Uncle Tom's Cabin

“My master! and who made him my mater? That’s what I think of—what right has he to me? I’m a man as much as he is. I’m a better man than he is. I know more about business than he does; I’m a better manager than he is; I can read better than he can; I can write a better hand –and I’ve learned it all myself, and no thanks to him—I’ve learned it in spite of him; and now what right has he to make a dray-horse of me?” 

In many ways, George serves as a foil to the belief, held by many of Stowe’s contemporaries, that black people were somehow naturally less intelligent than whites. George is much more capable than his master, a fact which highlights the absurd notion that a human being can be owned by anyone—especially someone inferior to them. 

“Here he turned to the rough trundle bed full of little woolly heads, and broke fairly down. He leaned over the back of the chair, and covered his face with his large hands. Sobs, heavy, hoarse and loud, shook the chair, and great tears fell through his fingers on the floor; just such tears, sir, as you dropped into the coffin where lay your first-born son; such tears, woman, as you shed when you heard the cries of your dying babe. For, sir, he was a man, —and you are but another man. And, woman, though dressed in silk and jewels, you are but a woman, and, in life’s great straits and mighty griefs, ye feel but one sorrow!” 

Stowe emphasizes the pathos of the scene that wrenches Tom from his family. Stowe frequently turns to the commonalities of motherhood and fatherhood to sway her audience emotionally. The feelings of human beings denigrated into the status of property becomes a common theme throughout the rest of the novel. 

“If any of our refined and Christian readers object to the society into which this scene introduces them, let us beg them to begin and conquer their prejudices in time. The catching business, we beg to remind them, is rising to the dignity of a lawful and patriotic profession. If all the broad land between the Mississippi and the Pacific becomes one great market for bodies and souls, and human property retains the locomotive tendencies of this nineteenth century, the trader and catcher may yet be among our aristocracy.” 

One of the stylistic hallmarks of Uncle Tom’s Cabin is the frequent addresses to the reader made by Stowe. In this passage, she highlights the unsavory aspects of Haley, Loker, and Marks by reminding the reader that men such as them are not only part of a slave-owning society; they are necessary to it functioning properly. By referring to her readers as Christians, Stowe plays upon their moral conscience and uses guilt to sway opinion. 

“Having ‘noting of the bear about him but the skin,’ and being gifted by nature with a great, honest, just heart, quite equal to his gigantic frame, he had been for some years witnessing with repressed uneasiness for the workings of a system equally bad for oppressor and oppressed.” 

It is no coincidence that John Van Trompe, the novel’s first, proper abolitionist character, is a man of great stature; his size represents the morality of the abolitionist cause. Stowe repeats a common abolitionist argument here: slavery is bad for both slaves and slave owners. The logic of this argument is that slavery corrupts the master morally; one cannot be a good Christian and own slaves.

“Tom had watched the whole transaction from first to last, and had a perfect understanding of its results. To him, it looked like something unutterably horrible and cruel, because, poor, ignorant black soul! he had not learned to generalize, and to take enlarged views. If he had only been instructed by certain ministers of Christianity, he might have thought better of it, and seen in it an every-day incident of a lawful trade; a trade which is the vital support of an institution which an American divine tells us has ‘no evils but such as are inseparable from any other relations in social and domestic life.’ But Tom, as we see, being a poor, ignorant fellow, whose reading had been confined entirely to the New Testament, could not comfort and solace himself with views like these.”

Stowe makes heavy use of irony here, comparing Tom’s compassionate perspective on Lucy’s loss with that of a society ostensibly following Jesus’s teachings. The values of the New Testament are supposed to override those of the Old Testament. However, the Old Testament was frequently used to justify slavery.

“You would think no harm in a child’s caressing a large dog, even if he was black; but a creature that can think, and reason, and feel, and is immortal, you shudder at; confess it, cousin. I know the feeling among some of you northerners well enough. Not that there is a particle of virtue in our not having it; but custom with us does what Christianity ought to do, —obliterates the feeling of personal prejudice. I have often noticed, in my travels north, how much stronger this was with you than with us. You loathe them as you would a snake or a toad, yet you are indignant at their wrongs. You would not have them abused; but you don’t want to have anything to do with them yourselves. You would send them to Africa, out of your sight and smell, and then send a missionary or two to do up all the self-denial of elevating them compendiously. Isn’t that it?” 

In this passage, Stowe, through Augustine, confronts the hypocrisy of her fellow Northerners. While many Northerners advocated for emancipation, they also advocated for repatriating former slaves to African countries, such as Liberia. While Ophelia believes slavery is immoral, she does not believe in equality between blacks and whites.

“‘O, ye poor crittur!’ said Tom, ‘han’t nobody never telled ye how the Lord Jesus loved ye, and died for ye? Han’t they telled ye that he’ll help ye, and ye can go to heaven, and have rest, at last?’

‘I looks like gwine to heaven,’ said the woman; ‘an’t thar where white folks is gwine? S’pose they’d have me thar? I’d rather go to torment, and get away from Mas’r and Missis. I had so,’ she said, as with her usual groan, she got her basket on her head, and walked sullenly away.”

