Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a book by Harriet Beecher Stowe that describes
in detail the lives of slaves. It discusses the good masters and the brutal
masters, the field slaves and the house servants, and how they were traded.
This book opened the eyes of many to what slavery was like.
Supposedly,
Abraham Lincoln greeted Harriet Beecher Stowe around the start of the Civil War
by saying “So you're the little woman who wrote the book that started this
great war.” When they read the book, people in the north felt slavery on a more
personal level. No longer was it an obscure southern practice that was only
speculated about. Northerners became outraged about the cruelty of slavery.
Southerners were outraged and said that the book exaggerated slavery. Tension built
between the North and the South (http://www.ushistory.org/us/28d.asp).
Uncle Tom’s Cabin sold 300,000 copies in
the north and was even more commonly read in Great Britain; thus giving it a wide
fan base (http://www.ushistory.org/us/28d.asp) . Many people during the 1850’s were not very well educated about
slavery. Only 10% of southerners actually owned slaves, so slavery was not as
prevalent as some people think. Northerners heard word of mouth stories and
whatever was written in the newspaper. Uncle
Tom’s Cabin has reached generation after generation of people, and is the
world’s second most published book after the bible (https://louisville.edu/theatrearts/current-season/past-productions/lincoln_uncle_tom.html).
The book was banned in the south because of its
power and possibility to incite riots.
Stowe characterizes both the North and the
South in the book. Miss Ophelia is the stereotypical northerner. “She is hard
working, harsh yet virtuous, opinionated, and democratic. She is an
abolitionist yet prejudiced against blacks.” Augustine St. Clare is the
Southerner. He is “wealthy, lazy,
and educated. He has too much time on his hands, drinks too much alcohol, and
is generally indulgent of his slaves because he recognizes they make his life
easier.” Simon Legree, who grew up in the North and moved to the South
was the harshest of all the masters (http://www.shmoop.com/uncle-toms-cabin/characterization.html).
Eva is the mixed race slave that works in the house and is proper and perfect.
Topsy is the slave child who was left to run wild, and now she is a liar and a
thief.
Several criticisms have
been discussed about Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
All the slaves eventually end up in
Africa, Canada, or heaven, showing that Stowe did not believe that free blacks
and whites could share the same territory. Other freed slaves of the time,
including Frederick Douglass were trying to fight for an America where blacks
and whites were equal. Also, Stowe portrays mulattos and other mixed races as
being of a higher class than blacks and offers examples at the end of the book of
mulattos who have improved their circumstances, but she does not offer any
examples of black success in America. Others criticized her for entering the
world of politics which she was not supposed to know anything about because she
was a woman. She was also criticized because Tom was killed when he did not
reveal the whereabouts of escaped slaves. Does this mean that Stowe wanted
slaves to suffer in silence while upholding their Christian values? (http://www.enotes.com/uncle-toms-cabin-reference/uncle-toms-cabin).
Even though its
accuracy is still up for debate and it has many criticisms, Uncle Tom’s Cabin so enraged people with
its hard working, Christian character that they began to seek freedom for
slaves. Uncle Tom’s Cabin is one of
the most influential books in history.
