Excerpt from "A Slave's Story"
Published in Putnam's Monthly Magazine, June 1857

By 1857, America was on the brink of civil war. The most significant reason for the conflict was the issue of states' rights—that is, the question of how much power the federal government had over the states. Slavery was related to this issue, as many states wanted to determine for themselves whether they would allow slavery in their state.

Whereas questions regarding federal and state power were largely abstract, or removed from everyday reality, slavery was a highly personal issue. Opponents of slavery sought to make it still more personal through the use of the written word. For example, the 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) by Harriet Beecher Stowe strongly influenced public sentiment against slavery both in the northern United States and in England, whose dependence on cotton from the slaveholding...