Anti-Slavely in Uncle Tom's Cabin - Essay Example

? Harriet Beecher Stowe did not have much interest in slavery early in her life. It was a geographically isolated evil; and while she had heard accounts of slaveholder brutality and slave ingenuity in escaping; she had little interest in publicizing the stories she was personally acquainted with; neither those she directly experienced or those related via her brother. In her mind it was a temporary institution. Its consignment to the rubbish heap of history inevitable, so she thought. Until that is, the ratification of a new Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, enhancing the rights of slave-catchers to pursue their quarry, and threatening the rights of already freed blacks. Not only were slave hunters allowed to chase of their quarry in any of the northern states, abduct freed blacks, and claim the right to enslave them before a magistrate (who would gain a cash bounty for sentencing a black to be dragged back to slavery) (1) – the new law mandated that regular white citizens were now required to assist slave catchers in their grim work. Regardless of prior positions, the Fugitive slave act of 1850 was a watershed moment. Whites in the South and North alike were directly affected by the institution of this Compromise of 1850, the body of legislation that included far more stringent Fugitive Slave restrictions and demands. Southern slave masters holding African Americans as bondage chattel could be justified in feeling a greater sense of security and confidence in the disposition of their property, thanks to a mandate that not only allowed, but required the forcible capture from Northern Law-enforcement institutions; followed by the return of slaves who had fled to supposed freedom in the North. Northerners, now required to assist in the pursuit of slaves, found themselves deeply enmeshed in what Stowe would refer to as the "patriarchal institution." Could anyone deny that enforced compliance with the Fugitive Slave Act was effectively the same as support for slavery itself? To the consternation of many Northerners, the answer was clear. Defiance of the act exposed an individual to fines and imprisonment. However one personally felt about the Fugitive Slave Act itself, no longer could slavery be thought of as a strictly Southern system. There were a number of high-profile cases in which fugitive slaves were captured in cities as far north as Boston and sent South. Could anyone watch the public spectacle of a once free black man being dragged through the streets in chains on his way to torture, and oppression and yet remain ambivalent? Historians disagree to what extent the fugitive slave act galvanized sectional interests. But there was no doubt that the abolitionist movement was galvanized. When Stowe encountered otherwise honest, 'Christian' men and women suggesting that it was a patriotic duty to aid in the capture of slaves fleeing their oppression; she concluded that people must not really know what slavery is. She herself had no qualms about risking the fines, and or jail sentences by assisting her own household servant in fleeing to Canada. She explained herself, and her reversal of her earlier modesty as follows: "Up to this year I have always felt that I had no particular call to meddle with this subject, and I dreaded to expose even my own mind to the full force of its exciting power. But I feel now that the time is come when even a woman or a child who can speak a word for freedom and humanity is bound to speak. . . (2) " Thus, Stowe endeavored to correct this public ignorance of "what an accursed thing slavery is" with, what became the second most popular book of the 19th Century – second only to the Bible, to Mrs. Stowe's surprise; emerging as an international, polarizing sensation; which created a demand for her to launch three European publicity tours. (3) in this matter, Mrs. Stowe served as an example representative to her generation of women. For while many conventions of Victorian modesty remained extant, a movement of white, middle-class women was becoming more active in the public sphere than ever before in the Western world. The beginnings of a movement that would cultivate in women's suffrage. In this regard she was the preeminent trendsetter. The shape of her anti-slavery message came in the form of an emotional appeal, to be sure But in accomplishing this, Stowe was not simply attempting to tug at the heartstrings of her audience, through the piteous plights of 'life among the lowly'; she was attempting to counter the racist popular prejudice of the day; that blacks are some lower caste of animal without human feeling - lower beings without heartstrings of their own. Her primary audience in this endeavor was educated, Christian whites. Although in her manifesto following the novel itself, she does make reference to people from all sections of the country joining together in opposition of the institution. Necessity would dictate a primarily white audience, because it is whites who held the power to determine the slavery issue. And it was to her white brethren that she needed to communicate the humanity; the slaves