Posted on 12/16/2003 1:15:09 PM PST by PeaRidge
Uncle Tom's Cabin by Gail Jarvis by Gail Jarvis
People who disagree with me often claim that my historical views do not conform with "modern" interpretations. For my enlightenment, they recommend "modern" history books, books written after the 1960s. However, one correspondent took the opposite approach insisting that I needed to read a book from the past, Uncle Tom's Cabin. Of course, like most of you, I read the book years ago when I was younger. And, although I thought I remembered it, I decided to read it again; this time slowly and analytically.
Its author, Harriet Beecher Stowe was the daughter, sister, and wife of ministers and fervent Abolitionists who used New England pulpits to passionately proselytize against slavery. So it is not surprising that she became an Abolitionist and wrote her influential novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Although the book is the most famous of all anti-slavery polemics, I suspect most people are not aware of many of the opinions held by its author.
In rereading her book, I was first struck by Mrs. Stowe insistence that slavery in the South was no worse than slavery in the North had been. Furthermore, Stowe did not condemn Southern plantation owners but rather placed the onus of slavery on the slave system itself; especially New England slave traders, New York bankers, and other Northern entrepreneurs who profited from slave commerce.
Writer and Civil Rights activist James Baldwin was incensed by her position, stating: "It was her object to show that the evils of slavery were the inherent evils of a bad system, and not always the fault of those who had become involved in it and were its actual administrators." To Baldwin this opinion was racist and abdicated slave owners of personal responsibility.
Civil rights activists were also irritated by Mrs. Stowe’s support of the American Colonization Society’s belief that slaves should be returned to Africa, support she shared with Abraham Lincoln.
Although an Abolitionist, Stowe belonged to the "gradual emancipation" school. She believed that slaves must receive at least a basic education before being freed. And she insisted that they be converted to Christianity. After these two conditions were met, they should be recolonized to Africa.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published two years after the Compromises of 1850. During a hectic two-month period, Congress enacted several laws designed to placate both pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions. The law that especially rankled Mrs. Stowe was the Fugitive Slave Act, which required that all run-away slaves be returned to their owners. She thought it was hypocrisy for Northern congressmen, who publicly condemned slavery, to enact the Compromises of 1850.
Harriet Beecher Stowe decided that she could make her point more dramatically by using a fiction format. Her goal was not to write the great American novel, but, like Charles Dickens, create sympathy for members of an underclass of society, slaves.
The character "Uncle Tom" grew up on the plantation of his first master, Mr. Shelby, a Southerner who was kindly disposed toward his slaves. In the course of events, Mr. Shelby incurs such large debts that he must either sell Tom, his most valuable slave, or sell all the others. This dilemma allows Mrs. Stowe to demonstrate how the economic realities of the slave system itself often precluded humanitarian considerations.
Uncle Tom’s second master, Mr. St. Clare, was also a Southerner and a compassionate slave owner. Mrs. Stowe uses St. Clare’s Vermont cousin, Miss Ophelia, to illustrate the Northern view of slavery. Miss Ophelia chastises St. Clare: "It’s a perfect abomination for you to defend such a system – you all do – all you southerners." But, annoyed by the slipshod manner in which the house servants conduct themselves; she calls them "shiftless." Miss Ophelia is also offended by the close companionship of St. Clare’s daughter, Little Eva, with Tom and the other slaves, which she deems inappropriate.
Uncle Tom’s third and final master is perhaps the most famous villain in American literature – Simon Legree: a New England Yankee. Legree amasses enough money pirating to purchase a plantation in Louisiana. As a plantation owner, he regularly beats, curses and abuses his slaves. In one of his beatings of Tom, Legree's rage boils over and he accidentally kills the noble slave.
Toward the end of the book, an escaped slave, George Harris, realizes he can now achieve his dream of joining the colony in Liberia: "Let me go to form part of a nation, which shall have a voice in the councils of nations, and then we can speak. We have the claim of an injured race for reparation. But, then, I do not want it. I want a country, a nation, of my own."
