Uncle Tom's Cabin

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."

"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..

Gail Jarvis [send him mail], a CPA living in Beaufort, SC, is an advocate of the voluntary union of states established by the founders.

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?

There's no need for a comission with OBL. We know perfectly well what he wants. All we need do is convert to Islam and kill all the Jews, and we'll never have another problem with him. He'll be our brother.

And if we had only allowed Japan to have all of Asia, Hirohito would have been our best friend. Think of all the lives that would have been saved. It's all our fault for getting attacked, don't ya know.

Imagine there's no heaven,
It's easy if you try,
No hell below us,
Above us only sky,
Imagine all the people
living for today...

Imagine there's no countries,
It isnt hard to do,
Nothing to kill or die for,
No religion too,
Imagine all the people
living life in peace...

Imagine no possesions,
I wonder if you can,
No need for greed or hunger,
A brotherhood of man,
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

You may say Im a dreamer,
but Im not the only one,
I hope some day you'll join us,
And the world will live as one.

Barf!

Most southerners on these threads tend to disavow a connection to the southern tidewater aristocracy, preferring to embrace the back country (or upcountry) yeomen as their prototype ancestor. Which is fine except that this group was not the culture that our southern founding fathers sprang from. This group was not much interested in participating in the noble experiment of democracy, and they were not represented well amongst the men who came together in New York and Philidelphia to create this great nation.

As for the tidewater aristocracy, my folks still live on a small fraction of the original land grant, in 1641. I not only do not disavow their presence, I am a descendant. But despite the impoverishment my family suffered as a direct result of the War Between the States, (7/8 of the family land gone, worth (probably) over 1 billion today), the greatest loss was not to us in the sense of having lost tangible wealth, but the Constitutional Republic which the Founders tried to establish. My ancestors took an oath to the Soverign State of Maryland after the Revolution, which gives a perspective on the Soverign status of the individual Former Colonies, and defines the word 'State' as commonly used in the time: to wit, a country. This is why states (even today) have Secretaries of State.

The folks in the 'back country' wanted one thing: to be left alone to succeed or fail on their own merits. It was not until English Army atrocities reached an impermissable level that an army assembled from the hinterlands to defeat a wing of Cornwwallis' Army (I believe it was at Kings' Mountain, but I may be wrong) and then go home.

That defeat for the British, by backwoodsmen fighting for the safety of their families, was one of the events which led to Washington being able to bottle up Cornwallis' army near Yorktown (along with the French Naval intervention), and led to the conclusion of the war.

In either aspect, the tenacious and ferocious fighting for the safety of home and family, as well as the classical education which the 'aristocracy' posessed, we find the culture which gave rise to the Republic. That those of the 'aristocracy' sought to protect the Rights of those in the hinterlands as well as their own interests is another hallmark of the suitability of those men for the enormous task they had at hand. The Southern aversion to the term "Aristocracy" has its roots in the abolition of that status by the selfsame persons who held it, as well as historical abuse by the "Aristocracy" of England and France of their positions of power. Men here were not to be serfs, but citizens.

I understand there are complications in this viewpoint when one factors in slaves, indentured servants, and the indigenous residents, but recall the times and do not judge them by today's standards. A citizen was free, white, 21, and a property owner. Not all were wealthy in terms of liquid assets, and many who owned slaves worked alongside them in the fields. Most did not mistreat so valuable an asset, and in many cases, families were connected until and beyond manumission, whether voluntarily done or by government decree.

Slaves have always been, and continue (in some parts of the world) to be a valuable commodity.

But if slaves were so valuable, there would have been breeding farms which raised only food for the 'livestock' and slaves (didn't happen). If slaves were so valuable, do the descendants of these slave owners not have a case against the North for siezing their property and denying them the use and ownership of that property. Kinda changes the Reparations picture, doesn't it?

