Uncle Toms Cabin: A 19th-Century Bestseller

http://bindings.lib.ua.edu/gallery/uncletom.html

Uncle Toms Cabin: A 19th-Century Bestseller

Exposed to slavery and its effects for most of her life,
Harriet Beecher Stowe finally decided to do
something about the wretched evil after Congress
passed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. She combined
her disgust for slavery with her story-telling skills to
create Uncle Toms Cabinthe first American fiction
work to become an international bestseller, and the
reason Abraham Lincoln allegedly called Stowe the
little lady who made this big war.

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Uncle Tom's Cabin
(Trischler and Company, 1891)

By the time of Stowes birth in 1811, Americans had been arguing about slavery for
decades. This debate reached fever pitch during her childhood, when the Missouri
Compromise banned slavery above 3630 north latitude. Stowes family opposed the
Compromise because it allowed Missouri to enter the Union as a slave state. Her father,
prominent Congregationalist minister Lyman Beecher, preached several anti-slavery
sermons in response to the issue.
Because few slaveholders inhabited Stowes home state of
Connecticut, her New England childhood kept her secluded
from slavery's true horrors. However, Stowes family moved
in 1832 to Cincinnati, Ohio, right across the border from
slaveholding Kentucky. As a teacher at a school for former
slave children there, Stowe learned first hand about the
plight of southern slaves. Some of the things she saw and
heard would become stories in her famous book.
The last chapter of Uncle Toms Cabin contains a brief
explanation of why Stowe wrote the controversial stories.
Stowe said that she, like many northerners, ignored slavery
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because it was too painful to think about, and she thought it
The Life-Work of the Author of Uncle
would go away on its own. The Fugitive Slave Act made her
Tom's Cabin
(Funk and Wagnalls, 1889)
see that would never happen. Writing about herself in third
person, Stowe explained that when she heard, with perfect surprise and consternation,
Christian and humane people actually recommending the remanding of escaped fugitives
into slavery, as a duty binding on good citizensshe could only think, These men and
Christians cannot know what slavery is.
Knowing the racist tendencies of northerners, Stowe understood that pleas for racial
equality would do little to sway public opinion. Instead, she focused on themes of

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religion and the sanctity of family, of human compassion and

cruelty.
Her complex narrative weaves together the stories of Uncle
Tom, who through a series of slave trades winds up in the hands
of the vicious and greedy Louisiana plantation owner Simon
Legree; Eliza, who flees with her son after overhearing that he
is to be sold away from her; the St. Clares and Shelbys,
benevolent white families in New Orleans and Kentucky; slave
hunter Tom Loker; and a number of other white slaveowners,
African slaves, and freed blacks. Stowe based many of the
characters on real people, such as a Maryland-born slave named
Josiah Henson, who escaped to Canada in 1830 on the
Underground Railroad.

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La Case de l'Oncle Tom
(Paris: Ernest Flammarion Editeur,
1928)

The Free Soil newspaper National Era paid Stowe $300 for 40 installments of the
melodrama, Uncle Toms Cabin, or Life Among the Lowly. It published in serial form
for ten months, beginning with the 5 June 1851 issue. Response to the stories encouraged
Stowe to publish them as a novel.
Released on 20 March 1852, Uncle Toms Cabin sold 10,000 copies in the first week and
300,000 within a year. By 1857, the book had been translated into 20 different languages,
and sold more than two million copies worldwide. Next to the Bible, it was the bestselling book of the nineteenth century.
Although Uncle Toms Cabin earned much acclaim, it also has
had its detractors. It was banned as abolitionist propaganda in
the South, and a number of pro-slavery writers responded with
so-called Anti-Tom literature. These novels portrayed slavery
from the southern point of view, in an attempt to show that
Stowe exaggerated her depiction of slaverys evils. Southerners
blamed Stowe's "inaccurate" interpretation on the fact that she
never had set foot in the South. Stowe responded in 1853 with A
Key to Uncle Toms Cabin, a collection of slave narratives,
newspaper clippings, and other facts that verified the details in
her novel.
Later, some readers who agreed with Stowes anti-slavery stance
criticized her for appearing to be condescending and racist
toward blacks. These critics blamed her book for perpetuating
stereotypes such as the happy darky, the tragic mulatto as a sex object, the affectionate
mammy, and pickanniny black children. People even began to label African-Americans
who are too eager to please white people as Uncle Toms.
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Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin
(Clarke, Beeton, & Co., 1853)

Tom shows that began to appear while National Era still was serializing Stowes

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Uncle Toms Cabin: A 19th-Century Bestseller

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stories deepened the stereotypes. Although Stowe never

authorized theatrical adaptations of her book, lax copyright
laws allowed for several companies to stage plays based on
the novel. Many of these were minstrel shows that followed
the stories loosely, using blackface actors to present
exaggerated caricatures of the black characters.
Related Online Resources
The Classic Text: Harriet Beecher Stowe
The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center
Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (essays and
resources about the book)

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Uncle Tom's Cabin: Told to the Children
(T. C. and E. C. Jack, 1904)

Slave Narratives and Uncle Tom's Cabin (PBS.org)

Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture: A Multimedia Archive (The University of
Virginia)

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