Name: Uncle Tom's Cabin 1
Uploaded: 2017-10-21T17:22:58.000Z
Duration: 7 min 35 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

- [Voiceover] Alright, so
we're here to talk about

such an interesting book
because when Abraham Lincoln

met Harriet Beecher Stowe, he said to her,

"So you're the little lady
that started this great war."

He said Uncle Tom's Cabin
actually started the Civil War.

- [Voiceover] I think that's
a really good question, Kim,

and these next two
videos are gonna help us

understand a little bit
more why Lincoln said that.

So this book was written
by Harriet Beecher Stowe,

in Litchfield, Connecticut to this kind of

- [Voiceover] Well
abolitionism was the belief

that slavery should be ended immediately.

about the institution of
slavery in early America.

Some people obviously
were very pro-slavery

believe that it was a natural institution

just wanted slavery to stay where it was,

and those were what we
would call free-soilers,

They said, "Alright, we
can't get rid of slavery

"It's too entrenched
there as an institution,

"but we can make sure
that it does not spread

But abolitionists were these
strongest opponents of slavery.

They said that slavery
should be ended today

everywhere in the United
States and the world,

and that it is an immoral,
un-Christian institution.

So these Western territories
were a really big part

of the increasing tension
over the institution

the Mexican-American War
and they got a whole bunch

of new territory that
had once been Mexico,

and these will become the states of Texas,

but this now threatened
the balance of power

between those slave-holding
states in US Congress

- [Voiceover] And this
kind of anxiety about

the Western expansion of
slavery was more tense

So the Compromise of 1850
happened right here in 1850,

and the Compromise of
1850, I like to think of it

kind of like a band-aid
over this sectional tension,

- [Voiceover] This is like
a gaping wound, right,

this tiny, little band-aid that's kind of

holding this dam together
to mix my metaphors.

actually admitted
California as a free state,

which was a really big win
for the North, obviously.

- [Voiceover] But it
also had a really strong

kind of critical part of
the Compromise of 1850,

- [Voiceover] Well the Fugitive Slave Act

requesting your help in
rounding up an escaped slave,

you had to help that marshal
or face charges yourself.

who was enslaved in the South
made a run for the North,

a run for Canada as many
of the enslaved people did,

they were oftentimes
fined, and this really made

all Northerners participatory in slavery,

even if they weren't
slaveholders themselves

Northerners were participating in the way

that slavery was held
together by disallowing

runaway slaves from continuing their lives

this might really galvanize
a Northern audience

into action about slavery because before,

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Uncle Tom's Cabin 1

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compromise

spread

fundamental