaway slave who moved to Canada, published, like you guys did, a story about his life and escape as a slave in Virginia.
Stowe said that his story greatly influenced her story.

4. The Story
Follows the main character, Uncle Tom, a religious slave. Tom gets sold to many different people, some are good, his last one is a bad man that beats him for many different reasons, including Tom’s faith in God.

5. Northern Response
Stowe’s book was the second best selling book in the 1850’s, only the Bible sold more copies.
Many northerners who did not know or pay attention to the slavery issue now faced it head on. Instead of a small issue that only abolitionists worried about, now it was a Christian Crusade issue to end slavery all together.

8. Southern Response
The whole south was outraged by the book. Even though a small percentage of the population owned slaves, the book, they thought, made the whole south look bad.
The book is looked at as yet another divide between north and south.

9. Martha Haines Butt
She published her book, entitled; Antifanaticism: A Tale of the South.
In her book she states that in the south slaves actually like being enslaved, and that slaves have better life's than poor northerners working and suffering in factories.

11. Response to Uncle Tom’s Cabin
As a northerner, what do you like about the book? Would a book motivate you to make social changes? (you can even think about your slave essays, after all, Stowe wrote her book using material from a slaves essay as well)
As a southerner, how would you respond to something that made you look bad? If the book is VERY popular in the north, how do you feel about the north?