Additional information
by John Passmore Edwards (Translator), Frederick Douglass (Author)
Many believe that Uncle Tom's Cabin was a big factor in the lead up to the Civil War. Regardless of whether or not Stowe's classic was one of the causes of the Civil War, its importance in U.S. history can't be overstated. From the preface: "IF ever a nation were taken by storm by a book, England has recently been stormed by "Uncle Tom's Cabin." It is scarcely three months since this book was first introduced to the British Reader, and it is certain that at least 1,000,000 copies of it have been printed and sold. The unexampled success of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" will ever be recorded as an extraordinary literary phenomena. Nothing of the kind, or anything approaching to it, was ever before witnessed in any age or in any country. A new fact has been contributed to the history of literature--such a fact, never before equalled, may never be surpassed. The pre-eminent success of the work in America, before it was reprinted in this country, was truly astonishing. All at once, as if by magic, everybody was either reading, or waiting to read, "the story of the age," and "a hundred thousand families were every day either moved to laughter, or bathed in tears," by its perusal. This book is not more remarkable for its poetry and its pathos, its artistic delineation of character and development of plot, than for its highly instructive power. A great moral idea runs beautifully through the whole story. One of the greatest evils of the world--slavery--is stripped of its disguises, and presented in all its naked and revolting hideousness to the reading world. And that Christianity, which consists not in professions and appearances, but in vital and vitalising action, is exhibited in all-subduing beauty and tenderness in every page of the work. If ever a book had a mission, that book is "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Its mission is to attract all readers to it by virtue of its many charms, and after attracting them, warm them with an enthusiasm, and fill them with a love of Humanity--and unmistakably and admirably has this mission so far been fulfilled. And it will continue to be fulfilled as the years pass away, and the empire of Injustice gradually crumbles before the advancing tide of a Christianised Civilisation. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" will not only be read by Englishmen, and those who talk the English language, all the world over, but it will be translated into all the principal languages of Europe, and become a household book for ages. This book, as it is now well known, depicts with graphic force Negro life in the United States. That it does this with as much truth as vigour, will be seen by a perusal of "Uncle Tom's Cabin." But as the truthfulness of the delineations of Mrs. Stowe's book has been called into question, and the inferences drawn therefrom disputed by the Times newspaper, and other authorities, such a book as "UNCLE TOM'S COMPANIONS" was demanded. It has been said that "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is an exaggeration, that it misrepresents Slavery and Slaveholders, and that its influence must be prejudicial in riveting more closely the chains of the poor slave, and protracting the hour of his emancipation."
