How could the novel titled Uncle Tom's Cabin be blamed for the US Civil War?

Answer 1

Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel titled Uncle Tom's Cabin was a highly read publication from the early 1850's that depicted the life of a slave in antebellum America. Stowe made it clear that she held both leaders in the North and the South to blame for the continuing institution of slavery. At the time, slavery existed as far north as Delaware. Ms. Stowe's novel brought public attention to slavery but so did more important events such as the 1850 Missouri Compromise and the 1854 Kansas Nebraska Act along with the Fugitive Slave Act. As an aside,President Lincoln promised to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act.
In addition,leading abolitionists from Frederick Douglas to Harriet Beecher Stowe were at odds with her idea that freed slaves should be deported to a new nation. The American Colonization Society, created decades before Ms. Stowe, advocated that a new African nation be the place for deporting freed slaves.
Speaker of the once Speaker o the House of Representatives Henry Clay, a slave owner and Representative Abraham Lincoln were both members of the Whig Party. Clay in fact was Lincoln's mentor. Each of them wrestled with the concept of slavery and the goals of the American Colonization Society. They saw no solution.
Even the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, drafted in the Summer of 1862, had a provision for freedmen deportation to places such as Central America.
The "real" Southern movement did not gain traction until after Lincoln's 1860 presidential election.
Far to much time existed between Stowe's novel and 1860 to have created an atmosphere tied to the April 1861 outbreak of the bombardment of Fort Sumter.
No pundits of the antebellum America era, nor modern day historians have ever put forth the proposition that Ms. Stowe's novel and the US Civil War had any connection.
And, as far as President Lincoln was concerned, he was a Unionist first and an opponent of slavery second. This is one reason the radical wing of the Republican Party believed that Lincoln was not suited to run the war effectively.