Since the 17th century, when African slaves were brought by Dutch slavers, Christianity has been used to justify the act of enslavement. The missionaries set sail with the slavers and attempted several times to convert the sold Africans into slavery. Throughout the 19th century, Christianity was a major factor in helping to institutionalize and even justify the suffering of slaves. Slaves were made to believe through Bible verses that if they suffered in their current life, they would have a better existence after their death. Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe, dramatizes the lives of many different slaves and their masters in a way that was one of the factors that helped spark the Civil War. The book focuses on the tension between the morality of religion and how religion was used to institutionalize slavery, particularly for the main character, Tom. Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin presents the interpretive tension between religion and how it was used by white slave owners to rationalize Tom's slavery and servitude to him and themselves. The white institution of Christianity was imposed on Tom from childhood to make him believe in the Puritan principle that individual suffering in life guarantees good tidings in death. Tom was taught to read the Bible and believes that God will be with him wherever he goes, even after he is sold and separated from Aunt Chloe and the rest of his family. “I am in the hands of the Lord,” said Tom; “Nothing can go further than he allows;--and that's one thing I can thank him for. I'm the one who's sold out and falling apart, and you're looking after the kids. You are safe here; ---what is to come will fall only on me; and the Lord will help me, I know he will," (Stowe 81)... middle of paper... invokes the language of the crucifixion of Christ on the cross by the Romans. Stowe makes a similar statement describing the daily predicament of black slaves. Most whites view the system of slavery as natural; they see the black as inferior to them and therefore designed to serve them based on the color of their skin. Blacks, however, view slavery through the forced biblical paradigm it was forced upon them. Stowe makes the analogy that African Americans suffer daily in slavery as Christ suffered on the cross. Overall, Uncle Tom's Cabin is filled with religious undertones of martyrdom, imposed religion, and genuine pity of the slaves in. slavery. Harriet Beecher Stowe shows the gap between how slave owners saw religion as a whip to keep slaves in line and how slaves saw the same religion as a balm for the wounds inflicted on them by whites..