Harriette Beecher Stowe’s masterwork arguably was Uncle Tom’s Cabin. It traced the story of an Africa American slave, Tom who gave his life so that the whereabouts of other slaves stayed secret. But could Uncle Tom’s Cabin be the 2nd most important book ever sold? How did it influence the world and the Republican Party? This may be an overstatement, but after you read this article you may change your mind, as this reporter did.
Harriette Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin was a strong abolitionist. Her novel had such an impact of those of her time that we decided to dedicate an entire article to determining its impact on the country of today to see if there was some correclation. The answer to our inquiry caused us to ask more questions than.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin exposed the dark side of the slave experience in America. In antibellum south, the life of slaves was brutal. Tom
Uncle Tom’s Cabin tells the story of Uncle Tom, depicted as a saintly, dignified slave. While being transported by boat to auction in New Orleans, Tom saves the life of Little Eva, whose grateful father then purchases Tom. Eva and Tom soon become great friends. Always frail, Eva’s health begins to decline rapidly, and on her deathbed she asks her father to free all his slaves. He makes plans to do so but is then killed, and the brutal Simon Legree, Tom’s new owner, has Tom whipped to death after he refuses to divulge the whereabouts of certain runaway slaves. Tom maintains a steadfastly Christian attitude toward his own suffering, and Stowe imbues Tom’s death with echoes of Christ’s.
Stowe’s depiction of slavery in her novel was informed by her Christianity and by her immersion in abolitionist writings. She also drew on her personal experience during the 1830s and ’40s while living in Cincinnati, Ohio, which was a destination for those escaping slavery in Kentucky and other Southern states. In Uncle Tom’s Cabin she made her case against slavery by cataloging the suffering experienced by enslaved people and by showing that their owners were morally broken.
Growth of the Abolitionist Movement
The abolitionist movement began as a more organized, radical and immediate effort to end slavery than earlier campaigns. It officially emerged around 1830. Historians believe ideas set forth during the religious movement known as the Second Great Awakening inspired abolitionists to rise up against slavery.
In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historic movement that sought to end the Atlantic slave trade and liberate the enslaved people. The most notable abolitionist, not surprisingly: Frederick Douglass William Lloyd Garrison, Angelina Grimké, John Brown, Courtesy and Harriet Beecher Stowe
By the beginning of the Civil War, it is estimated that there were 255,000 individuals, both Black and White, involved in the anti-slavery and abolitionist movement in the United States. What was needed was a larger national organization to get their message out and effect change.
The Republican Party
The birth of the Grand Old Party (GOP), on in Ripon, Wisconsin came as a result of the conflict of where the nation was, and what its founding document, The Declaration of Independence declared. In its opening lines are stated the foundation of the nation, “….that all men are created equal…” and yet there was the scourge of slavery mostly in the South.
The Republican Party emerged in 1854 to combat the Kansas–Nebraska Act and the expansion of slavery into American territories. The early Republican Party consisted of northern Protestants, factory workers, professionals, businessmen, prosperous farmers, and after 1866, former black slaves. The party had very little support from white Southerners at the time, who predominantly backed the Democratic Party in the Solid South,
In the North the economy was more industrial, while in the South it was more agricultural. When the threat of expanding the practice of enslaving Africans in the North there had to be an answer. That answer came in the form of a new political organization, The Republican Party, whose mission was to restore America to the founding ideal it had set out to achieve and to end slavery.
For brevity, here is what happened as a result of the abolitionist movement, which morphed into the Republican Party. The election of Abraham Lincoln as the Republicans Party’s 1st President. Subsequently Lincoln vowed to not allow slavery to expand into the Western Territories, which prompted him to sign The Emancipation Proclamation, which was the necessary legislation that gave slaves their opportunity to free life in the United States. It was the culminating act of many arguments and papers by abolitionists. It was an endearing proclamation by President Lincoln to free slaves. The oppression caused by servitude was lifted.
