Page "Humanitarianism" Paragraph 27

The population of the slave states in America on the eve of the civil war in 1860 was 8, 098, 000 of whom 4, 204, 000 were black.

There were 385, 000 slave-holders: of these the 46, 000 who owned more than 20 slaves were " planters ".

By the 1830s the North, which had itself renounced slavery, was increasingly influenced by the abolitionist movement in England.

The opposition to slavery widened.

Perhaps, as Abraham Lincoln said in his Presidential campaign, the Union had to become one or the other.

It could not remain slave and non-slave.

In 1852 Harriet Beecher Stowe published Uncle Tom's Cabin.

It had a powerful effect on both sides of the Atlantic.

It described the cruelties of the system and the horrors of remote plantations.

By the end of 1852 hundreds of thousands of copies of the book had been sold in the United States.