Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a famous antislavery novel by the American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. It first appeared as a serial in the abolitionist newspaper National Era in 1851 and 1852. The novel was published as a book later in 1852 and quickly became a best seller in the United States and the United Kingdom.
Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin to criticize slavery, which she considered a national sin. She hoped that her novel would help bring slavery to an early and peaceful end. However, the book increased the hostility of many Northerners toward the South. Southerners, on the other hand, considered Stowe’s description of slavery inaccurate. They called the book an insult and an injustice. Historians believe that the bitter feelings aroused by Stowe’s book helped cause the American Civil War (1861-1865).
The chief character in Uncle Tom’s Cabin is Uncle Tom, an elderly and dignified enslaved Black man. The story describes Tom’s experiences with three slaveholders. Two of them—George Shelby and Augustine St. Clare—treat Tom kindly. But the third, Simon Legree, abuses Tom and has him brutally beaten for refusing to tell where two escaped enslaved people are hiding. Tom dies from the beating. A subplot of the novel tells about an enslaved family—George and Eliza and their baby—who flee to freedom in Canada. In one famous episode, Eliza, clutching her baby, escapes across the frozen Ohio River from pursuers who are trying to capture them. Two other characters in the book are Topsy, a mischievous Black girl, and Little Eva, St. Clare’s young daughter. The death of Little Eva is another famous episode.
The novel presents a realistic account of American life 10 years before the Civil War. Stowe created a vivid picture of Southern life, with Tom being sold from one slaveowner to another. Uncle Tom’s Cabin also describes the upper Midwest as seen by George and Eliza as they flee northward into Canada.
After the Civil War, Uncle Tom’s Cabin became known chiefly through abridgments of the novel and through plays based on the book. However, these versions distorted the original story and characters. By the late 1800’s, most people believed that Uncle Tom’s Cabin dealt primarily with the death of Tom and Little Eva, Topsy’s antics, and Eliza’s escape. The term “Uncle Tom” came to stand for a Black man who, for selfish reasons or through fear, adopts a humble manner to gain favor with white people. But the novel portrayed Tom as a brave man who dies rather than betray two fellow enslaved people. Few people realized that Simon Legree, the cruel villain, was a Northerner, and that Augustine St. Clare, a Southerner, recognized the evils of slavery.
The famous American critic Edmund Wilson wrote that reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin for the first time may be a “startling experience.” He stated that “it is a much more remarkable book than one had ever been allowed to suspect.”