In a postscript to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe catalogues the evils of the slavery system and then addresses Southerners:
"The author hopes she has done justice to that nobility, generosity, and humanity which in many cases characterizes individuals at the South. Such instances save us from utter despair of our kind. To you, generous, noble-minded men and women of the South – you, whose virtue, and magnanimity, and purity of character are the greater for the severer trial it has encountered – to you is her appeal."
Next she turns her attention to Northerners:
"Do you say that the people of the free states have nothing to do with it? The people of the free states have defended, encouraged, and participated; and are more guilty for it, before God, than the South. There are multitudes of slaves temporarily owned, and sold again, by merchants in Northern cities; and shall the whole guilt or obloquy of slavery fall only on the South? Northern men, Northern mothers, Northern Christians, have something more to do than denounce their brethren at the South; they have to look to the evil among themselves."
Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published almost ten years before the War Between the States. Harriet Beecher Stowe did as much as anyone to encourage "gradual emancipation" of the New England sort..
December 16, 2003
Gail Jarvis [send him mail], a CPA living in Beaufort, SC, is an advocate of the voluntary union of states established by the founders.
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Today, the federal government with its billions in income tax revenues is the center of power and most feared source of oppression in the US. In the days before federal income taxes, things looked different to some Americans. Those in the back country, habitually outvoted by clever lowlanders often saw less to fear in distant Washington than in state political elites. Whatever the sentiment against federal revenue agents, state government and its decisions affected the lives of highlanders more and produced greater friction and animosity.
At the other end of the social scale, many wealthy citizens, including more than a few big Delta planters, feared the levelling Jacksonian passions of local Democrats and trusted the federal government and the Whigs to keep the ship of state on an even keel. And of course, African Americans in the South on the whole had more to fear from local than federal authorities (in some Northern states, though, things looked different, as US Marshalls hunted runaways and state governments passed "personal liberty laws" to prevent extradition).
One way confusion sets in is the Celtic-Cavalier thesis. On the whole, it's probably true that those in the hill country were more Irish or Scots-Irish or North English than those in the flatlands. But it wasn't the case that everyone whose ancestry was "Celtic" was poor and every "Cavalier" rich. Rich lowland families like the Butlers or Bullochs might be related to the Irish or Scots nobility. A poor, but enterprising Irishman might find his fortune in Georgia or the Mississippi Delta. A great Tidewater family like the Washingtons, Randolphs or Byrds would apparently have poor cousins in the West Virginia highlands. In the Piedmont, where Madison and Jefferson lived, and in the lands beyond the Appalachians Celt, Cavalier, and even Yankee might intermarry. And the largest settlement of Scots was in the lowlands in the Cape Fear area. There definitely were deep divisions in the White South, but the Celtic-Cavalier theory can blur as much as it clarifies.
Many of those whose ancestors would have been very critical or hostile of the Confederacy in the 1860s, now assume it spoke for them and fought their fight. It's an indication of how historical understandings change and symbols take on different meanings, but it shouldn't be allowed to govern our understanding of the past. Present-day political divisions get projected back on the past. People want to believe that all the libertarians were on one side and all the statists on the other. In fact, things were much messier, and confused by regional interests and the issue of slavery. Many who think about the Civil War today tend to get their wires crossed, taking the near anarchic freedom-loving spirit of the back country or Britain's Celtic fringes for the inspiration behind the Old South or the Confederacy, when in fact the positive state-building impulses of the lowlanders played a crucial role in the history of the 19th century South.
The United States grew out of the interaction of a variety of different groups. It's certainly possible to wish that history had unfolded differently, but it's doubtful that one group alone -- whether libertarian backcountry pioneers, public-spirited Virginians, learned Yankees, pragmatic New Yorkers, or temperate Philadelphians -- could have done a better job by themselves without the moderating or inspiring influence of the others. Left to themselves, the various groups that made the country would probably have done a worse job than the nation to which they all contributed did.
It's just that when people start to make the Old South or the Confederacy a particular repository of virtue or victimhood, and the rest of the country evil and oppressive that people take exception. In other words, I doubt anyone here is going to start a conversation by running down the South, but when someone tries to make the Confederacy a model of freedom, people naturally object.
