American Treasures: Uncle Tom s Cabin theepochtimes.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from theepochtimes.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Sages, Saints, and Surprises: Some Writing That Shaped America
Since the 18th century, the printed word has influenced the course of American history.
From the founding of the United States, its literacy rates were higher than the countries of Europe. In his article “The Spread of Education Before Compulsion,” Edwin West of the Foundation for Economic Education writes that by 1800, literacy among white American males had reached almost 90 percent. In 1828, the United States sported 50 universities and 600 newspapers and journals. As West tells us, one writer reported that year, “With us a newspaper is the fare of almost every meal in almost every family.”
Over 41 issues, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel
Uncle Tom s Cabin was published as a serial in the abolitionist newspaper
The National Era, beginning on June 5, 1851. At first, few readers followed the story, but its audience steadily grew as the drama unfolded.
“Wherever I went among the friends of the
Era, I found
Uncle Tom’s Cabin a theme for admiring remark,” journalist and social critic Grace Greenwood wrote in a travelogue published in the
Era. “[E]verywhere I went, I saw it read with pleasant smiles and irrepressible tears.’” The story was discussed in other abolitionist publications, such as Frederick Douglass’s newspaper
Begun in Greece and Culminated in our American Civil War: Abolitionism and the Greek Revolution thenationalherald.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from thenationalherald.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.