The Civil War
The Emancipation Proclamation
The Civil War started because of uncompromising differences between the free and slave states over the power of the national government to prohibit slavery in the territories that had not yet become states. … The event that triggered war came at Fort Sumter in Charleston Bay on April 12, 1861. Some four years later and 700,000 lives lost the Union North prevailed over the Confederate South.
The next chapter in America would prove to be as harrowing as the first. Within a year of the end of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln would be cut down by an assassins bullet. Blacks by then would be assuming their roles in local and national government.
First Blacks in Office
“First Colored Senator and Representatives in the 41st and 42nd Congress of the United States.” (Left to right) Senator Hiram Revels of Mississippi, Representatives Benjamin Turner of Alabama, Robert DeLarge of South Carolina, Josiah Walls of Florida, Jefferson Long of Georgia, Joseph Rainey and Robert B. Elliot of South Carolina.By Currier and Ives, 1872
Courtesy of the Library of Congress
Reconstruction saw the election of an African American senator, Hiram Revels of Mississippi, and several members of the House from the South. After a brief period of Republican control in the South which saw major improvements in the lives of African Americans, Southern states instituted new laws aimed at intimidating black political activities.
But the door had been opened. Blacks who had up til this time not been allowed to even aspire to holding office, now had a real taste of self-determination in America. It would prove to be the catalyst for others to seek office years later.
Women’s Right to Vote
On May 21, 1919, an Illinois Republican by the name of James Mann reintroduced the 19th Amendment in the House of Representatives and it passed by a vote of 304 to 89. It was a decisive victory, and the split among Democrats and Republicans was staggering. In all, over 200 Republicans voted in favor of the 19th Amendment, while only 102 Democrats voted alongside them. Subsequently, on June 4, 1919, the 19th Amendment passed the Senate by a vote of 56 to 25. Once again, the split among Democrats and Republicans was notable: eighty-two percent of Republicans voted in favor of the amendment while only forty-one percent of their Democrat colleagues concurred.
The very next year in March of 1920, 36 states ratified the 19th Amendment, and the infighting within state legislatures was steadily approaching a crescendo. Many Democrat-controlled legislatures opposed ratification, and out of those 36 states that ratified, 26 were Republican. Following ratification, over eight million women voted in the November presidential election that same year. What was the result? A 26.2 percentage-point victory for Warren G. Harding, a proud Ohio Republican who was a staunch advocate for women’s suffrage. This is not a mere coincidence; it was a direct reflection of how Republicans helped lead the charge for women’s rights.
Teddy Roosevelt- The Great Conservationist
As President from 1901 to 1909, he signed legislation establishing five new national parks: Crater Lake, Oregon; Wind Cave, South Dakota; Sullys Hill, North Dakota (later re-designated a game preserve); Mesa Verde, Colorado; and Platt, Oklahoma (now part of Chickasaw National Recreation Area) You may have heard of one of Roosevelts most enduring National Parks The Grand Canyon.
The conservation legacy of Theodore Roosevelt is found in the 230 million acres of public lands he helped establish during his presidency. Much of that land – 150 millions acres – was set aside as national forests. Roosevelt created the present-day USFS in 1905, an organization within the Department of Agriculture. The idea was to conserve forests for continued use. An adamant proponent of utilizing the country’s resources, Roosevelt wanted to insure the sustainability of those resources.
Roosevelt was also the first president to create a Federal Bird Reserve, and he would establish 51 of these during his administration. These reserves would later become today’s national wildlife refuges, managed by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). Today there is a national wildlife refuge in every state, and North Dakota boasts the most refuges of any state in the country.
During Roosevelt’s administration, the National Park System grew substantially. When the National Park Service was created in 1916 – seven years after Roosevelt left office – there were 35 sites to be managed by the new organization. Roosevelt helped created 23 of those.
