- [Voiceover] Hey Kim. - [Kim] Hey, Becca. So, we've been talking
about Uncle Tom's Cabin, published in 1852 by
Harriet Beecher Stowe, and said to have been
one of the main causes of the American Civil War. So, remind me again of
what Uncle Tom's Cabin was actually about. - [Becca] So Uncle Tom's Cabin was about the horrors of slavery in the deep south and also appealed to a lot of
American's Christian values and tried to point out these
fundamental contradictions between Christian faith and slavery. - [Kim] So, it was published in 1852. How did people receive this book? - [Becca] So there was a
lot of mixed reactions. But, it was the most read
book of the 19th century, so there were a lot of reactions. (laughing) In the north, mostly, people
were reading this all the time, no matter if you were an intellectual or just kind of a 17 year old
picking up a book off a shelf, you were going to read Uncle Tom's Cabin. And a lot of the people
that actually read the book were young men that would
later fight in the Civil War. - [Kim] How interesting. Okay, so, like this would be
our book club book of the month except everybody was, this was like the Oprah's
book club choice of 1852. - [Becca] Exactly.
- [Kim] Everybody was reading it. - [Becca] Yeah, there's
really almost nothing like it. Not even Harry Potter. But it did have the
same international scope that Harry Potter does today. - [Kim] So, it was popular in
the northern United States, and elsewhere in the world. So, where else was it popular? - [Becca] Mostly in Europe. But it was translated
into over 60 languages. - [Kim] Wow. - [Becca] And, this also
kind of put the spotlight on American slavery. So, there was all this
international attention. What is going on in America, and what's going to happen? - [Kim] That's so interesting. It reminds me of The King and I. If you've seen that she,
the woman goes to Siam, and shows people the book Uncle Tom's Cabin and they put on a version of a play based on Uncle Tom's Cabin in what would be Thailand. - [Becca] So yeah, so
this makes it this kind of international spectacle. The fate of slavery had
to be somehow figured out, and everyone was watching. - [Kim] That's so interesting. So, I'm imagining that white southerners were not big fans of this book. - [Becca] So, white
southerners were definitely not a fan of Uncle Tom's Cabin. And in response, there was
this movement of these things called anti-Tom novels. Here's an anti-Tom novel right next to us, right over here, Aunt Phillis's Cabin. (Kim laughing) - [Kim] Creative name.
- [Becca] Aunt Phillis' Cabin, yes (laughing), very creative name. These anti-Tom novels
aimed to point out that maybe Harriet Beecher Stowe didn't know what she was actually talking about. They also accused Harriet Beecher Stowe of not actually even
living in the deep south, so she didn't even know
what slavery was like. They wanted to paint
southern slave society in this really positive light. They wanted to show all
the ways that it actually maintains social order, and promoted economic welfare, so this was kind of this
response from the south, also in novel form. - [Kim] So, it's this big
kind of cultural battle over the interpretation of slavery. You have people on one hand saying slavery is destructive to families, slavery is incompatible with Christianity. And then, responses from the white south, saying, oh no, actually slavery is great, it helps everybody. - [Becca] Right, so there
was this kind of battle within the literary community about the peculiar institution of slavery. Which one was it? - [Kim] So what if, I'm illiterate, right. I mean, not everybody
in 19th century America was a New England intellectual who was reading Christian novels. How would I have heard
about Uncle Tom's Cabin? - [Becca] That's a really good point, Kim. So, Tom Shows were depictions
of Uncle Tom's Cabin in theaters around the world. And so, they were often times
put on by abolitionist people trying to point out the
issues with slavery today and end slavery immediately. - [Kim] So, this is before
there's copyright law, right, so you can just put on a
show of anybody's novel if you feel like it. - [Becca] Exactly, but often times, they really misconstrued the novel. And actually, now are
remembered as contributing to the problem of racism in America. - [Kim] Racial stereotypes,
too, I would imagine, because we still have
this phrase Uncle Tom kind of to mean an African-American who is
a martyr to the status quo as opposed to someone who
might fight against racism. It seems like they might have borrowed a lot of these stereotypes
from minstrel shows which were also very
popular in this time period. - [Becca] And some of the characters within these minstrel shows turned into the character that
was remembered as Jim Crow, which became the dominating racial order after the Civil War. So, in the Civil Rights
era in the mid-1950's, lots of activists actually
wanted to completely reject the progress that Uncle Tom's
Cabin and these Tom Shows had made because they actually
reduced African Americans to this terrible stereotype. And so, later on, this kind of idea that someone was an Uncle Tom
became a racial slur, really, and they then rejected Uncle Tom's Cabin as being a tool towards racial equality and more saw it as a part of the problem. - [Kim] So, I think,
the most important thing about Uncle Tom's Cabin
is that it's this catalyst of really intense emotions about slavery which in the 1850's will lead
eventually to the Civil War. And, following the publication
of Uncle Tom's Cabin, you'll see more and more violence on both sides of this issue. For example, John Brown,
this famous abolitionist actually goes out to
Kansas and murders people. - [Becca] And I think that
Lincoln was very astute in pointing out that Uncle Tom's Cabin really catalyzed a lot of this violence. And he even met with
Harriet Beecher Stowe, so she earned herself
a little meeting with Abraham Lincoln. (Kim laughing) - [Kim] And he said, "So you're the little lady
that started this great war." I'm trying to think of another
book that has started a war. - [Becca] I think we would
probably remember that. But I do think Lincoln was
really astute in pointing out just how impactful this
cultural phenomenon, this Tom-mania was on
the question of slavery and on the fate of the American people. And really, it just begged
the question in a new way, in this kind of public setting. I mean, I just think that the book itself, the way that the book could just travel all around the United States and so many different kinds of people were able to read it and
get their hands on it. This really was just
this movement of people just thinking a lot about slavery, reading a lot about slavery. - [Kim] Yeah, well, I think
after Uncle Tom's Cabin, I don't think there was a
way to not have an opinion on the slavery issue. Either you were for it, or you were against it. And that divisiveness would
lead to the Civil War. - [Becca] And again, there's
this international focus. There's a deeper, sectional divide between the north and the south, and there was this kind of
sorting over the slavery question that Uncle Tom's Cabin really promoted.