This investigation seeks to explore the extent to which literature impacted social disorder during the antebellum years of the Civil War? To assess the extent to which American literature caused social unrest before the Civil War, this investigation focuses on the effects of popular works such as Uncle Tom's Cabin, Uncle Remus, and other famous publications about the great audience. The effects of literature on certain social groups, such as political parties, are also considered throughout the investigation. The effects of literature written during the postwar years on the American Civil War will not be considered, even though they relate directly to the war. Rather, this investigation only evaluates the effects of works written on the eve of the war which played an important role in its development. Although Civil War literature is often largely ignored, many of these titles were incredibly influential in their time (Moss 21). Civil War literature was preoccupied with promise and danger, often stirring the spirits of future abolitionists and separatists into true spirits (Lamb 240). One of the most influential works of the period before the Civil War was Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings by Joel Chandler Harris. This collection of folklore was pretty much the first major step toward understanding slave culture (Moss 397). As important as Uncle Remus was, probably the most important book that influenced the coming Civil War was Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. It is the most immediately influential work ever to appear in the United States, having sold over 305,000 copies in America just one year after its publication in 1852 (Wilson 3). Harriet Beecher Stowe produced documents such as the compromise of ...... middle of paper ...... lden, MA: Blackwell, 2005. Print.Lowance, Mason I., Ellen E. Westbrook and De Prospo RC The Stowe Debate: Rhetorical Strategies in Uncle Tom's Cabin. Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 1994. Print. Moss, Joyce and George Wilson. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” In Literature and Its Times: Profiles of 300 notable literary works and the historical events that gave rise to them. Detroit: Gale 1997 Nelson, Scott Reynolds and Carol Sheriff. A People at War: Civilians and Soldiers in the American Civil War, 1854-1877. New York: Oxford UP, 2007. Print. Simpson, Lewis P. “Library of Southern Literature: Civil War in Literature.” Southern Literature Library: Civil War in Literature. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, nd Web. April 01, 2014. Wilson, Edmund. Patriotic gore; Studies in American Civil War Literature. New York: Oxford UP, 1962. Print.