toiling, suffering, and being torn from their loved ones already knew that they had human feelings, it was generally white Northerners who doubted it. In addressing the novel itself, there are a number of substantive and literary criticisms that reveal themselves. Modern authors would consider it detrimental to the stream of consciousness to add extraneous narration that takes the reader out of the story. Such as the numerous instances during the book where Stowe – as the author addresses the audience directly. But this technique was apparently common in many writings during the Victorian period. Present literary convention prefers to show, rather than tell, allowing the reader to have his own feelings, and impressions rather than Stowe telling us her opinions, on what we should feel/experience. The message itself is intensely propagandist towards a Christian ideology. But in the character of uncle Tom, the intense religiosity, against a broader perspective becomes a two edged sword. While there is little doubt that many a desperate, abused slave no doubt took great comfort in the promises of the Bible, the slave masters themselves could, and did adapt Christianity to service their own agenda. Uncle Tom's devotion appears to be integral to his refusal to attempt his own freedom. His self-sacrificing, moralistic sense gave him loyalty to each of his oppressors. He did not seem to believe in the rightness of slavery itself as an institution, yet his morality forced him into a position where anything he might do to escape would constitute a breach of trust and violation of his personal code. In this manner, his honesty and religiosity could be seen as supportive of the slavery system that was responsible for his own suffering and abuse, especially at the hands of Legree, his final owner. Today his name has become an epithet, designating a sort of 'racial Judas', supporting oppression in betrayal of his own people. But at the end of the story, there is no basis for a judgment of any sort of ethnic treason. On the plantation of his final master, he suffers his first round of tortures for his refusal to take up the whip against another slave – as his final master attempts to corrupt him into every bit a child of hell as his two black overseers. In fairness, it is Sambo and Quimbo who are the traitors to their race, if anyone is. Ultimately, Tom is tortured to death for refusing to reveal the escape plan of Cassy and Emmeline. Knowing full well that Legree has 'counted the cost', and is fully prepared to mete out a slow and hideous death, he resists divulging the plan in the face of the brutality which; due to irrepressible Victorian sensibilities; Stowe could not describe in graphic detail. In this sacrifice, Tom achieves a sort of Christlike apotheosis – as well as a sort of redemption for his manhood after his worshipful servility towards the much beloved 'Little Eva,' child of his second master. Stowe makes the case of Christianity being the hope and salvation of all nations, and in her retelling all her sympathetic characters, despite any initial skepticism eventually become converted. But for the slave, Christian faith could just as easily be a tool of bondage. One can make the argument that the preponderance of religious imagery, including direct scriptural quotes is an expression of conventional Christian ideology as a vehicle to grant psychological legitimacy for the practice of slavery within the mind of the slave himself. Stowe assuredly did not intend this, but the biblical exhortations of honesty, and loyalty of servants to their masters, could and were extended as a principle justification for permanent, racial chattel slavery. Malcolm-X's deliberate rejection of Christ becomes comprehensible under this perspective. Some shackles are external in the form of literal iron chains or the overseers whip, but other restraints are the ones in which the slave, the titular character uncle Tom being the principal example, imposes upon himself. Thus, the self-serving hypocrisy of the slave master's religion becomes yet another shackle utilized artfully by the masters, in the continual bondage of the black population, both in the mind and in the body. Uncle Tom in this case becomes a tragic figure because the very religion which controls his reality, and thus the reality of most slaves while shackling him; sustains him even as it provides the impetus for his remaining in bondage. Past scholars have posed the question of what prevented the emergence of a black Spartacus, in the deep South in response to the crushing oppression of the slavery system. Why were there not more Nat Turners? Most older slave states, Imperial Rome being the principal example – absorbed territory outwards from a central power base. This enabled military, economic, and cultural Imperial domination of the regions into which their influence spread. Conquered territories were pressed into the Roman way of life, yet still retained full knowledge of who they had once been, and where they came from. The ancient Spartacus knew who he was, where he came from – and who his gods were. Even if those particular details have been lost to historians, the