How did northerners react to Harriet Beecher Stowe's book?

Answer 1

I'm going to assume you're talking about Uncle Tom's Cabin.

"The novel garnered many negative reviews among Northern critics, many disturbed by its challenge to the Fugitive Slave Act," ("Lincoln, Stowe..." 2.1). There were positive reviews, of course, but most of these critics wondered if her novel could illicit any real changes in regards to slavery or the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which demanded that Northerners turn over all escaped slaves to authorities. It is assumed that Uncle Tom's Cabin helped bring forth the Civil War and rallied Northerners into a rage against slavery. However, the realevidence is of large book sales, not inspirational change, and "only the most naïve scholar would gauge the novel's impact in the culture by adding up a publisher's sales receipts," (2.5). Also, about a decade after the book's publications a rash of race riots occurred in (the very Northern) New York. The riots were so bad that an African American orphanage was burned down. Given these facts, it isn't likely that the book was taken seriously by anyone until after the Civil War. Even then, there was a children's edition of Uncle Tom's Cabin in the 1950's-1960's that was greatly edited to encourage segregation (though I can't find my citation for that right now). Of course, Stowe had nothing to do with this children's edition, as she was dead. Still, we can see that Stowe's novel wasn't nearly as great a tool in inspiring racial equality as she would have hoped.

Vollaro, Daniel R. "Lincoln, Stowe, and the 'Little Woman/Great War' Story: The Making, and Breaking, of a Great American Anecdote." Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association.Winter 2009. HW Wilson. OneSearch. Grand Canyon University Library. 25 April 2011.