5/31/2020

The Underground Railroad Records: Narrating the Hardships, Hairbreadth Escapes, and Death Struggles of Slaves in their Efforts for Freedom by William Still

Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

This is a page turner. It’s one of those all-encompassing, stay-up-all-night books that you can’t be rid of until you’re finished.

Someone suggested this book would be melodramatic and not worth the read - too dated. As “the book that started the Civil War” and a previously banned book, I don’t quite understand not reading it. People were sentenced to ten years in jail for just having a copy. In The Pioneers, David McCullough writes a bit about the place where Stowe and her husband lived, and mentions their move to Maine. The Pioneers is what put Uncle Tom’s Cabin on my NYPL hold list.

I happened to be in Brunswick, Maine on the day that I finished the book. I took a quick detour to the Harriet Beecher Stowe house, and read that Joshua Chamberlain was a frequent visitor in her parlor during his college years.