Uncle Tom’s Cabin
A Book that Changed America
Introduction & Thesis
Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1851 as a tribute to the horrific reality faced by African Americans in the 1800s. She shaped the consensus on slavery by detailing the barbarous side of humanity. In the decade preceding the Civil War, Stowe sparked outrage in people who were previously mute or undecided on the subject of slavery. She brought the appalling truth of the practice into people’s lives by publishing her work as a series of newspaper stories in the abolitionist newspaper, the National Era. The reports highlighted the horrors of recapturing escaped slaves and outraged Southern slaveholders. Regardless, Uncle Tom’s Cabin was met with immediate national acclaim and sold 300,000 copies within the first three months. Within a decade, numerous publishers had translated it into dozens of languages, and it was the first American novel to sell over a million copies (Background to Uncle Tom’s Cabin). Abolitionist’s battle to end slavery would not be won for over a decade after the book was published. Yet, the impact of Uncle Tom’s Cabin would be felt for generations and has a significant enduring legacy.
About the Author
Harriet Beecher Stowe was born on June 14th, 1811, daughter to a prominent Congregationalist minister in Litchfield, Connecticut. Her mother died of tuberculosis when she was only five years old, and later in her life, she would attribute her empathy towards black families broken by slavery to her own grief (Stowe, Harriet Beecher). Stowe received an extensive education by studying in private schools and then became a teacher in Hartford. In 1832 she moved to Cincinnati to join her father, who had remarried and served as the first president of the Lane Theological Seminary. Cincinnati is a border city that sits across the river from Kentucky, where slavery was rife; this exposed Stowe to slavery and saw her “act on behalf of its victims by aiding fugitives on the Underground Railroad” (Uncle Tom’s Cabin). Several years later, at the age of 25, she married Calvin Stowe, and they had seven children. During this period, she wrote for “Atlantic, Christian Union, Godey’s Ladies’ Book, the Independent, and the New York Evangelist” (Stowe, Harriet Beecher). When the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 passed, mandating all citizens legally compelled to help return escaped slaves to their masters, Stowe was outraged. It was this passionate fury that led her to write Uncle Tom’s Cabin, “first published serially in an abolitionist newspaper, The National Era” (Burt, Uncle Tom’s Cabin). She was committed to portraying slavery in its most graphic and lifelike form as possible to persuade her readers of the evils of slavery. Stowe had only a modicum of expectations for the novel, but instead, it became a publishing phenomenon, and she became internationally famous. When Lincoln announced the end of slavery, Harriet Beecher Stowe danced in the streets.
About the Book
The novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin was first published as a series in the abolitionist newspaper the National Era in 1851. Prior to its creation, Harriet Beecher Stowe had obtained a copy of Theodore Weld’s book American Slavery as It Is. One of the stories in it portrays a slave who chooses death by flogging over denying his belief in Jesus, and this particular story rested heavily with Stowe. Years later, when Stowe witnessed the flogging of a black man, she is said to have fallen into a trance and later that day began writing Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Background to Uncle Tom’s Cabin).
Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly, gives a fictional account of two harrowing journeys of escaping the clutches of slavery in America. The two journeys differ in many ways, but both are wrought with trial, tribulation, and “how slavery disrupted households and the sacred ties that existed between parent and child, husband and wife” (Background to Uncle Tom’s Cabin).
“Uncle Tom” Shelby is a devout Christian who a Kentuckian slaveholder owns. Tom’s owner is forced to sell him and his wife’s maid, Eliza, to get out of debt; Tom accepts his fate and heads downriver to his new home. Eliza instead chooses to flee with her child to Canada, and her journey is wrought with the struggle of evading all who pursue her and attempt to drag her back to the confines of slavery. Eventually, she makes it to Canada and freedom with her son and husband. On the other hand, Tom endures cruel and unusual punishment (although not uncommon for slaves at that time) at the hands of his new owner, and though his faith in God never faltered, he eventually dies a martyr’s death.
The Legacy
Uncle Tom’s Cabin’s legacy as a story depicting the actual and vile treatment of human beings solely based on skin color; tortured, chained, and sold as objects, persists in perpetuity because of its authentic and graphic nature. It evoked extreme responses initially which, “ranged from censorship to physical violence and butchery. An enraged slaveholder was incited to sever the ear of a slave and send it to Stowe” (Background to Uncle Tom’s Cabin). Some individuals had concerns over “whether (Stowe’s) book was too manipulatively emotional to serve as a lasting document” (Background to Uncle Tom’s Cabin). This emotional response alternatively proved to be what stirred over a million Americans to buy a copy of the novel, the first to sell that many in American history. “Within a decade, the book was translated into dozens of languages including Finnish, Armenian, Javanese, even Welsh,” and worldwide notoriety ensued (Background to Uncle Tom’s Cabin).
The effect of this novel spurred people throughout the world to take a stance against slavery and, “there is more than a little justification in the comment Abraham Lincoln allegedly made greeting Stowe on a visit to the White House by calling her “the little lady who made this big war” (Burt, Uncle Tom’s Cabin). Unlike other novels of that period, “humanizing slaves in this way completely changed the attitudes of her readers, who then felt profound sympathy for the plight of slaves” (MacKenzie, Uncle Tom’s Cabin). Stowe’s novel was a plea to the American people to end once and for all the inhumane suffering of African Americans. The story she told helped to influence enough people for that to become an eventual reality. Her goal to represent slavery in the most realistic way possible is a testament to the immense suffering of millions of people previously deemed subhuman. Based upon verifiable stories of abuse, Uncle Tom’s Cabin lives on as a noble attempt by one individual to incite radical change in society and succeeded.
Citations
1. Bloom, Harold. “Background to Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Chelsea House, 2008. Bloom’s Literature, online.infobase.com/Auth/Index?aid=95547&itemid=WE54&articleId=2225. Accessed July 8th 2021.
2. Burt, Daniel S. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” The Novel 100, Revised Edition, Facts On File, 2010. Bloom’s Literature, online.infobase.com/Auth/Index?aid=95547&itemid=WE54&articleId=46236. Accessed July 8th 2021.
3. MacKenzie, Cindy. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Student’s Encyclopedia of Great American Writers, Volume 2, Facts On File, 2010. Bloom’s Literature, online.infobase.com/Auth/Index?aid=95547&itemid=WE54&articleId=481793. Accessed July 11th 2021.
4. Snodgrass, Mary Ellen. “Stowe, Harriet Beecher.” Encyclopedia of Feminist Literature, Second Edition, Facts On File, 2013. History Research Center, online.infobase.com/Auth/Index?aid=&itemid=&articleId=34045. Accessed July 10th 2021.