Opening new territory without the ability to farm it was useless to both the North and the South. If the Southern economy depended on slaves, then the Northern economy depended on slaves, too, or the raw materials base the North exploited would vanish. Similarly, the Tarrif revenue would vanish as fewer goods would be imported when Southern production came to a standstill. My data is from Maryland, where tobacco harvests were increasingly able to be handled by larger families. And, due to the seasonal demand for labor, slavery was becoming less economical. (Yes, Virginia, Maryland was a Southern State, but y'all took too long to vote on secession, and by then Maryland had been occupied by troops from up north.)

Slavery did not become an defining issue until the North needed Cannon fodder (black troops) and the North tried to foment a rebellion of slaves in the South against their owners, in 1863.

Slaves have always been, and continue (in some parts of the world) to be a valuable commodity.

Slavery did not become an defining issue until the North needed Cannon fodder (black troops) and the North tried to foment a rebellion of slaves in the South against their owners, in 1863.

But if slaves were so valuable, there would have been breeding farms which raised only food for the 'livestock' and slaves (didn't happen).

That is pretty much what was happening in Virginia, Kentucky, and to some degree in Maryland and North Carolina. Slaves were being "sold down the river" to the industrial sized plantation in the deep south. The records exist showing that each year tens of thousands of slaves left the upper south for the much more difficult lives further south.

Also consider this. In the 50 years prior to the war, the slave population of the United States increased nearly four times, and was confined to 15 states of the old south. The birth rate among slaves was several times higher than that of the white population. In South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama, slaves made up between 40% and 55% of the total population while prime land for plantation-based agriculture was running short and the older 'established' plantations were suffering from single-crop soil depletion.

The demographic dynamics of the economy forced the southern leadership to look at expansion of slavery, to the west and to the south, Mexico, and Cuba, as the only viable long-term strategy to assure future prosperity. The ascendance of a "free-soil" party to national dominance was seen by them to be a clear and present danger to their way of life, not because there was a consensus or even a desire in the North to end slavery -- which it could not have done under any circumstances short of war -- but because it promised to contain slavery exactly where it was. With a coming shortage of good land and an every increasing population of slaves, the south saw the prospect of both economic and social ruin in a matter of one or two generations.

If the Southern economy depended on slaves, then the Northern economy depended on slaves, too, or the raw materials base the North exploited would vanish.

It seems that the New England textile mills continued to operate just fine after slavery was abolished. What other southern raw material was critical to the Northern economy?

Stowe was making a Christian appeal. Look into your own hearts Northerners and see the evil. Fine. But Jarvis doesn't respond with a Christian appeal of his own to his fellow Southerners, but with an attack on Northerners that blames them for slavery. It's a whitewash and a pretty contemptible move.

Dewd, If you're asking, why don't today's Northerners look in their hearts rather than blame 19th century Southerners for slavery, the answer is that most Americans today don't think much about slavery at all. When they do, they recognize it as an American failing, not as a specifically Southern one. First of all, regional categories aren't as important to most modern Americans as they are to those posting on this thread. Secondly, lately there have been stories in the press about 18th century slavery in the Northern states. Thirdly, more and more Americans recognize how deeply involved slavery was involved in America's founding. So it's not like everyone in the North wakes up every day gnashing their teeth about long dead Southern slaveowners.

But when someone starts talking about the poor secessionists, who only wanted to live in peace and freedom, anyone who's interested in American history will be obligated to object or comment if they don't share that simplistic view. There was another side of things that apologists for the Confederacy don't know or don't like to talk about or want to hide. And that point of view deserved a hearing.

But all the same, it's not as though contemporary Northerners blame contemporary Southerners for anything that happened before they were born. And even with regard to the Confederate leaders, they were as much misguided or foolish or reckless as they were villains. I accept that in large part they were fighting for freedom as they understood it. But we can't forever refrain from judging whether their understanding of freedom was the best possible understanding or whether it was at all adequate.