Eisenhower and the 1957 Civil Rights Bill
The Civil Rights Act of 1957 was the first federal civil rights legislation passed by the United States Congress since the Civil Rights Act of 1875. The bill was passed by the 85th United States Congress and signed into law by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on September 9, 1957.
The Supreme Court‘s 1954 ruling in the case of Brown v. Board of Education brought the issue of school desegregation to the fore of public attention, as Southern Democrat leaders began a campaign of “massive resistance” against desegregation. In the midst of this campaign, President Eisenhower proposed a civil rights bill designed to provide federal protection for African American voting rights; most African Americans in the Southern United States had been effectively disenfranchised by various state and local laws.
Though the civil rights bill passed Congress, opponents of the act were able to remove several provisions, limiting its immediate impact. During the debate over the law, Senator Strom Thurmond, who at the time was a Democrat conducted the longest one-person filibuster in Senate history.
Martin Luther King
Arguably the greatest civil rights activist in history, one who gave his life for the cause of freedom and the man who is often quoted for his memorable line, “the content of ones Character and not the color of ones skin, Martin Luther King followed in the footsteps of abolitionist’ and freedom riders like Stowe and Tubman. To say that MLK was not a Republican would belie his actions and way he led his life.
In addition, his niece Alveda King, an Evangelical supporter of President Donald Trump, has argued that her uncle was a Republican, like his father Martin Luther King, Sr., who was also a Baptist minister. It only made sense since during the 1960’s the Democrat Party was staunchly segregationist and no Black would have ever registered Democrat. It was this same MLK who would march on the White House to secure the 1968 Voting Rights Act against silent opposition by LBJ and many in the Democrat Party.
It was surmised the only reason LBJ signed the Act was to garner votes in Black communities all across America. It isn’t surprising, this same tactic is used in the modern day Democrat Party to keep power in the inner City of most of the largest population centers around the nation. All of these are predominately minority and vote Democrat.
The Great Communicator came out of the Party with abolished slavery, Ronald Reagan was elected president from 1981-1989 and will go down in history as one of the most popular presidents in history. He ushered in a sense of optimism and strength unparalleled. Among his greatest achievements was the Conservative Movement, the Fall of the Iron Curtain and the Rise of America as the unequalled Military Super Power.
If it were not for Reagan, America and her politics would not be the same. He was not only a great communicator, he influenced a generation of leaders which is still felt today. The Conservative Movement, small government, low taxes and freedom to the individual sparked a wave of patriotism and optimism not only during his tenure but for decades following his departure from the Presidency.
American might and being “the shining light high upon a hill” still is the aspirational hope for those who step foot on our shores. It was Reagan and he alone who fought back Soviet Communism. The Fall of the Wall in Germany was a direct result of Reagans admonition to the Soviet Leader Gorbachov, “Tear down this wall”. Within our lifetimes we witnessed a man of humor and steel chiseled determination of will. His qualities would be repeated in the 45 President of the USA Donald Trump.
The Conservative Movement
This chapter in American history has yet to be written, as Mr. Trump’s legacy is still unfolding. “45” with 100% opposition by the Left performed miracles on the US and global economy during his 4 short years in office. Mr. Trump fell victim to what he represented. The same spirit which was in Harriette Beecher Stowe, Lincoln, Roosevelt, King and Reagan resided in Trump, for against unparalleled opposition his persevered.
It wasn’t what Mr. Trump espoused, as many on the Left and in the media say, rather it was what he represented that threatened the opposition. Stowe and abolitionist like her believed in the ideal of America, they fought and died that the American dream could be realized in their lifetimes and in the lives of their children. It was this spirit which resides in Mr. Trump and his followers, which makes Liberals and Progressives shake in their boots.
As we look back on the 191 years since the beginning of the Abolitionist Movement and the printing of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, we can reflect on a people who God gave a calling. That calling, was to give of oneself, so that others could be free. Just as Uncle Tom demonstrated in the book, there is a greater reward to look forward to in the giving of ones life for another.