Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin was the defining piece of the era in which it was written. The book opened the eyes of both North and South to the cruelties that occurred in all forms of slavery, and held nothing back in exposing the complicity of non-slaveowners in sustaining America's peculiar institution. Then-President Abraham Lincoln himself attributed Stowe's narrative to the cause of the American Civil War. In such an influential tale that so forcefully emphasizes the need for emancipation, one would hardly expect to find racism that indicates discomfort with people in slavery. However, Stowe shows no apprehension in characterizing his characters based on their various races. While this sometimes serves a decidedly polemical purpose, the author often employs racism where it appears to be entirely unnecessary. Overall, Stowe appears to be all too comfortable promoting stereotypes unsuitable for a polemical piece calling for the liberation of enslaved Africans and African Americans. George Harris is a slave who embodies qualities few people in the nineteenth-century South had. he would believe he existed in a black man. He shows skillful ingenuity, inventing a machine that improves the efficiency of cleaning hemp in the factory to which his master rents it. Unlike many of his fellow slaves, he longs for something more. When he is belittled and deceived by his master for nothing more than his hard-earned success, he must hold back every nerve and impulse in his body to avoid fighting back. He shows boldness and daring in running away from his owner when the sanctity of his marriage to Eliza is threatened, and even more so in his journey to Canada...... middle of paper ......ack Sam (as he is called around the plantation) is a walking stereotype who has no polemical purpose. There is certainly no shortage of evidence that Stowe displayed blatant racism in his writings. Sometimes his stereotypes serve a polemical purpose, but no reason can be found for Black Sam to be a mischievous comedian, for George and Eliza to be mulattos rather than Africans, or for the imitations of the other characters presented above. It should be kept in mind that racism was a well-established and generally accepted practice in the nineteenth century, and Harriet Beecher Stowe does not deserve damnation 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 the Christian overtones that his novel presents to the reader..