Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, was the defining element of the era in which it was writing. The book opened the eyes of both the North and the South to the cruelties committed in all forms of slavery, and held nothing back in revealing the complicity of non-slaveholders in maintaining America's special institution. Then-President Abraham Lincoln himself attributed Stowe's account to the cause of the American Civil War. In such an influential story that so forcefully emphasizes the need for emancipation, one would hardly expect to find racism that would reflect unease toward people in slavery. However, Stowe shows no apprehension about characterizing his characters based on their different races. Although this sometimes serves a distinctly polemical purpose, the author often employs racism where it seems completely unnecessary. Overall, Stowe seems all too comfortable with promoting stereotypes that are inappropriate for a polemical article calling for the liberation of enslaved Africans and African Americans. George Harris is a slave embodying qualities rare in the 19th century South. would believe to exist in a black man. He demonstrates deft ingenuity by inventing a machine that improves the efficiency of cleaning hemp at the factory to which his master rents him. Unlike many of his fellow slaves, he yearns for something more. When he is belittled and deceived by his master for nothing more than his hard-earned success, he must restrain every nerve and impulse in his body to avoid fighting back. He shows daring and daring in running away from his owner when the sanctity of his marriage to Eliza is threatened, and even more so during his trip to Canada...... middle of paper ...... ack Sam (as he's known around the plantation) is a walking stereotype who serves no polemical purpose. There is certainly no shortage of evidence that Stowe displayed unabashed racism in his writings. Sometimes his stereotypes serve a polemical purpose, but we find no reason for Black Sam to be a mischievous comedian, for George and Eliza to be mulatto rather than African, or for the typographies of the other characters presented above. It should be kept in mind that racism was a well-established and generally accepted practice in the 19th century, and Harriet Beecher Stowe does not deserve to be condemned for perpetuating these labels. However, his willingness to label blacks and whites in such a black and white manner belies the call for emancipation and Christian overtones that his novel presents to the reader..