I don't have any great emotional investment in America's 19th century leaders: they were only human, they made mistakes and were involved in some unsavory things. But when someone tries to say that the Northerners were all monsters and that Southern leaders, who were implicated in their own abuses and corruptions, were martyrs and victims, I have to object. Just how America is going to get through this political correctness mess isn't clear, but the Confederate strategy of attacking unionists for violating the rules of 21st century political correctness while excusing secessionists isn't going to work. It's unjust, and frankly, stupid. It's hard to think of a better way to cut the ground out from under the foundations of our national institutions.

If you're talking about why 19th century Northerners condemned Southerners and didn't look for evil amongst themselves, that's a harder question. Stowe was living evidence that some did. John Brown was evidence that others probably didn't. We'd have to go back and look at the documents of the times to get a feeling for what most people must have thought.

Some Northern states had gotten rid of slavery 70 years before Stowe wrote. That abolition was quite an achievement and one that Southerners could have emulated. It might have been arrogant for some Northerners to pride themselves on something their grandfathers did generations ago, but it was human and as natural as taking pride in the Revolution of 1776 or in being born Christians rather than pagans. What's surprising may not be that some Northerners were morally arrogant, but that most weren't.

Besides a dedicated nucleus of abolitionists who saw slavery as a focus of evil and evangelicals who prayed for everyone, there were those who just wanted to live their own lives but saw aggressive slaveholders as a disruptive force. They saw attempts to spread slavery to the territories, recapture runaways, overturn personal liberty laws, acquire new slave lands, reestablish the slave trade as threats to their freedom and way of life. They saw unilateral secession as the collapse of the Constitution, liberty, and the American order. We can argue about whether they were right or wrong. They may well have been too sensitive and easily alarmed. The same is true of Southerners who saw an end to slavery's expansion as an assault on the Southern way of life. But most of those who cared at all about political questions were too caught up in the rush of events to exercise the kind of penitent tolerance that wants.

Jarvis acts as though there were only two responses to 19th century America's moral problem: arrogant self-righteous attacks on slavery or tolerant Christian acceptance of it. But there was a third alternative: cynical complicity in the maintenance of slavery. And perhaps even a fourth: spinless passivity in the face of whatever slaveowners wanted to do.

Now in fact, what came after the Civil War and Reconstruction was a Northern tolerance of however Southerners wanted to arrange their own governments. Most Northerners had more or less accepted this principle before the Civil War, though it didn't extend to secession. Was this better or worse than forthright abolitionism? Was the older Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., who accepted whatever states wanted to do including forcibly castration of the simpleminded, better or worse than his younger abolitionist self? I don't claim to know the answer, but things are a lot more complicated than Jarvis wants his readers to think. He plays with ideas of moral superiority and wounded pride, but ignores the difficulties of what we are to do about abuses when we find them in the world.

I didn't say that 19th century America was a "pinnacle of civilization," North or South. In some things there was greater freedom and virtue, in other things not. I do hope most of us love our country and respect its Founders, and I'm willing to admit that most 19th century Southerners saw themselves as being in some way heirs to the Founders. But so did most 19th century Northerners. They certainly wouldn't recognize themselves in some of the absurd caricatures that Rockwell and SIP loyalists paint of them.

I can't deny that there was a connection between Confederacy and the Randolphs, Pinckneys, and Butlers of the Revolution and the early Republic. There was also a clear connection to Jefferson and Washington. But I don't see why anyone would deny the connection between the Lincoln and the Founders -- Washington, Hamilton, Madison, and even Jefferson. Maybe it's malice, or resentment, or a desire to give State's Rights and Jeffersonian constitutional theories a more solid foundation than they in fact have.

It's also hard for me to understand how someone can argue that a victory for the Confederacy would have given us greater freedom and the peace, stability, and prosperity we enjoy today. Libertarian confederates look to be naive rationalists who don't look very closely at conditions in the real world. It might seem logical on the surface that if you let a group break away when it wants to, freedom will be increased, but a look around the world at places similar to the Mississippi Delta or the South Carolina lowlands suggests that oppression and bitter strife would have been the natural result of secession.

