Final answer:
Harriet Beecher Stowe's “Uncle Tom's Cabin” outraged slave owners because it depicted the cruel realities of slavery and its negative moral impact on society. It was a key antislavery work that contributed to the tension between the North and South, ultimately leading to the Civil War.
Step-by-step explanation:
“Uncle Tom's Cabin” outraged slave owners because it showed how the brutal realities of slavery harmed everyone associated with it. The book, authored by Harriet Beecher Stowe, was published in 1852 and became a seminal piece of antislavery literature. Stowe's novel depicted the severe maltreatment of slaves and the moral degradation it caused, thereby energizing the abolitionist movement and increasing tensions between the North and South.
Stowe was born in Connecticut and had heard stories from enslaved people firsthand after moving to Ohio. She highlighted in her work how slavery was a sin due to its destructive impact on families and its corrupting influence on white citizens, including slaveholders who brutalized and exploited slaves. The book's vivid illustrations of slavery's cruelty helped to shift the public's perception in the North against the institution of slavery, selling over 300,000 copies in its first year alone. However, it was met with strong opposition in the South, where it was considered slanderous, full of false accusations, and a direct attack on the Southern way of life.