During the nineteenth century slavery was at the heart of a divided nation. The North and South had two completely different views on the concept of slavery. The ownership of one man by another did not seem humane to the North and therefore it was banned, whereas the South felt that slavery was a necessity for production and prosperity. Harriet Beecher Stowe and Frederick Douglass were authors during this struggle between north and south and each of them wrote powerful stories which became an integral part of American history. Stowe's story, called "Uncle Tom's Cabin," is about life with slavery as she imagined it. She also uses the personal stories of several slaves and owners to aid in the integrity of the book. Douglass" book, called "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave," is an autobiography and gives an account of what it was like to live as an American slave. Each book has similarities and differences in the way slavery is portrayed.
Stowe and Douglass express very similar views on slavery. Stowe seems to express her views through the characters in the story. At one point in the story a character named Augustine St. Claire was telling his views on slavery to his cousin and it seems that Stowe was also revealing her deepest thoughts on the subject, " there have been times when I have thought, if the whole country would sink, and hide all this injustice and misery from the light, I would willingly sink with it" (332). This shows her strong opposition to the idea of slavery. She also exposes the cruelty of slavery through writing about the beatings of several slaves that did not obey their masters. Douglass also shows the same opposition through the description of his direct encounters with the brutal life of slavery. He describes with great detail the punishment he and other slaves received for not obeying their masters. Douglass also describes his struggles with the separation from his mother.