...“If the greatness of a novel were based solely upon its popularity and sociological impact, then Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin would undoubtedly be one of the greatest American novels of all time” (Levernier). When it was published, Uncle Tom’s Cabin sold out of its first edition within two days and it generated immediate controversy. This paper works to give insight into Harriet Beecher Stowe’s ideas behind the novel and to explore the reaction by readers in the North, South, and globally. Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) was born in Litchfield, Connecticut into a prominent family of preachers. Later in life, while living in Cincinnati, Stowe came in contact to actual runaway slaves. Stowe was appalled by the stories she heard...
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...The American Civil War was a war between the confederate and union states. It started on April 12, 1861. It ended on May 9, 1865. By the end of the civil war, more than 620,000 men died. One of the causes of the American Civil War was slavery. The confederate states were eleven southern states that promoted the slavery. The confederacy is also known as the confederate states and “the South”. The union states was against slavery. The Union is known as “the North”. The union defeated the confederate states in 1865. The union put an end to slavery when they won. In 1863, Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed the southern states. Lincoln was killed in 1865 by John Wilkes Booth, who was a southern supporter. One cause...
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...Lynn Crain McFall Eng 201 July 15, 2011 Slavery and Racism Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the mid-1800s. Stowe was well educated and was raised in strong Christian and Calvinist beliefs (Weinstein). Her writing of this novel reflects things she was witness to as well as things she was told. Stowe opposed slavery and racism (Novels). These became major themes in her novel. Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Stowe has two main plots going through the novel. The first plot Uncle Tom’s story. He is an old slave, very reliable and trustworthy. His master is a kind man and treats his slaves well. Hard times fall on the master, and he must sell two of his slaves to pay the bills. Tom is one of the two chosen to be sold. Tom must leave his family and travel to New Orleans with a trader. Tom becomes friends with a young girl on the ship that is carrying them to New Orleans. The girl’s father buys Tom at her request. Tom once again has a good master. He is treated well and doesn’t want for anything material. He does miss his family and hopes that someday he can return to his home in Kentucky. Tom’s young mistress falls sick and soon dies. The master had told Tom that he was going to set him free and that he had begun the paper work. It was his daughter’s wish that Tom be set free and could return to his family. As fate would have it, the master is involved in a brawl. He is trying to stop it, but is injured in the process. Unfortunately, not much later, he...
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...2011 Bill T. Jones and the Last Supper at Uncle Tom's Cabin/ The Promised Land William Tass Jones was born on February 15, 1952, in Bunnell, Florida. He and his family moved north as part of the the Great Migration in the first half of the twentieth century. They settled in Wayland, New York, where Jones attended Wayland High School. He discovered dance while in college on a sports scholarship at Binghamton University and soon began studying classical ballet and modern dance. It was here that he met Arnie Zane, a photographer who was to become his partner and collaborator. Together they studied the art of dance and became co-founders of American Dance Asy- lum, based in Binghamton, New York in 1973. Jones was tall, black, and graceful, Zane was short, white, and tough, and it was in their obvious contrast that the success of their performing partnership hinged. A gay African American who has experienced dual prejudices, Bill T. Jones has often brilliantly transformed his anger and autobiography into dance. Early he became known for highly confrontational sexually and racially charged dances that obliterated boundaries between the public and the private. He and Arnie were life and dance partners from 1971 until Zane died in 1988, and Jones has continued to direct the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. Jones's Last Supper at Uncle Tom's Cabin/The Promised Land is a sprawling, ambitious dance about racism, repression...
