Uncle Tom's Cabin

NOIRTRASH said:

The writing is pretty good, and Stowe knew how to build sympathy for the black characters, all of whom are attractive, smart, talented, and good people. Eliza is a quadroon (1/4th black) and hot. Its a morality play in blackface.

Historian Thomas Fleming says Stowe had no contact with real slaves.

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NOIRTRASH said:

Late in the afternoon of a chilly day in February, two gentlemen were sitting alone over their wine, in a well-furnished dining parlor, in the town of P——, in Kentucky. There were no servants present, and the gentlemen, with chairs closely approaching, seemed to be discussing some subject with great earnestness. For convenience sake, we have said, hitherto, two gentlemen. One of the parties, however, when critically examined, did not seem, strictly speaking, to come under the species. He was a short, thick-set man, with coarse, commonplace features, and that swaggering air of pretension which marks a low man who is trying to

Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Uncle Tom's Cabin (p. 3). . Kindle Edition.

I wanna know how this book sold 300,000 copies when it came out, then killed 800,000 people in a civil war. Lincoln called the author the little lady who made the war.

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Boxlicker101 said:

She may have had some contact with escaped or freed slaves when she lived in Cincinnati.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Beecher_Stowe

Given her sympathies, she may have been involved with the underground railroad.

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NOIRTRASH said:

Fleming says NO. Her contact with blacks was akin to my contact with Hollywood stars.

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Boxlicker101 said:

He might be right but, if she was part of the underground railroad, it would not have been common knowledge. It was illegal, you know.

Additionally:

In 1832, at the age of 21, Harriet Beecher moved to Cincinnati, Ohio to join her father, who had become the president of Lane Theological Seminary. There, she also joined the Semi-Colon Club, a literary salon and social club whose members included the Beecher sisters, Caroline Lee Hentz, Salmon P. Chase (future governor of the state and Secretary of Treasury under President Lincoln), Emily Blackwell, and others.[5] Cincinnati's trade and shipping business on the Ohio River was booming, drawing numerous migrants from different parts of the country, including many free blacks, as well as Irish immigrants who worked on the state's canals and railroads. Areas of the city had been wrecked in the Cincinnati riots of 1829, when ethnic Irish attacked blacks, trying to push competitors out of the city. Beecher met a number of African Americans who had suffered in those attacks, and their experience contributed to her later writing about slavery. Riots took place again in 1836 and 1841, driven also by native-born anti-abolitionists.

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