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Mightier Than the Sword, by David S. Reynolds

Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin stands alongside Benjamin Frank­lin's Autobiography, Thomas Paine's Common Sense and Frederick Douglass's Narrative as an Ameri­can classic. Any liberally educated person needs to know something about Eliza, Uncle Tom, Eva and the notorious Simon Legree. Stowe's novel filled the American imagination with the cruelty and injustice of slavery, and it may even have motivated some northerners to take up arms.