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...Naomi Chebii American Culture and Film 2nd Essay: 12 Years a Slave 28-09-2015 Ref: Analysis on 12 Years a Slave The film 12 Years a Slave tells the horrific true story of a free black man Solomon Northup, who was dragged, kidnapped and sold into slavery in 1850s America to suffer years of abuse in the Pre-Civil War South. From start to finish, basic facts about the time, the places, the people, and the practices of the day are incorporated, sometimes in excessive detail, into Northup’s story. He speaks with authority on all subjects of his enslavement, naming names and pointing out landmarks along the way. In doing so, he dares skeptics to refute his story, knowing that public record and common knowledge would defend it. The son of an emancipated slave, Northup was born free. He lived, worked, and married in New York, where his family resided. He was a multifaceted laborer and also an accomplished violin player. In 1841, aged 33, he was tricked into leaving his family behind his wife, and two young daughters, by two white con men, who offered him a job as a fiddler in a travelling circus. So he travelled with them to Washington, D.C., where they dragged him and sold him to a slave trader called Burch. Despite having papers showing he was a free man, Solomon was whipped and beaten and subjected into a brutal torture by his new owner. 12 Years a Slave serves as a timeless indictment of the practice of human slavery. As we saw from the film how Northup’s detailing the abuses...
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...into two—the “free states” and “slaved states”. This issue of slavery caused lots of notable moments in the history of America; from the Missouri Compromise to Compromise of 1850; from the violent incident called ‘Bleeding Kansas’ to the publishing of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom Cabin; and of course, the Civil War. (Lambert, 2012) What if it didn’t end in the 19th century? A greater chaos might have been made. This issue on slavery made Abraham Lincoln, for me, the bravest president of America. Abraham Lincoln is 16th president of the USA. He’s a lawyer with no formal education and a republican. He’s the American greatest leader and most eloquent in speeches among all other presidents. For me, his eloquence showed his brevity as he’s not afraid of whatever it will lead him to. Reading his famous quotes, I can say that America can still be inspired by his words. Some other interesting facts about him are he being the tallest and the first to wear a beard among all the presidents. As he also said, “Every person is responsible for his own looks after 40.” (The Quotations Page, 1994) Trivial facts aside, he triggered the infamous American Civil War by greatly opposing slavery. (Summers, 2013) “As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.”-Abraham Lincoln (The Quotations...
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...increased so much during that period that even citizens thought of their country divided into two halves, being the North and the South. Each section considered themselves as right and proper while the other as ridiculous and wrong. These tensions kept building until the thought of secession became not a question of if but rather a question of when. According to Cole C. Kingseed, author of The American Civil War, the seeds of the Civil War can be planted as early as the Constitutional Convention of 1787. By the time of the convention five states had already abolished slavery, which made the southern states tentative to join the union for the fear of not having their slaves counted for representation in congress. A compromise was made that allowed for three out of every five slaves to be counted as the population. The slave owning states made it very clear that the only way for a union was for slavery to be legal in the southern states. Before the United States of America formally came into...
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...12 years a slave In the years before the Civil War, Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a free black man from upstate New York, is kidnapped and sold into slavery in the South. Subjected to the cruelty of one malevolent owner (Michael Fassbender), he also finds unexpected kindness from another, as he struggles continually to survive and maintain some of his dignity. Then in the 12th year of the disheartening ordeal, a chance meeting with an abolitionist from Canada changes Solomon's life forever. Twelve Years a Slave (1853) is a memoir and slave narrative by American Solomon Northup as told to and edited by David Wilson. Northup, a black man who was born free in New York state, details his being tricked to go to Washington, D.C., where he was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the Deep South. After having been kept in bondage for 12 years in Louisiana by various masters, Northup was able to write to friends and family in New York, who in turn secured his release with the aid of the state. Northup's account provides extensive details on the slave markets in Washington, D.C. and New Orleans, and describes at length cotton and sugar cultivation and slave treatment on major plantations in Louisiana. The work was published eight years before the Civil War by Derby & Miller of Auburn, New York,[2] soon after Harriet Beecher Stowe's best-selling novel about slavery,Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), to which it lent factual support. Northup's book, dedicated to Stowe, sold 30,000 copies...