Prue’s story is one of great pathos and serves as one of the greatest reminders of the cruelties of slavery in the novel. Her predicament is a spiritual one in Tom’s perspective. Her one means of escaping the torment of her earthly life may damn her soul; however, Prue is so eager to escape from the pain inflicted by her white masters that she would even accept damnation to do so. 

“There stood the two children representatives of the two extremes of society. The fair, high-bred child, with her golden head, her deep eyes, her spiritual, noble brow, and prince-like movements; and her black, keen, subtle, cringing, yet acute neighbor. They stood the representatives of their races. The Saxon, born of ages of cultivation, command, education, physical and moral eminence; the Afric, born of ages of oppression, submission, ignorance, toil and vice!” 

Topsy and Eva are two of the most iconic characters in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and the first instance of their interaction in the novel juxtaposes the social forces that shaped them. They are opposites in all aspects. However, Eva’s spiritual nature makes it easy for her to be instructive in religious matters, while Topsy’s natural acuteness makes her an ideal student for the proper instruction. This reflects Stowe’s belief in the potential of Africa becoming a Christianized continent; Topsy’s later missionary work confirms this.

“Many of you, I am afraid, are very careless. You are thinking only about this world. I want you to remember that there is a beautiful world, where Jesus is. I am going there, and you can go there. It is for you, as much as me. But, if you want to go there, you must not live idle, careless, thoughtless lives. You must be Christians. You must remember that each one of you can become angels and be angels forever... If you want to be Christians, Jesus will help you. You must pray to him; you must read—” 

Eva’s farewell speech, attended to by an audience of the St. Clare family’s black servants, is an iconic moment in American sentimental literature. Eva is the novel’s saintly child, and her example serves as an inspiration of conversion and contrition for the adults in her life. 

“Knows all that, Mas’r St. Clare; Mas’r’s been too good; but, Mas’r, I’d rather have poor clothes, poor house, poor everything, and have ’em mine, than have the best, and have ’em any man’s else,—I had so, Mas’r; I think it’s natur, Mas’r.” 

A common anti-abolitionist argument held that a slave who was taken care of by a kind master was better off than a free black person could be. However, even a slave to a good master does not belong to himself. Augustine is surprised that Tom is so eager to leave; however, Tom deeply values freedom and the opportunity to be his own man trumps even his love for Augustine.

“We hear often of the distress of the negro servants, on the loss of a kind master; and with good reason, for no creature on God’s earth is left more utterly unprotected and desolate than the slave in these circumstances.

“The child who has lost a father has still the protection of friends, and of the law; he is something, and can do something,—has acknowledged rights and position; the slave has none. The law regards him, in every respect, as devoid of rights as a bale of merchandise. The only possible acknowledgment of any of the longings and wants of a human and immortal creature, which are given to him, comes to him through the sovereign and irresponsible will of his master; and when that master is stricken down, nothing remains.”

Augustine represents the danger that the kind master poses to their slaves. While he is alive, his servants are treated well and protected from the viciousness of the system at large; however, the sum total of their rights are derived from his uncommon benevolence. When he dies, they are subject to the whims of whoever bids the most for control of their lives. 

“Tom had been standing wistfully examining the multitude of faces thronging around him, for one whom he would wish to call master. And if you should ever be under the necessity, sir, of selecting, out of two hundred men, one who was to become your absolute owner and disposer, you would, perhaps, realize, just as Tom did, how few there were that you would feel at all comfortable in being made over to.” 

Stowe uses one of her frequent, direct addresses to her audience in order to create sympathy for Tom’s plight—an all-too common predicament under the system of slavery. This is calculated to counter the fallacious argument that good slave owners, like Augustine St. Clare, justify the system as a whole. Tom finds no St. Clare in the crowd of men looking to buy him.

“It is one of the bitterest apportionments of a lot of slavery, that the negro, sympathetic and assimilative, after acquiring, in a refined family, the tastes and feelings which form the atmosphere of such a place, is not the less liable to become the bond-slave of the coarsest and most brutal,—just as a chair or table, which once decorated the superb saloon, comes, at last battered and defaced, to the bar-room of some filthy tavern, or some low haunt of vulgar debauchery. The great difference is, that the table and chair cannot feel, and the man ca; for even a legal enactment that he shall be ‘taken, reputed, adjudged in law, to be a chattel personal,’ cannot blot out his soul with its own private little world of memories, hopes, loves, fears, and desires.”

Stowe once again turns to the ironic trope of living property to demonstrate the absurdity of the concept. A slave like Tom could be transferred from one owner to another just like a chair; however, a chair lacks a soul, and a human being is not an object. This passage also demonstrates the importance that nurture and education have on human development. 

“‘Granted,’ said the young man; ‘but, in my opinion, it is you considerate, humane men, that are responsible for all the brutality and outrage wrought by these wretches; because, if it were not for your sanction and influence, the whole system could not keep foothold for an hour. If there were no planters except such as that one,’ said he, pointing with his finger to Legree, who stood with his back to them, ‘the whole thing would go down like a millstone. It is your respectability and humanity that licenses and protects his brutality.’” 

