Uncle Tom's Cabin Conflict

In the 1800s, the United States faced its biggest problem in all of American history: the Civil War. In April of 1861, the war that would either mend or tear the union apart began. Tension between the north and south broke loose, spiraling into chaos. The pro-slavery south was competing with the anti-slavery north over territory and the fate of the institution of slavery. President Abraham Lincoln called on the Civil War not as a war on race, but a war on unity. So, leading to the war, slave-states occupied the south and free-states occupied the north. The new western land was determined by the Missouri-compromise: any new state created above the Missouri compromise line was considered a free state, below was pro-slavery. Many challenges came …show more content…
In Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the defiance of slave to his slave owner shows the relationship between the north and south leading up to the Civil war. Tom is a slave who helped another slave, Lucy, with her cotton picking because she was sick. Two other slaves tell the evil slave-owner, Legree, that Tom has been helping Lucy. Legree orders Tom to whip Lucy, but he refuses. Legree gets furious and orders the other slaves to beat him until he is dead as he is called a beast. This quick scene shows a similar tension between the north and south. The south had not owned the north, however the after the Dred Scott case, any state could technically be a slave state. The south was defined by is pro-slavery principals; southerners could come up to the northern regions to claim a slave. So in correlation, the south had inhibited all of the United States. Slavery and territorial issues are the two leading reasons for the start of the Civil War, while the ownership of parts of a human are seen to correlate between the mindset and motives of the northerners and the …show more content…
Although the south did have much land and their ridiculous institution of slavery, their greed catalyzed the nation to fight one another based on who is a citizen and who is a object. In Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the south is represented by the evil slave owner, Legree. Legree argues with the slave and beats him until he is dead. Tom represents the north, spiritually. Tom states how a soul can not be bought, to which the northerners believed that slaves are people and not objects. However the south argued that they own the labor and physicality of the slaves; therefore controlling the whole slave. Through the Fugitive Slave Law and the verdict of the Dred Scott v. Sandford, the south had been able to control the north with implanting slavery in the northern regions. These bias issues in the government let the northerns prepare for war. The south would regard to the verdict of the Dred Scott case, “They (the blacks) had no rights to which the white man was bound to respect.” (Roger B. Taney). The north would argue the exact opposite. The Civil War tore the nation apart while mending it’s people