WORLD NEWS TRUST: Some things are bigger than any of us (Mickey Z.)

[Tace]

Mickey Z. -- World News Trust

“One of the good things about everything being so fucked up—about the culture being so ubiquitously destructive -- is that no matter where you look -- no matter what your gifts, no matter where your heart lies -- there’s good and desperately important work to be done.” --Derrick Jensen

Nov. 15, 2008 -- In 1850, the Fugitive Slave Law was passed and both Northerners and Southerners were now legally required to turn in runaway slaves. One year later, Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin (or Life Among the Lowly) as a serial in an antislavery paper, The National Era. In 1852, the Boston publishing company Jewett published it as a book and, as they are wont to say, the rest is history.

Widely considered to be the first social protest novel published in the United States (and the first major novel to have a black hero), Uncle Tom’s Cabin sold more copies -- with the exception of The Bible -- than any book had ever sold in America until that point with sales reaching 300,000 copies in the first year.

Stowe’s graphic depiction of slave life -- based on true stories -- personalized the issue, reclaiming it from the sanitized domain of courtroom legalese. Her story outraged some and inspired many others. To her critics, she answered with A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1853 to provide documentation that every incident in her book had actually happened. Upon meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1862, Abraham Lincoln remarked: "So you’re the little woman that wrote the book that made this great war."

more

http://www.worldnewstrust.com/wnt-reports/commentary/some-things-are-bigger-than-any-of-us-mickey-z.html