Uncle Tom’s Cabin, as you may know, is an anti-slavery novel written by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe, published in 1852. Since its initial release, the work has been credited with helping fuel the abolitionist cause in the 1850s and causing the American Civil War, one of the bloodiest wars in American history. American Civil War historian James M. McPherson has written in many of his published works of the Civil War and its many components. His opinion on Uncle Tom’s Cabin is quite admiring, indicating in his books of its great plot and moving characters.

McPherson has a likeness for Uncle Tom’s Cabin because of both its message and its impact on American history. In first comparing it to the romantic novel Gone With the Wind, he showed how Gone With the Wind glamorized the Old South and romanticized the Confederacy, while Uncle Tom’s Cabin helped shape attitudes that would deeply devastate both. Not only does Uncle Tom’s Cabin have its moments of comedy, drama, and appeals to the reader, but it also displays morality, a competition between good and evil. Uncle Tom’s Cabin showed the cruelties of slavery and how they could impact the domestic life. Since the 19^th century witnessed the rise of the middle class, people were horrified at the thought of separating families, since the family was considered sacred. McPherson also admired the fact that Harriet Beecher Stowe based the characters in her novel on people in real life. Stowe apparently knew more about slavery than people assumed, from being brought into contact with many fugitives fleeing into Ohio. One of her brothers lived in Louisiana and gave Stowe the material that brought about the image of Simon Legree and his plantation. Basically, McPherson admired Uncle Tom’s Cabin, praising it as one of the most influential novels of the 19^th century.

The importance of Uncle Tom’s Cabin was truly significant to James M. McPherson. He enjoyed reading the literary work in high school in the 1950s and argued with his professors in college over its true significance. McPherson is determined to make Uncle Tom’s Cabin be seen by all as a global masterpiece, demonstrating the significant flaws in American government during the existence of a divided nation.