abyss.

Then, the book tries to show how slavery develops the worst men, of the
stamp of Simon Legree, the brutal overseer. Legree pours out the vials
of his wrath upon the slaves about him, debauching a young octaroon to
the level of his mistress, hunting his slaves with bloodhounds, killing
them without trial before a jury. Power is dangerous; there is the czar
spirit in every man. Slavery made a brute still more brutal--made the
sensual man more sensual, and finally debased Legree to the level of the
demon.

It is a book full of pathos and tears. Remembering that the book was
written for the miscellaneous millions, to rouse the nation at large to
moral indignation, it is doubtful whether any book was ever more
perfectly adapted to the end aimed at. Literary artists have criticized
"Uncle Tom's Cabin," and contrasted it with "Henry Esmond," "Vanity
Fair" and "Adam Bede." But if Thackeray, Dickens and George Eliot
achieved unique success in creating books that should reach their set,
one thing is certain,--the boys, who afterwards became the soldiers of
the Civil War, read "Uncle Tom's Cabin" with dim eyes and indignant
hearts, because the book found their judgment and their conscience, and
lifted them to the point where they were made ready in the day of God's
power, to fight the battle for freedom.

When all the school children had read the death of little Eva and of
Uncle Tom, and all the farmers and working men--the dwellers in city and
country, from seaboard to mountains and prairie--had followed the career
of these slaves to the end, and the people of the North were fully awake
to the horror of the slave traffic, the multitudes began to look with
questioning eyes into each other's faces, asking, "What can be done?