UTC & the Civil War


  Stowe's novel is the only work of imaginative literature mentioned in every textbook on American history I've ever seen, as one of "The Causes of the Civil War." Lincoln is supposed to have told Stowe it was the cause — you can see the source of that anecdote at the end of the chapter 7 of her son and grandson's biography below. In his 1921 novel about Robert E. Lee, Thomas Dixon (whose first novel we'll be reading soon) wrote that "Uncle Tom's Cabin had prepared the stubble" that John Brown's act had caused to "burst into flame" (CLICK HERE FOR MORE).
  I've had no luck finding ways to prove, or even begin to document, the actual historical relationship between Stowe's novel and the Civil War, but here are three items that can remind us to keep that issue in mind as we go forward with the story of Stowe's story as a cultural site.

     
  • A Union Soldier Sees UTC (Playbill & Letter, 1861)
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  • "The great moral of our civil war" (Harper's Magazine, 1861)
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  • Stowe Meets Lincoln (Chapter 7, The Story of Stowe's Life, 1911)

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