The story Uncle Tom’s Cabin begins when Arthur Shelby, a slaveowner in Kentucky, has to sell Harry and Uncle Tom, two slaves, to pay off a debt. However, Harry’s mother is Shelby’s wife servant, and she warns them. Harry’s mother, Eliza, flees over the Ohio River, chased by the trader who had purchased her son. Sympathetic people help her, and she makes for the Canadian border. Meanwhile, Uncle Tom saves a white girl named Eva from drowning, and her father purchases Uncle Tom from the trader in gratitude. It is the relationship that Eva and Tom form that helps Eva to learn the tenets of Christianity. Eva becomes terminally sick and ends up dying; her father promises to set Uncle Tom free, but he dies before he can complete the process, and his widow sells Tom to Simon Legree. In the meantime. Eliza and George are still running from the slave trader, but they manage to escape into Canada using a disguise. Tom is undergoing torture in the form of lashings from Legree, but his spiritual strength keeps him going, to the point where he can forgive Legree and the two overseers for whipping him to death. Ironically, George Shelby, the descendant of Tom’s first owner shows up to buy his freedom, but he only gets there when Tom is uttering his very last words. Shelby returns to his family farm and sets all of the slaves free; the escaped slaves end up in France with plans to go on to Liberia (Stowe).
One reason why Uncle Tom’s Cabin remains on reading lists today and why it is such an important work in American history is that it has a unique “ability to illustrate slavery’s effect on failies, and to help readers empathize with enslaved characters” (“Impact of Uncle Tom’s Cabin”). Within the book, the characters engage in discussions about the reasons why slavery came to be and the future that awaits those who become free. There is a story that claims that when President Abraham Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1862, he greeted her by saying, “’So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war’” (“Impact of Uncle Tom’s Cabin”). The implication of this exchange is that her book had a galvanizing effect on the anti-slavery forces in the United States, pushing the country more toward conflict. While the most passionate abolitionists found that the book failed to do enough to ask for an immediate end to the institution of slavery, there were moderates who enjoyed the fact that the book gave slavery a point of empathy that both white and black readers could appreciate. Perhaps the most poignant point of connection came from the fact that the burden that slaves who were mothers faced, trying as hard as they could to protect their children, even though there was little to do once their children were sold. The steps that Eliza takes to protect Harry ring true with what just about any mother would do to keep her children as safe as possible.
It is difficult to say whether or not the Civil War would have erupted in 1861 without the publication of this novel. The battle over states’ rights would likely have taken place at some point, and the fact that slavery was passing out of legality in other parts of Europe and North America would have led to a boiling point soon. However, the power of her book as a message against slavery has made her novel a classic.
Works Cited
“Impact of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Slavery and the Civil War.”
https://www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org/utc/impact.shtml
Stowe, Harriet Beecher. New York: Dover Thrift Editions, c2005.