The nameless young Northern man invalidates the argument that the humane slaveowners counterbalance the brutal ones. Legree is a prime example of the worst kind of master in the Southern system. This is part of what Augustine realized before his death: it was not enough to be a good slave owner when men such as Legree exist. The ”human” slave owners are morally culpable as well.

“Tom in various ways manifested a tenderness of feeling, a commiseration for his fellow sufferers, strange and new to them, which was watched with a jealous eye by Legree.” 

Legree demonstrates the Christian principle that sinners have a natural abhorrence for those who are good. Tom’s meek acceptance of his lot in life and his willingness to care for those who suffer as much as he does makes him an ideal Christian. Though Tom never actively goes against Legree, it is these character traits that make the plantation owner continually persecute him. 

“Is there anything in it glorious and dear for a nation, that is not also glorious and dear for a man? What is freedom to a nation, but freedom to the individuals in it? What is freedom to that young man, who sits there, with his arms folded over his broad chest, the tint of African blood in his cheek, its dark fires in his eyes—what is freedom to George Harris? To your fathers, freedom was the right of a nation to be a nation. To him, it is the right of a man to be a man, and not a brute.” 

Stowe links George’s will and inherent right to be free to the national ethos that champions freedom. The slave system made a mockery of the spirit of liberty that drove the American Revolution a little over a generation prior to the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. George’s yearning for freedom is shown to be natural for a man who grew up in America and who demonstrates many of the qualities judged desirable in a man of his era—despite the fact that he is a slave. 

“Ye say that the interest of the master is a sufficient safeguard for the slave. In the fury of man’s mad mind will, he will wittingly, and with open eye, sell his own soul to the devil to gain his ends; and will he be more careful of his neighbor’s body?” 

Stowe again confronts a logical fallacy in the defense of slave ownership. Legree demonstrates that he is willing to go against his best interests, both financially and metaphysically, for short-term gains. Financial motives were not enough to protect slaves from being abused or worked to death.

“Mas’r, if you was sick, or in trouble, or dying, and I could save ye, I’d give ye my heart’s blood; and, if taking every drop of blood in this poor old body would save your precious soul, I’d give ‘em freely as the Lord gave his for me. O, Mas’r, don’t bring this great sin on your soul! It will hurt you more than ‘t will hurt me! Do the worst you can, my troubles will be over soon; but, if ye don’t repent, yours won’t never end!” 

Tom’s compassion toward Legree’s soul, even in the face of his own imminent death, makes him the ultimate Christian hero of the novel. Tom’s example serves to convey Stowe’s message that perfect Christian morality can take root even in the most oppressive situations. Stowe is arguing that the greater danger of damnation lies on the master, not the slave. 

“George saw, at once, the force of this defiance. There was not a white person on the place; and, in all southern courts, the testimony of colored blood is nothing. He felt, at that moment, as if he could have rent the heavens with his heart’s indignant cry for justice; but in vain.” 

Here, George realizes after accusing Legree of murder that he could not be convicted, because the legal institution of racism in the South did not recognize the testimony of a black person. Prior to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, black characters were stock and ancillary in literature primarily written and consumed by whites. Stowe deliberately makes black characters a central focus and emphasizes their humanity in a bid to make her readers see their soulfulness and how hypocritical it is to have laws denying people of color their humanity. 

“‘Witness, eternal God!’ said George, kneeling on the grave of his poor friend; ‘oh, witness, that, from this hour, I will do what one man can do to drive out this curse of slavery from my land!’” 

George’s oath before Tom’s anonymous grave emphasizes the necessity of widescale action to end the system of slavery. Because it is an institution, it relies on hegemonic consent to function. As a lone man, George can emancipate only those under the scope of his power. The emphasis he places on this stresses the fact to Stowe’s audience and urges each singular reader to do what they can.

“After all, let a man take what pains he may to hush it, a human soul is an awful ghostly, unquiet possession, for a bad man to have.” 

Legree knows deep down that persecuting and killing Tom was wrong. Part of Stowe’s antislavery argument relies on the common humanity of both master and slave. In a Christian worldview, this means that both have souls, and Legree’s soul recoils at the sins his body commits. 

“These shores of refuge, like the eternal shore, often unite again, in glad communion, hearts that for long years have mourned each other as lost. And affecting beyond expression is the earnestness with which every new arrival among them is met, if, perchance, it may bring tidings of mother, sister, child or wife, still lost to view in the shadows of slavery.” 

This passage presents the hope Canada holds from the perspective of the enslaved. The Harris family, now improbably reunited, was only able to find each other because of the freedom Canada promises. Their family is safe in a free country; bondage can never break them apart again.

“My sympathies are not for my father’s race, but for my mother’s. To him I was no more than a fine dog or horse: to my poor heart-broken mother I was a child; and, though I never saw her, after the cruel sale that separated us, till she died, yet I know she always loved me dearly.” 

George explains his rationale for throwing his lot in with the black side of his heritage, rather than the white side. Though he and his family can pass as white, their black ancestry will likely exclude them from society due to racial prejudice. George believes starting a new, Christian nation in Africa will be a better alternative for the freed slaves of America.