Kentucky, George Shelby freed all his slaves when his father died. He said he freed them in the name of Uncle Tom. When Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published in 1852, it created an immediate controversy in a United States that was divided-both geographically and politically-by the issue of slavery. It is impossible to Uncle Tom’s Cabin outside of historical forces that prompted Harriet Beecher Stowe to write it.The early settlers of the Thirteen Colonies were well aware of the problem that was developing for the young nation as more and more slaves were kidnapped form Africa and brought to the U.S. to supply agricultural labor for the under populated colonies. Due to a complex combination of economic need, political indecision, scientific ignorance, and prior custom, no action was taken to rid the country of slaves while there were still few enough of them to return to their home in Africa. Thomas Jefferson said that America, ”had a tiger by the ears,” meaning that the slaves were dangerous because, like a tiger in captivity, they would turn on the people that captured them if they were ever released. Jefferson concluded, as did most Americans in the 18th century, that the only way to control the “tiger” was to keep holding the tiger tightly by the ears, as terrible as that dilemma was for both the slaves and the slave owners. Thus when Jefferson wrote in the declaration of independence in 1776 that “all men are created equal,” he did not conclude the African slaves. The “triangular trade” was extremely lucrative. It was called “triangular” because the path of a trading ship, if traced on a map, describes a triangle over the Atlantic Ocean. The ships would take manufactured goods from England and Europe to trade in Africa for slaves. The slaves would be transported to the Indies or Americas (the notorious “middle passage”) and traded for staples like ...
