Uncle Tom's Cabin

I had never read Uncle Tom's Cabin, so when I visited the Harriet Beecher Stowe House in Hartford, Connecticut some weeks ago I picked up a copy. Ironically, I started the book on the first of February, Black History Month in this country, and finished it today, the last day of the month.

The novel, perhaps more than any other, had a profound effect on history. Abraham Lincoln is said to have remarked, upon meeting the diminutive Stowe, "So this is the little lady who made this big war." The book was released in serial form in 1852, and the book was the second-highest selling book of the century, following only The Bible.

To read it now, over a hundred and fifty years later, evokes several thoughts and emotions, particularly when one considers that a man of African descent is close to being the President of the United States. Stowe was spurred to write the book because she was outraged by the passing of the Fugitive Slave Act, which made it a crime for Northern abolitionists to aid fugitive slaves once they had escaped to the north.

The story has two main strands, following two slaves from the Shelby plantation in Kentucky. The Shelby family is kind to their slaves, but a debt forces Shelby to sell off Uncle Tom, who is a virtuous, Christian man, and Harry, the son of Eliza. Eliza overhears and steals off with her boy, and escapes into Ohio across the frozen river (I was surprised that this scene happens so early in the book, as it is the one scene I knew about before reading). With the assistance of Quakers, she is reunited with her husband, who is an intelligent man who can pass for white, and they escape to Canada.

Tom's situation is different. At first he is purchased by the St. Clare family after he rescues their daughter, Eva, from drowning. The St. Clare's are largely kind--the father, Augustine, recognizes the evils of slavery but figures there's nothing he can do about him, and the wife, Marie, is a selfish whiner. Augustine's cousin Ophelia comes from Vermont to help with the child, and she finds slavery deplorable, but in one of Stowe's cagey twists, Ophelia is also repulsed by blacks, which surely was a common opinion of northerners at the time.

When St. Clare dies unexpectedly, Tom is sold to the sinister Simon Legree, who thinks of his slaves as worse than chattel. Tom, resolutely Christian, will not follow Legree's order to beat one of his fellow slaves, and suffers the consequences. He refuses to try to escape, but does aid two women to flee, covering them at the expense of his own life.

Much of this book is flowery and sentimental, and dripping with Christianity. Of course, Stowe's husband and brother were preachers. There are also some rather clunky examples of foreshadowing: a discussion between Ophelia and St. Clare about what should happen if he were to die is followed only a page or two later by his murder. And there are some passages that just defy modern sensibility, such as the death of Eva, who is a saintly child. Oscar Wilde once said that only someone with a heart of stone could read of the death of Dickens' Little Nell without laughing, the same could be said for Eva's death scene.

There is also page after page of characters debating whether slavery is proper or not. While reading this I had to remind myself that when she was writing this, that was the question of the age. Today only the most backward of thinkers could even contemplate such a monstrous institution, but at the time it was flourishing, and an entire nation was ripped apart over the debate. In retrospect, it seems horribly misguided and a colossal waste of life.

Uncle Tom's Cabin was turned into a stage production, which earned Stowe not a penny, as there were no copyright laws back then. The stage play simplified the story and led to the image of Uncle Tom as a bowing and scraping figure that would lead his name to be a term of insult to the African-American community. In the novel, he is not so much subservient as irrepressibly noble. During his death scene, when the slaves who acted as Legree's lieutenants and see the error of their ways, seek his forgiveness, and he grants it and he hopes for their redemption: "'Poor critturs!' said Tom, "I'd be willin' to bar all I have, if it'll only bring ye to Christ! O Lord! give me these two more souls, I pray.' That prayer was answered." It's hard to read that without being moved.