"So you're the lady whose book started this great war- (Unger 579). This famous quotation came from Abraham Lincoln upon meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1862. This quotation shows the great influence Uncle Tom's Cabin had on the minds of its readers and on a nation in turmoil. At the height of racial tension in nineteenth century America, Stowe revealed the sufferings and hardships the slave was forced to endure. Because of its effect on the history of our nation, and because of its enduring influence on people all around the world, Uncle Tom's Cabin remains one of the most important books ever written by an American writer, particularly a female writer (Coil 11). In the novel, Stowe used strong-minded women who sent a message to female readers that they also can take action against slavery. She urges Christian women to recognize their true calling as the guardians of American morals and American youth (Yellin 88). Uncle Tom's Cabin is profoundly feministic in its implications because of the opinionated female characters that voiced their beliefs and showed moral superiority over their male counterparts. .
Women's suffrage was first proposed in the United States at the first women's rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, just two years before Uncle Tom's Cabin was published. At this convention, a Declaration of Sentiments that paralleled the wording of the Declaration of Independence was drafted, insisting on the adoption of a women's suffrage resolution. The Women's Rights movement of this time also advocated more liberal divorce laws, less restrictive clothing for women, coeducation, and the right of married women to control their property. American women authors of this time by and large stuck to themes of piety, deference, and domesticity prescribed for their sex (Bloom 50). The Women's Rights movement was in place and active during the time that Stowe wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin.