There was a real mess brewing in 19th century North America. As bad as things were, they could easily have been much worse. Our larger country made it possible to dilute racial and class conflicts in westward movement and national markets. A smaller country would have choked on such conflicts.

People of the time didn't know what would happen, but they could clearly see the dangers in some of the possible results. If Southerners had made plans for a peaceful, mutual dissolution of the union, it would have happened, but they acted too rashly and provocatively, and an armed response was only natural. It certainly would have been nice if war and its unforseen horrors could have been avoided, but it's unlikely that secession would have made Americans better or freer or happier.

Twenty-first century Confederates seem to be pretty naive people, who assume that we could have more freedom and retain all the advantages of peace, wealth, and security that we have acquired over time, if we radically changed our history and threw away the institutions and compromises of the founding. Nineteenth century Unionists were rather more clear-headed. They looked around the world -- at Haiti, at Latin America, at Africa and Asia, at Europe's failed states -- and concluded that disunity would mean falling under foreign influences and eventually submitting to war, poverty, and tyranny. Maybe they were wrong, but we have to have at least as broad a perspective as they did before we can judge them fairly.

Nineteenth century America and Lincoln were the crucial bridge between the founders and us. Some people want to see a falling away at that time, a loss of the Old Republic. But things could have turned out far worse. Secessionists themselves rejected the Old Republic and secession demonstrated the flaws at the heart of our constitutional union. It didn't last, and that suggests that it probably couldn't have. Whatever happened in mid-19th century America, the result would have been something very different from what had come before. So I'm inclined to praise Lincoln for saving what he could, extending the idea of liberty in an important direction, and trying to put the country back on a sound footing.

I don't idolize Lincoln or idealize his America, but I have to give him and his countrymen some credit for negotiating the sectional, racial, economic, political, and class conflicts of their day. Democracy was coming -- however one understands the word -- and had been on its way since the days of Jefferson and Jackson. Once the franchise was extended, it was bound to be used by the many poor to better their condition more or less at the expense of the wealthy few. Racial animosity was a reality that seemed to have no easy resolution. Some degree of industrialization was unavoidable if the country was to maintain its independence and satisfy popular aspirations. On the whole, I think the US did rather well, given the unavoidable changes and challenges it had to face. It's unlikely that splitting the nation and letting slaveowners had their own country wouldn't have made things any better today.

...they recognize it as an American failing, not as a specifically Southern one....

If only. These threads on FR are proof to the contrary. Ms. Beecher-Stowe's words are still unanswered.

There was another side of things that apologists for the Confederacy don't know or don't like to talk about or want to hide.

Based on the FR threads, that would be the Northern myth-makers attempts to absolve themselves of any regional racist guilt as they blame everything on the South and the Confederacy.

it's not as though contemporary Northerners blame contemporary Southerners for anything that happened before they were born.

lol, what cave have you been living in? No offense man, but that sentence is just make-believe. Take it from this Southerner that very very many Northerners do indeed do just that. And quite a few of them have posted on these FR threads. Not with every post, but it comes out often enough.

I accept that in large part they were fighting for freedom as they understood it. But we can't forever refrain from judging whether their understanding of freedom was the best possible understanding or whether it was at all adequate.

Is the same not true of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and many other slave-owning Founders? I already know your answer, it will be the typical Northern guilt-shift of "they didn't fight to keep their slaves". It's bigger than that. That's what the Northron myth-makers don't understand. An English person opposing the Revolution could easily have made the exact same arguments that Northron myth-makers do, but didn't. They were bigger than that. They had offered freedom to the colonist's slaves if they would oppose the Revolution, just as Lincoln finally ended up doing later in the war. The difference is that England didn't promise "loyal" slave colonies they could keep their slaves like Lincoln did the "loyal" slave-States. The English didn't over-simplify things afterwards to justify their actions and clear their conscience. They were far more honorable.

Just how America is going to get through this political correctness mess isn't clear...

Ain't that the truth. Myth-makers like Jaffa and McPherson certainly fuel the fires of misconception and regional bias.

