In Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Cassy and Eliza’s escape stories from slavery are explicitly explained in thorough detail. Eliza begins at the Shelby plantation in Kentucky, and makes her way to Canada after hearing about the selling of her son Harry. Cassy is introduced at Legree’s plantation in Louisiana and plans her escape after having enough of the terrible torture that Legree put her through and Tom’s refusal to kill him. Both women derive from two completely different situations of slavery, yet both feel the need to escape and go to extraordinary lengths in order to reach freedom. Both of their slave escape stories presented by Stowe included multiple details that seemed rather outlandish and farfetched.
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This legislation is ultimately why Stowe became inspired to write her novel. Looking into Stowe’s life, she was born into a heavily religious family and her father was a minister: “I well remember his prayers morning and evening in the family for “poor, oppressed, bleeding Africa “, that the time of her deliverance might come; prayers offered with strong crying and tears, and which indelibly impressed my heart and made me what I am from my very coul, the enemy of all slavery” (Stowe 18). In being a Christian abolitionist, Stowe can personally detest to the religious arguments in favor of slavery. Her target audience for her novel is all Christians in the hopes of discrediting the argument that religion can justify slavery along with pointing out the weakness among those who support slavery . Stowe writes,
It then appears that the church has the power to put an end to this evil and does not do it. In this sense she may be said to be pro-slavery. But I would ask you, would you consider it a fair representation of the Christian church in this country to say that it is pro-intemperance, pro-Sabbath -breaking, and pro-everything that it might put down if it were in a higher state of moral feeling? If you should make a list of all the abolitionists of the country- certainly some of the most influential and efficient ones are ministers (Stowe, pg
This legislation is ultimately why Stowe became inspired to write her novel. Looking into Stowe’s life, she was born into a heavily religious family and her father was a minister: “I well remember his prayers morning and evening in the family for “poor, oppressed, bleeding Africa “, that the time of her deliverance might come; prayers offered with strong crying and tears, and which indelibly impressed my heart and made me what I am from my very coul, the enemy of all slavery” (Stowe 18). In being a Christian abolitionist, Stowe can personally detest to the religious arguments in favor of slavery. Her target audience for her novel is all Christians in the hopes of discrediting the argument that religion can justify slavery along with pointing out the weakness among those who support slavery . Stowe writes,
It then appears that the church has the power to put an end to this evil and does not do it. In this sense she may be said to be pro-slavery. But I would ask you, would you consider it a fair representation of the Christian church in this country to say that it is pro-intemperance, pro-Sabbath -breaking, and pro-everything that it might put down if it were in a higher state of moral feeling? If you should make a list of all the abolitionists of the country- certainly some of the most influential and efficient ones are ministers (Stowe, pg