February 6, 2014 - Uncle Tom's Cabin

For several years, I have intended to read some classics of world literature. War and Peace is on my Kindle, along with some lesser known Lewis Carroll, Les Miserables in the original, some Mark Twain. Ulysses. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.  They are free or $0.99 on the Kindle.

Tonight I finished Uncle Tom's Cabin. I knew nothing about it when I started it, other than that its author was an abolitionist and that the phrase "uncle Tom" as a pejorative originated there. So let me elaborate a bit on it for those who may know nothing more about it than I did. Harriet Beecher Stowe was the daughter of a preacher and a staunch abolitionist. She wrote the book as a plea to Northerners to understand how bad slavery actually was, to relieve them of their moral superiority. It was published just a few years before the Civil War started, and was the best selling book of its time. I had supposed that abolitionists were fully modern in their views on racial equality, but I was completely mistaken. Naive would be a kind way to describe it, I suppose. Stowe was, in modern terms, a terrible bigot and racist. Her thesis was that although people of African decent were certainly different than whites (and possibly inferior), they were still human at least, and should be treated as such.

The rest of this post, until the last paragraph, is all spoilers.  If you care about that, either stop reading now, or skip to the end.

The book concerns the fate of a slave named Tom, known affectionately by young Master George as Uncle Tom. Tom lives on the Shelby's farm with his wife and children, and takes good care of the owner's son, George. Tom is a pious man, devout in his faith, and he can read a little of the Bible, the only thing we ever see him read. He works hard for his master, and has nearly complete control of the farm. His master is kind, and takes good care of his slaves. They still would love freedom, but realize that what they've got was a good deal compared to people around them. Unfortunately, Mr Shelby is not good with finances, and decides to settle a debt by selling a 6 year old boy to a slave trader. The boy and his mother run away from the farm, and head to Canada. Their success is far from certain. Mr Shelby eventually decides to sell Tom as well, knowing that an experienced hand like Tom will fetch a good price. Mr Shelby promises Tom that when he has raised enough money, he will send to New Orleans and buy him back.

Tom is first sold to a gentleman in New Orleans, who has many slaves but dislikes slavery. His central quandary is: "But what else is a rich man to do?" His daughter loves Tom, and when she eventually gets sick and dies, she makes her dad promise to grant Tom his freedom. He agrees to do so, and draws up the legal papers that will make Tom a free man. Before they are signed by the notary, however, the master is killed. His wife is a hard woman, and disavows her husband's promise. Again, Tom is sold. This time, he is not so lucky.

He is sold to a Simon Legree, a disturbingly brutal man without any humanity. It is on Legree's plantation that Tom reaches a final degree of religious devotion. Legree beats him near death, and Tom has a vision of the Savior. After that day, he never cares how much he is beaten. Legree is ruthless. His philosophy with slaves is that it is cheaper to buy new ones than it is to take care of the ones he already has. He hates Tom because Tom is impervious to his will. Tom works hard, faithfully, under the whip of Legree and his minions, and won't say a bad thing about him. He feels sorry for Simon, and chastises the other slaves for saying unkind things about their master. Their torturer. Their owner. He is a rapist, a murderer, and any other foul thing you can think of to describe a human.

One night, a woman slave in the house wakes Tom up. She has laced Legree's drink with something, and has an axe in her hand.  She begs Tom to go with her to the house and kill Legree and set all of the slaves free. Tom refuses. His love for Jesus is so great that he refuses to take a single human life to save a hundred other human lives. She relents, and devises another plan to escape, along with the beautiful young woman Simon recently bought. The women make their escape, and Simon beats Tom, determined to break him once and for all. He vows that either Tom will break, or he will die. Tom does not break. The women get on a boat to Canada.

Young Master George has grown up, and while settling his recently deceased father's affairs, determines to set all of his slaves free.  He first has to make good on his promise to buy Tom back. He arrives at Legree's farm in time to see Tom as he dies. He buries Tom there, and returns to Kentucky, where he informs Tom's widow and children that Tom is dead.

Who, then, is an Uncle Tom? Someone who gives in to people in authority without a thought to their own welfare or that of anyone else. Someone who has the power to stand up and make things better for his friends but refuses to do so. Some would call him a traitor. I would call him a man with narrow vision or lacking good priorities. I desperately wanted him to kill Legree, and read his speech with a sinking feeling of dread, knowing that he would take what I saw as the coward's way out. He refused to act.

The book is a swirling study of life in the 1850s, dense with religion, politics, dialects. The author's prejudices give a certain color to the text. She is a biased observer in both positive and negative ways, and deciphering an objective truth out of what she presents is often a challenge as well.  I had not thought about the personal tragedies of slavery. Of course you get the general sense of wrongness when you think or read about it in a history class, but the complete depravity of it in practice had escaped me. I just hadn't thought it through to its logical conclusion. So I'm very glad I read it, and had that chapter of American life spelled out for me in all its horror.