Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe ****

Uncle Tom’s Cabin was written in response to The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. When Lincoln met the author, he was reported to declare, "So this is the little lady who started this great war.” Her main arguments against slavery were selling children away from their mothers, and the arbitrary disposition of enslaved people when their owner died. The enslaved people are shown to have family and Christian feelings. Slavery is characterized as a “curse forever.” I imagine she “started this great war” by inspiring empathy for enslaved people and arguing against complacency.

The story has two main plotlines. Uncle Tom is sold south, and Eliza escapes north to Canada. Both begin when Mr. Selby is forced by financial hardship to sell Tom and Eliza’s son Harry to a slave trader Tom Loker. Eliza is aided by Quakers in Ohio. Tom is first sold to the good owner Augustine St. Clare and then to the evil owner Simon Legree.

The book discusses many issues that are current today: white supremacy, reparations, segregation, the difference between being enslaved and poor, and whether saying only a few owners are evil is reason condemn the entire system. Segregation: “How many merchants would take Adolph, if I wanted to make him a clerk; or mechanics if I wanted him taught a trade? If I wanted to put Jane and Rosa to a school, how many schools are there in the northern states that would take them in? how many families that would board them?”

The book foresees The EU (“If Europe ever becomes a grand council of free nations.”)

The author is an anti-Semite and supports black stereotypes: “cooking being an indigenous talent of the African race,” “nature of his kindly race, ever yearning towards the simple and childlike,” and “the African, naturally patient, timid, and unenterprising.”

Tom is a parallel to Christ.

Harriet Beecher Stowe was a contemporary of Charles Dickens. Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published shortly after David Copperfield. Like Dickens, Uncle Tom’s cabin was serialized and is often written as if the author was paid by the word, which she probably was. Also, like Dickens, the myriad plotlines are tied up in a happy ending.

A powerful story of the mistreatment of African Americans, prior to the Civil War, that is still relevant today.

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