SOURCE: Grant, David. “Stowe's Dred and the Narrative Logic of Slavery's Extension.” Studies in American Fiction 28, no. 2 (autumn 2000): 151-73.

In the following essay, Grant maintains that Stowe's novel was written in an effort to secure a victory for the Republican party in the election of 1856.

In writing Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp, Harriet Beecher Stowe became the first major American author to produce what amounts to a campaign novel. Composed as the events that shaped the canvass unfolded and as the Republican party completed its national organization, excerpted in many Republican newspapers before its release, prefaced so as to steer its reception toward the great decision facing the nation, published in the late summer as election excitement was reaching its peak, heralded in the Republican press as a contribution to the cause,¹ advertised by its publisher alongside other works of campaign propaganda²—the novel in...