The real South of today is fine, and the rest of the country can learn much from it. But the mythic or legendary South that was always right and always victimized is a burden that modern Americans can do with out. We can find many things to in 19th century America that were good and many that were bad, but it's not likely that we need to bring back Jefferson Davis and make him our hero any more than we need to bring back Franklin Pierce or Chester A. Arthur.
I don't have any problem with Southerners taking pride in their history. But so much of that history is American or United States history and so little is the history of intersectional war that it seems a pity to emphasize four little years out of four hundred.
Maybe we should talk about ways we can increase or preserve our liberties, but the rebellion of 1861 and the Confederacy weren't means towards that end in the past, and they certainly won't make anyone any freer now.
"Northern men, Northern mothers, Northern Christians, have something more to do than denounce their brethren at the South; they have to look to the evil among themselves."
in your dreams lightweight.
Since you sothron types won't even admit that the southern rebellion was based on defense of slavery then I don't see this happening any time soon, either.
You're the first.
Lincoln prosecuted a war that was thrust upon him. He had little choice other than bow to southern aggression and turn over forts and facilities that belonged to the U.S. It was the Davis regime that turned to war to settle the matter, not the Lincoln Administration. So the question you should be asking was why slavery was worth launching a war over?
...attempt to generate a coherent (I know, it will be difficult for you)...
It appears from reading our posts that coherence is not the problem here. It's comprehension on your part.
As with the article, many of us spend a great deal of time countering the converse argument with respect to the North (i.e. yankees=all good). I think that most here would grant that the CSA was not the pinnacle of western civilization; hopes that it might have become so are merely speculation. Why do their opponents stubbornly insist that the Union was?
So, in your preschool room everone speaks the same language then?
Hyuk, hyuk, hyuk. I'll bet you have visions of giving up your day job for life as a stand-up comedian, don't you?
There's that comprehension problem of your's again. President Lincoln didn't go to war, he accepted the war that was initiated by the Davis regime. The forts and facilities were the property of the U.S. government and were located in what the administration believed were U.S. states and cities. Why shouldn't he want to hold on to them?
Why didn't he just accept the Southern commissioners and negotiate?
Negotiate the settlement of propety already seized by the confederacy, or that which they were preparing to bombard into submission? In other words, negotiate with a confederate gun pointed at his head. Doesn't it seem reasonable to expect negotiation before disposition of the property in question? Why didn't the confederates negotiate a settlement before they stole the property? That is, if they were serious about a fair and reasonable settlement that is.
Were their other USA military outposts in foreign lands prior to the war?
No, and there were no USA military outposts in foreign lands at the outbreak of the war, either.
"The time for compromise has now passed, and the South is determined to maintain her position, and make all who oppose her smell Southern powder and feel Southern steel" -Jefferson Davis, Feb 16th, 1861
Meredith - "According to those flat bellied experts, I should have taken a dirt nap 30 years ago............but they keep dyin'.........and I'm still here. Ya know.........sometimes I think God forgot about me.......Just goes to show ya........."
Lemon - "Show ya what?"
Meredith - "Huh?"
Lemon - "Goes to show ya what pa?"
Meredith - "Well, it just goes to sh............uh....what the hell are you talkin' about?"
Lemon - "You said, 'it just goes to show ya', and ........well goes to show ya what? I thought there's gonna be a moral."
Meredith - "Moral? Nahhh there ain't no moral...............I just like that story."
[G] Such is the conversation, when you're involved.
So you can 'accept a war' without 'going to war'? I think they call that unconditional surrender, yet somehow what Lincoln did does not impress me as being unconditional surrender, you aside your rediculous symantics games I think my meaning was clear. Oddly, as I stated before here we are talking about your diversion into the mind of the Lincoln instead of answering a simple question.
The forts and facilities were the property of the U.S. government and were located in what the administration believed were U.S. states and cities.
Does that make it a religious quest? I wish you'd clarify. When we abandon an embassy, it's US property, on US soil; is it your contention that whenever we do so it should be immediately followed be invasion and wholesale destruction of both military and civilian assets?
