When a Kentucky farmer is forced to sell two slaves to a plantation owner, it becomes a turning point in the lives of both slaves. For Eliza, it's one of escape—a harrowing flight north with her young son. For Uncle Tom, sent down the Mississippi River, it's a more certain fate, as he struggles to survive against the brutal exploitation of his traders.
As the single most popular novel of its era, Stowe's volatile work of protest fiction fueled the abolitionist cause in the 1850s. The book personalized the plight of slavery in a way that political speeches and newspapers could not. Stowe's humanistic approach ignited a national argument, one credited by historians as a key contributor to the outbreak of the Civil War.
