American Experience; The Abolitionists; Interview with Joan D. Hedrick, part 3 of 3

The reason Uncle Tom's cabin was so powerful is that Stowe was able to mobilize common beliefs in motherhood, in family life, in Christianity, in democracy, and then hold them up to the light of the institution of slavery and show how contradictory these things were. It was precisely because her ideas were so common in every day, and also that she had the genius to embody them in vivid characters with vernacular speech that people felt was being spoken right next to their ear. It was so vivid, so immediate, they had no way of distancing themselves from it, and it became a profound part of their experience and the way they henceforth saw the slavery issue.

Now all we have to do is just sit still for a few seconds, and then we'll do the quote 30 seconds of room time. Thank you so much.