the book made upon adults and boys. Hardened sinners in partizan
politics could read the book, laugh and weep over the passing
incidents, and then go on as if nothing had happened. Not so with
the thirteen-year-old boy. He never could be the same again. The
Republican party of 1860 was especially successful in gaining the
first vote of the youthful citizen and undoubtedly owed much of
its influence to "Uncle Tom's Cabin."

Two lines of attack were rapidly rendering impossible the
continuance of slavery in the United States. Mrs. Stowe gave
effective expression to the moral, religious, and humanitarian
sentiment against slavery. In the year in which her work was
published, Frederick Law Olmsted began his extended journeys
throughout the South. He represents the impartial scientific
observer. His books were published during the years 1856, 1857,
and 1861. They constitute in their own way an indictment against
slavery quite as forcible as that of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," but an
indictment that rests chiefly upon the blighting influence of the
institution of slavery upon agriculture, manufactures, and the
general industrial and social order. The crisis came too soon for
these publications to have any marked effect upon the issue.
Their appeal was to the deliberate and thoughtful reader, and
political control had already drifted into the hands of those who
were not deliberate and composed.

In 1857, however, there appeared a book which did exert a marked
influence upon immediate political issues. There is no evidence
that Hinton Rowan Helper, the author of "The Impending Crisis,"
had any knowledge of the writings of Olmsted; but he was familiar
with Northern anti-slavery literature. "I have considered my