Negotiate the settlement of propety already seized by the confederacy,
Surely you are not suggesting that our government is agianst this... Maybe you should spend some time reading about asset forfeiture over on the WOD threads.
Fourth time, Non: Why did Southern independence have to be quashed, given that the men doing it cared nothing for ending slavery. Ready, on your marks, get set.... GO (x4)!
The Missouri Compromise was 'The Compromise of 1820' which established the "northern limit" of slavery in the territories at 36'30". It was undone by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. This article mentions the Compromise of 1850. That is not the Missouri Compromise.
The Compromise of 1850 admitted California as a free state while extending the Missouri Compromise line westward thorugh the new western territories gained after the Mexican-American War.
Very strange logic. Did you ever hear of Pearl Harbor? The US accepted a war on Dec. 7, 1941. We accepted another on Sept. 11, 2001. It's not what we wanted. It was given to us and we accepted it as a fact.
What you insist Lincoln should have done is no different than demanding that FDR or G. W. Bush simply fold the flag and allow our enemies to do what they pleased. It sounds like something a Deanie Baby would say.
This was my conclusion as well, I'm glad we see eye to eye on your thinking.
Did you ever hear of Pearl Harbor?
Pearl Harbor? What's that?
The US accepted a war on Dec. 7, 1941.
The US didn't "go to war" with the Japanese? All them old timers at the VFW are faking it to get cheaper beer or what?
What you insist Lincoln should have done is no different than demanding that FDR or G. W. Bush simply fold the flag and allow our enemies to do what they pleased.
Osama bin Laden and Hirohito sent peace commissioners to talk with FDR and GW? You mean they could've opened a line of communication that might have saved countless Americans and stubbornly chose not to do so, even if unwilling to negotiate? I guess maybe the analogy fails on so many other points that you'd not made it to consideration of that point.
It sounds like something a Deanie Baby would say.
Typical FR tactic, I thought you were above it.
As economics includes the natural resource bases to which a government may avail itself, including those occupied or conquered, it is inherently obvious that your understanding of history is on par with your understanding of economics. Any war over territorial dominion is a war involving economics.
Books have been written on the topic, but I suggest you avail yourself of an encyclopedia and look up the causes of those wars. I will not write volumes here in rebuttal to indicate the obvious.
Their profit margins in the 10 years leading up to the war had never been higher.
Again, economics apply. If your profit is higher (by expanding the size of your operation, like the vanishing independant farmers of today are being absorbed by larger operations), then there is in one sort of reckoning, only an increase in the amount of money the government is taking from you if you cannot effectively trade with whom you wish without punitive tarrifs.
As an analogy, if you make $20,000 per year, your income tax (bottom line, how much paid)is a relative pittance to the person who makes $100,000 per year.
If that tax is percieved as being unbalanced on a regional basis, if Californians paid Federal income tax at twice the rate New Yorkers did, y'all would have your dander up, too.
The leaders of the times were not hell-bent on freeing slaves, with the exception of a few Abolitionists. Especially Northern leaders who would see a rapid diminuition in taxable trade as farm econcmies collapsed. The slaves were the labor which harvested profitable, but labor-intensive crops. Some, such as tobacco, still have no effective mechanical means of being worked or harvested.
For Southern leaders to advocate forced manumission would have been tantamount to to the Iowa Governor advocating a tractor ban in Iowa.
So don't expect to see comments from the political leaders of the times.
However, when one does the simple arithmetic on how much it costs to feed, clothe, house, and provide health care for an employee 24/7/365 versus paying a wage and letting the employee fend for themselves, the equation works out toward manumission. Contrary to tedious Northern stereotypes of Southerners, then and now, simple arithmetic was not beyond even the 'aristocracy'. Manumission was on the rise. I suggest you do further research into how many slaves were owned, including those owned by free blacks.
I heartily reccommend sources published prior to the revisions of the 1930's, and especially prior to the 1960's, whence much has been obfusticated by political agendae, especially those of the NAACP and the Reparationists.
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