...but the Confederate strategy of attacking unionists for violating the rules of 21st century political correctness while excusing secessionists isn't going to work.

lol, that "strategy" as you call it, is nothing more than people attempting to point out the hypocrisy of the Northern myth. They don't "excuse" secessionists for it, they point out that the "unionists" were no better. By modern standards, that is. History must be taken in perspective, something the northern myth-makers are unwilling to do.

Most brilliantly stated. I wish that everyone would study history, and not historians.

Some Northern states had gotten rid of slavery 70 years before Stowe wrote. That abolition was quite an achievement and one that Southerners could have emulated.

And what is not ever discussed is that many Northerners had gotten rid of slavery only a decade or less before Stowe wrote. And that some still had it in one form or another. The picture is never drawn clear, and for a reason. To mislead.

lol, so when we discuss the North, 20 percent of the population becomes extrememly significant and represents the whole. right...

...but things are a lot more complicated than Jarvis wants his readers to think.

I wish to G-d you and others would apply this same level of critique to those myth-spinning pets of the Claremont Institute. BTW. Jarvis was only discussing that one book and it's writer's statements about slavery. It was not about the whole war. It was about 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' and how IT related to the war.

Those slaves in Maryland not freed and no longer needed were indeed sold (why keep a labor base you no longer can show a profit on?).

As for breeding farms, please cite a source, this is the first I have heard of it. If slaves were a glut on the market, their value must have already plummeted.

As for New England's textile mills operating after slavery was abolished, (after the war) Carpetbagger-run cotton plantations still existed, only the former slaves were now employees, often of transpalnted northerners.

Were these former slaves better off?

Some were, especially those who had been educated by their masters in a trade or taught to read and write. They left the fields and made their way as free men, even though they were not equal in many respects.

Some probably not, and their descendants (in some cases) continue in slavery, to the Federal welfare system; provided food, health care, and housing by the fedgov 'massah'. One salient difference: the new slaves don't work.

BTW, not only did the colonists of European ancestry not invent slavery, they were not the first to practice it here. Indian tribes had practised slavery throughout the Americas long before the white man came. Oh, jeeez. I forgot. Blue coated soldiers took thir land, too, didn't they?

LINK

Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865.: Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. Volume 6.

Draft of a Communication to Stephen A. Hurlbut [1]

Executive Mansion, Washington, [c.August 15?] 186[3]

The within discusses a difficult subject---the most difficult with which we have to deal. The able bodied male contrabands are already employed by the Army. But the rest are in confusion and destitution. They better be set to digging their subsistence out of the ground. If there are plantations near you, on either side of the river, which are abandoned by their owners, first put as many contrabands on such, as they will hold---that is, as can draw subsistence from them. If some still remain, get loyal men, of character in the vicinity, to take them temporarily on wages, to be paid to the contrabands themselves---such men obliging themselves to not let the contrabands be kidnapped, or forcibly carried away. Of course, if any voluntarily make arrangements to work for their living, you will not hinder them. It is thought best to leave details to your discretion subject to the provisions of the acts of Congress & the orders of the War Department.

By direction of the President.

Annotation

[1] AD, DLC-Nicolay Papers. On August 15, General Stephen A. Hurlbut wrote Lincoln enclosing a letter of his to S. B. Walker, August 10, 1863, in which he gave his personal views concerning the conditions under which Mississippi could return to the Union. Hurlbut designated the letter as a communication to be presented before a reconstruction meeting in Mississippi and expressed the hope that it would meet Lincoln's approval. His comment on the relation of former masters and slaves is as follows: ``So far . . . as the U.States are concerned the relation of master and slave does not exist in Mississippi. . . . and soon the banks of the Great River will bristle with the bayonets of colored Regiments taken from the former slaves of the soil.

``Let this war continue six months and a very heavy proportion of the able bodied negroes of the Insurrectionary States will be in arms. . . .'' (DLC-RTL).

If Lincoln's draft became a letter or order, the original has not been located.

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