Tom Sawyer's Cabin

Author: Harriet Beecher Stowe (USA), translated by Wang Jiaxiang
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-01-01
Features: Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, strongly condemned the brutal treatment and trade of Black slaves as soulless livestock under American slavery. In 1850, the U.S. federal parliament passed the Fugitive Slave Act, stipulating that no one could harbor escaped slaves, and that residents of free states who assisted escaped slaves would face legal sanctions. The passage of this law effectively recognized Black slaves as private property of slaveholders across the entire United States in legal form. At that time, a significant number of Northern political and religious leaders even defended this act, arguing that it was necessary to maintain federal unity and prevent the country from splitting into two northern and southern nations. This further enraged Stowe. She believed that only those who were ignorant of the truth and cruelty of slavery would defend it and the Fugitive Slave Act. Determined to expose the horrifying crimes of slavery through literature, she resolved to bring these atrocities to the world. Her intended readers were mainly white Christians in the North, and she hoped to use her work to elicit their sympathy and support for the abolitionist movement.