American Civil War

American author Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly was published in 1852 after having originally appeared as forty weekly installments in the abolitionist periodical The National Era beginning in June of 1851. It was not intended to become a full-length novel, but its huge popularity led a publisher to contact Stowe and convince her to expand it. Though already an active abolitionist, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850... Read Uncle Tom's Cabin Summary

In “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?,” otherwise known as “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro,” Frederick Douglass outlines a careful argument against the institution of slavery and more specifically the Fugitive Slave Act. Weaving together ethical, religious, and sociopolitical threads of argument, Douglass points out the ironies of American values, particularly regarding the existence of an economic system based on slavery. Originally drafted and given as a speech in... Read What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? Summary

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