Volume 41, Number 20 · December 1, 1994
Her Holiness
By Alfred Kazin
Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), the biggest best seller of the nineteenth century after the Bible, is a central event in American history. By centering on and dramatizing the routine breakup of black families under slavery far more than the usual condemnations of slavery had done, Harriet Beecher Stowe elevated the slaves in the minds of people who had despised them as subhuman or who were just indifferent to their fate. The book aroused the most passionate indignation throughout the world against the special cruelty of American slavery, the worst in the Western world. It was the first work written in English to be translated into such remote languages as Illyrian or Wallachian. The heartbreak of families casually separated by slave traders and owners under economic pressure inflamed the universal audience for the book, especially among women whose prime belief was the Christian sacredness of family.
Feature, 2988 words
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