Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe was an abolitionist novel that was written a decade before the Civil War and influenced many Americans. The main theme of the novel is slavery as it follows the life of Uncle Tom, an old African American slave who is extremely loyal to his masters. Tom is treated kindly and never beaten physically at either the Shelby’s or the St. Clares’ residences. Stowe purposely shows positive relationships between Tom and his masters to highlight the fact that even when you treat a slave kindly, you are still morally corrupt. Although Shelby and St. Clare both treat him with kindness and respect, their capacity to tolerate slavery at all makes them ethically weak and unjust. Stowe also shows how slaves still suffered even under kind masters like these when Shelby sells Tom off, forcing him to leave his family behind. Stowe wanted to defuse the argument that slavery could be justified if the masters treated the slaves kindly. She is trying to prove that the way you treat the slaves doesn’t matter because the entire institution of slavery is unjust. She argues that the only way to act in a slave’s best interest is by freeing them. At the end of the book she also shows the harsh reality of how bad slavery can be by taking us to the Legree plantation. Here she shows everything that is wrong with slavery including sexual abuse, brutal beatings, and even killing. Stowe’s novel had a strong influence on the Civil War and was extremely powerful for the abolitionist movement at the time.