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Uncle Tom's Cabin
By
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896)
The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin
Stowe wrote this book to defend her novel against one of the most wide-spread complaints that pro-slavery critics lodged against it -- that as an account of slavery Uncle Tom's Cabinwas wholly false, or at least wildly exaggerated. Thus The Key is organized around that defensive project, taking up her major characters one at a time, for example, to cite real life equivalents to them. At the same time, defending her novel led her to mount a more aggressive attack on slavery in the South than the novel itself had. In the novel she works hard to be sympathetic to white southerners as well as black slaves; here, her prose seems much angrier, both morally and rhetorically more contemptuous. One explanation for this sharper tone could be the novel's reception in the South, where no one seems to have appreciated her attempt to be fair. Stowe was probably unprepared for the South's shrill rejection of the book.
The Key is prickly, dense book, with none of the readability of Uncle Tom's Cabin. When it first came out, it was also a best seller, though it's likely many bought it without understanding its nature. It's also a kind of fiction. Although it claims to be about the sources Stowe consulted while writing the novel, for example, she read many of the works cited here only after the novel was published.
The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin;Presenting the Original Facts and Documents Upon Which the Story Is Founded,Together with Corroborative Statements Verifying the Truth of the Work. By Harriet Beecher Stowe. Boston: John P. Jewett and Company, 1854.
PART I[364KB] Chapter 1-- Introductory
Chapter 2-- Mr. Haley
Chapter 3-- Mr. and Mrs. Shelby
Chapter 4-- George Harris
Chapter 5-- Eliza
Chapter 6-- Uncle Tom
Chapter 7-- Miss Ophelia
Chapter 8-- Marie St. Clare
Chapter 9-- St. Clare
Chapter 10-- Legree
Chapter 11-- Select Incidents of Lawful Trade
Chapter 12-- Topsy
Chapter 13-- The Quakers
Chapter 14-- The Spirit of St. ClarePART II[340KB] Chapter 1-- Introductory
Chapter 2-- What Is Slavery?
Chapter 3-- Souther v. Commonwealth--The Ne Plus Ultra of Legal Humanity
Chapter 4-- Protective Statutes
Chapter 5-- Protective Statutes of South Carolina and Louisiana--The Iron Collar of Louisiana and North Carolina
Chapter 6-- Protective Acts with Regard to Food and Raiment
Chapter 7-- The Execution of Justice
Chapter 8-- The Good Old Times
Chapter 9-- Moderate Correction and Accidental Death
Chapter 10-- Principles Established--State v. Legree; A Case Not in the Books
Chapter 11-- The Triumph of Justice Over Law
Chapter 12-- A Comparison of the Roman Law of Slavery with the American
Chapter 13-- The Men Better Than Their Laws
Chapter 14-- The Hebrew Slave Law Compared with the American Slave Law
Chapter 15-- Slavery Is DespotismPART III[388KB] Chapter 1-- Does Public Opinion Protect the Slave?
Chapter 2-- Public Opinion Formed by Education
Chapter 3-- Separation of Families
Chapter 4-- The Slave-Trade
Chapter 5-- Select Incidents of Lawful Trade, or Facts Stranger Than Fiction
Chapter 6-- [The Story of the Edmundsons]
Chapter 7-- [Emily Russell]
Chapter 8-- Kidnapping
Chapter 9-- Slaves as They Are, On Testimony of Owners
Chapter 10-- "Poor White Trash"PART IV[343KB] Chapter 1-- The Influence of the American Church on Slavery
Chapter 2-- [The American Church and Slavery]
Chapter 3-- Martyrdom
Chapter 4-- Servitude in the Primitive Church Compared with American Slavery
Chapter 5-- [Christianity and Slavery]
Chapter 6-- [Christianity and Slavery]
Chapter 7-- [Christianity and Slavery]
Chapter 8-- [Christianity and Slavery]
Chapter 9-- Is the System of Religion Which Is Taught the Slave the Gospel?
Chapter 10-- What Is To Be Done?
WHOLE TEXT[1.5MB] |
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