Harriet Beecher Stowe's melodramatic novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, which she called in the preface a "series of sketches", was written "to awaken sympathy and feeling for the African race" (Stowe "Preface"). It was so successful as a polemic against slavery that Lincoln gently called Mrs. Stowe "the little lady who started this big war" (Hughes "Introduction"). Stowe wrote from the point of view of an abolitionist, a Christian and a Northerner from a state that bordered the slave-owning South.

I. The Treatment of Slaves

It would be an exaggeration to say that all slaves were mistreated physically, and Stowe makes the point that some states were more disposed to treat slaves decently than others. Haley, the trader, comments that "You Kentucky folks spile your niggers" (Stowe, UTC Chapter 1, p.7). The farms of Kentucky offered a moderate climate and a more bearable workload than, for example, the Deep South...