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BOOKS AS ANTI-SLAVERY WEAPONS.
Whittier offered up "thanks for the fugitive slave law; for it gave occasion for 'Uncle Tom's Cabin.'" Mrs.Harriet Beecher Stowe had been mistress of a station on the Underground Railroad at Cincinnati, the storm-center of the West, and out of her experience she has transmitted to the world a knowledge of the elemental and tragic human experiences of the slaves which would otherwise have been restricted to a select few.

The mistress of a similar station in eastern Indiana, though she held novel reading a deadly sin, said: "'Uncle Tom's Cabin' is not a novel, it is a record of facts.

I myself have listened to the same stories." The reading public in all lands soon became sympathetic participants in the labors of those who, in defiance of law, were lending a hand to the aspirants for liberty.

At the time of the publication of the story in book form in March, 1852, America was being profoundly stirred by the stories of fugitives who had escaped from European despotism.