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...tract of land that Mexico ceded to the United States following the Mexican-America war: included California as well as parts of other Western territories. Fire-Eaters: A general unofficial term used to describe a group of Southern politicians who were extremely in favor of slavery and thus advocated for secession. Underground Railroad: A route that slaves took to secretly escape from their masters to freedom. Harriet Tubman: A particularly famous conductor of the railroad, helping to sneak hundreds of slaves out of servitude. William H. Seward: A somewhat radical politician who advocated for the abolition of slavery on moral grounds. Higher Law: The stance that...
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...The Scars of War Lou Hampton United States History 1763-1877 September 18, 2012 During the 1840s and 1850s, great change was coming to America. Northerners lived in a world of change in which they hardly understood. Their confusions and anxieties of that world made them ready for conflict. However, it was not completely clear what they were fighting for. The war wiped away their confusions and revealed to them where they stood and defined what kind of people they might be. Social and economic changes were happening as the North headed toward war. The economy accelerated, increased output, generated more wealth, moved products and people at faster speeds, transmitted information more rapidly and linked distant places by rail, telegraph and newspapers. New inventions, industries and products had sprung to life. The population multiplied six fold and the amount and size of cities were continuing their growth. There were 400 places with over 2,500 people. Swelling its possibilities, the nation expanded in size when in 1845 Texas joined the Union. Another factor in the nation’s growth was in 1846 when the Oregon territorial boundary was settled. The sudden economic growth was not as beneficial as it seemed. Per capita wealth was growing but there was a decline in actual wages. The North controlled about 92 percent of the wealth. This helped fuel sectionalism because the Southerners became afraid that they would lose their own culture and power in Congress. This...
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...Frederick Douglass, a black man who changed America's history with being one of the foremost leaders of the abolitionist movement, which fought to end slavery within the United States in the decades prior to the Civil War. A slave in America until the age of 20, wrote three of the most highly regarded autobiographies of the 19th century, yet he only began learning to read and write when he turned 12 years old. After an early life of hardship and pain, Douglass escaped to the North to began his soul changing and spiritual beliefs of all men and women should be created equal. The institution of slavery scarred him so deeply that he decided to dedicate his powers of speech and prose to fighting it. In this paper it will include discussions on Frederick Douglass's early life childhood, the struggles he overcame to became a successor his motives and morals, the impact he had on the civil war, his achievements, and the legacy that went on within his name. Frederick Douglass was born as Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey and was a slave from Talbot County, Maryland. His date of birth varied because slaves couldn't keep records, in result Frederick adopted February 14 as his birthday because his mother Harriet Bailey used to call him her "little valentine".(Douglass, (1885). When he was only an infant, he was separated from his mother, and she subsequently died when he was about seven years old. He then lived with his grandmother, Betty Bailey. His father remains unknown...
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...transcontinental railroad making Chicago the terminus, but they could not do this until the Indians were cleared away and the land was in control. Nebraska would presumably become a free state due to the Missouri Compromise but to please the South Douglas argued that the territories should be left open to popular sovereignty. Douglas pushed for the bill and won, therefore the Missouri Compromise was repealed and the North was in an uproar. 2. Birth of the Republican Party- Made up of former Free Soilers, Conscience Whigs, and “Anti-Nebraska” Democrats. Presented themselves as the party of freedom though they were not abolitionist, but they believed that slavery be kept out of the territories. The Republican Party appealed too many to voters who not only disagreed with slavery but also wanted to keep slavery out of their states. 3. Stephan A. Douglas- Known as the “Little Giant,” he was the most prominent spokesman of the Young American movement. He held a series of state offices before being elected for the United States Senate at the age of 29. Douglas wanted to get on with the development of the nation; to build railroads, acquire new territory, and expand trade. This made him suggest and push for the Kansas-Nebraska Act. 4. Popular Sovereignty- Also known as “squatter sovereignty,” the doctrine that says the people of a new territory, under the Constitution, have the right to decide the status of slavery. Congress officials liked it because it let them escape from making...
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