Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" (1852)

Read Uncle Tom's Cabin lately? I recently came to it for the first time and, you know what, it's a compelling page turner. It has a suspenseful plot and a readable style. No wonder it sold millions of copies, helped Harriet Beecher Stowe and her spouse get out of debt, and drew thousands of readers to the docks at Liverpool to greet her as she began her first European tour.

Stowe, who lived in Cincinnati for over twenty years, tackles American slavery head on and shows its corruptive influence on owners and slaves. Families are split and never reunited, pretty light-skinned young women are shipped down to the bordellos in New Orleans, children are torn from their mothers' arms and never seen again. Not all owners were cruel to their property (other than owning them of course), but Tom's kindly owner has to sell him down the river because of overwhelming debt. The worst of all slave owners is Simon Legree and eventually Uncle Tom falls into his hands and suffers vicious and graphically described tortures.

In reading the book I discovered that Uncle Tom was not an Uncle Tom. Later stage versions changed the character to a shuffling fool who pandered to his owners). In the novel he is noble and brave--a Christlike figure--who protects and sometimes saves his fellow creatures--some of them white.

When Abraham Lincoln met Harriet he said to her, "and you're the little lady he started the Civil War." The book had power then, and it still does.