Literature Network » Harriet Beecher Stowe

Outside Cincinnati, Ohio's Underground Attractions

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From: The Washington Post
Date: 19981227
Author:Jonathan Lerner

A pivotal scene in Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" takes place on the Ohio River, when the runaway slave Eliza braves ice floes to cross it. Stowe had heard about a real-life escape like this from a Presbyterian minister in Ripley, Ohio, named John Rankin, and re-created it in her book, which galvanized anti-slavery sentiment before the Civil War. Toni Morrison's "Beloved," also concerned with escape from slavery, is set on this river, too--the Ohio was a physical boundary between the slaveholding South and the North. Today, a number of sites in Ohio River towns are still ...

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