page_1036 < previous page page_1036 next page > Page 1036 in the Upper and Lower South and exposed the moral ironies in the legal, religious, and social arguments of white apologists. The immense impact of the novel (it sold 300,000 copies in its first year) was unexpected. Antislavery fiction had never sold well; Stowe was not an established writer, and few would have expected a woman to gain a popular hearing on the great political question of the day. Some female abolitionists had shocked decorum in the 1840s by speaking at public gatherings, but they were widely resented. The success of Uncle Tom's Cabin went far toward legitimizing, if not indeed creating, a role for women in public affairs. To the dismay of many northern radicals, Uncle Tom's Cabin casually endorsed colonization rather than abolition. In fact, Stowe was unconcerned about the tactics that made slavery a political issue: for her, the problem was religious and emotional, and one that women were best equipped to confront. Her stated purpose, "to awaken sympathy and feeling for the African race" and to urge that readers "feel right" about the issue, belongs to a feminist and utopian agenda that contemporary readers were slow to recognize. In the South, the book was read as sectional propaganda; in the North, it was read as a compelling moral romance. Although Stowe blamed the slave system itself as "the essence of all abuse" rather than the slaveholders and deliberately made its chief villain, Simon Legree, a displaced New Englander, the novel's effect was to exacerbate regional antagonisms. Indeed, Uncle Tom's Cabin, which called forth anti-Tom novels from southern writers, so raised the temperature of the dialogue that Lincoln would later, half-seriously, apportion to Stowe some responsibility for starting the Civil War. Notable among Stowe's subsequent works are A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853), documenting her case against slavery; Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp (1856), also on slavery; and The Minister's Wooing (1859), a historical novel that attacks Calvinism. Stowe also wrote realistic regional fiction, including The Pearl of Orr's Island (1861), which influenced Sarah Orne Jewett and Mary E. Wilkins Freeman. Her miscellaneous writings include Lady Byron Vindicated (1870), which created an international sensation by charging Lord Byron with incest, and Palmetto Leaves (1873), written at her winter home in Florida, which encouraged a Florida land boom. Thomas F. Gossett, Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture (1985); Eric J. Sundquist, ed., New Essays on Uncle Tom's Cabin (1986); Forrest Wilson, Crusader in Crinoline: The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe (1941). ALBERT J. VON FRANK See also Abolitionist Movement; Literature; Uncle Tom's Cabin. Strategic Arms Limitation Talks These negotiations helped thaw Soviet-American relations during the cold war. With help from National Security Adviser Henry A. Kissinger, President Richard M. Nixon and Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev completed the first Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) in 1972. (Contrary to popular impression, the "T" stands for "Talks," not "Treaty"; the acronym was coined originally to serve as a file heading for material related to the talks.) Both sides agreed to limit their offensive intercontinental ballistic missiles. The United States ended up with fewer missiles (710 submarine and 1,000 land missiles to 950 submarine and 1,410 land missiles for the Soviets), and Nixon would not cut other weapons, especially MIRVS (Multiple Independently Targetable Re-entry Vehicles), which put several warheads on one missile. But he and Brezhnev agreed to limit the amount of defensive antiballistic missiles (ABMS). The Senate approved the treaties 882. Nixon's successors met mixed results in negotiating SALT II. President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Kissinger met with Brezhnev and agreed to reduce the number of missiles, but disputes over Soviet treatment of Jews chilled relations. When President Jimmy Carter proposed more cuts, Brezhnev refused. Then, with the United States opening diplomatic relations with China and the Soviets needing economic help, Brezhnev met with Carter in Vienna in 1979 and  < previous page page_1036 next page >

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