THE BOOK OF DAMN
YANKEES
OTHERWISE KNOWN AS THE BOOK OF MANIFEST DESTINY
The slavery thing crops up again
Chapter 33
Part of the problem this time was that someone named fHarriet Beecher Stowe had written a book,
2Called ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’
3Which was all about how awful slavery was.
4The book became very very popular,
5gWhich made it a hot potato for the president,
6Because it was practically unprecedented for a Yank to write a book that a lot of Yanks could read.
7Not that there hadn’t been Yank writers before;
8hThere had been;
9It’s just that they’d never written any interesting books.
10iMost of the Yank writers before Harriet Beecher Stowe had been overeducated jPuritans from New England,
11Like kPaul Bunyan and lNathaniel Hawthorne,
12mWho wrote about nguilt and sin and suffering,
13Which the majority of Yanks have never cared about,
14Unless they can inflict it themselves,
15oIn person.
16Anyway,
17‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ started a big abolitionist movement,
18pWhich meant that a bunch of Yanks in New England insisted on telling the southern states how qevil and immoral they were for having slaves,
19And therefore caused the southern states to start retaliating in the traditional rAmerican way,
20By threatening to start their own country,
21sWhere they would be free from the chains of tyranny,
22And could do what they wanted to,
23However tthey wanted to do it.
✦ · · ✦ · · ✦
Chapter 33 / 154