man himself knew. But the mobility permitted by trans Atlantic travel, and the eventual European facility to penetrate remote corners of west Africa allowed for a more profound separation. Add to that the island-like isolation of the plantation system. There were many instances in the ancient world, of the vast urban populations, where the citizens – and slaves were heavily concentrated. But with plantations, many of which are separated by many miles, assembling – and organizing a large enough slave force would have been exceedingly implausible before a white militia could have organized to meet them. Descendents of African captives would emerge in America, knowledge of their prior language forbidden; nothing to tie them to their past origins. No gods of their own, no real conception of history as a race. Descendents of different West Africans would have been thrown together, all under the same heel. Thus whatever original tribal ties, and ancestral identity they once possessed would have defused to nothingness in their children, and their children's children. The cultural void that resulted from this isolation proved an opportunity for the slave states to dictate reality. "Blacks are a degraded race," became a common supposition, as the white supremacist pyramid of human existence came to fruition. During a coach ride scene in Uncle Tom's Cabin, an abolitionist passenger asks the ambivalent apologist whether her children should be bought and sold, like so much cattle – and how she would feel about it. The apologist responds, "we cannot reason with our own feelings such things." Reflecting the common conceit among whites that African Americans are soulless animals without human feelings. The presumption is one of a degraded being, some crude – accursed descendent of the First Murderer, allegedly marked for his crime with black skin. Ideas such as this gave rise to notions that blacks somehow cannot form families, or love their children. A convenient justification for breaking apart those phantom families; selling married men and women, and their children separately – as though they were interchangeable action figures. An excuse perhaps, but it does appear from other sources, biographies of Frederick Douglass for example – that these were the honest convictions of millions of white Americans. Northerners were taken in, Southerners believed to their own propaganda, blinding themselves to their shared humanity. Commonly held theories near the middle of the 19th century were disdainful of the prospect of blacks as soldiers, against the uprising of the Confederacy. Their supposedly 'jungle nature' would cause them to run for the trees, and make marching in formation impossible. To the extent that these quasi-biological notions held sway, black Americans never had a chance for equality. The propagandist justifications for slavery took on a life of their own, both apologizing for and perpetuating the exploitation. For the slave himself, such as Uncle Tom, all he had to cling to, to sustain him was the religion of his oppressors, strategically preached in white churches to paint the slave system as an expression of Divine Providence. As Douglass notes in his biography, as a boy he was taught, quite simply – "that white people were made to be masters, and black people made to be slaves." (4) For those under such a system, it became easier by far to accept their servitude; the new slave identity taking the place of their once African heritage. The chains deprived the slave of freedom, while adding a new identity to justify the loss of that freedom. How much more difficult would it become, for any other would be Nat Turner's to find something to fight for, something to believe in other than the identity they had known their entire lives; than for Spartacus, who had never forgotten who and what he was. Just as these quasi-biological presumptions of black inhumanity prevented acceptance; insured prejudice in North and the South, Harriet Beecher Stowe seeks to combat the popular wisdom that blacks are soulless brutes without loving ties, with a portrait of humanity. Dry lectures extolling particular virtues, using the tools of argumentative rhetoric have definite limits. One can wrestle with the logic of a proposition, or the illogic of a prevailing institution, but it is in emotion that motivation lies – and the people of the 19th century had to be motivated to attempt an end to slavery. The form of the novel puts us into the shoes of thinking, feeling creatures, caught in the throes of a merciless system. – men and women without a country. As the character George Harris insisted to the factory owner where he had proven his ingenuity. During George's flight to the North he happened upon a familiar face, and in George's encounter the logic of freedom and the passion for it combined. George Harris, and Uncle Tom, and Elisa, Adolph, and Cassy and millions of others are 'exiles in the lands of their birth', with no true country. As the factory owner was attempting to argue with George against the illegality of his flight North he maintained an insistence to try and 'speak good' to George, arguing that he was breaking the laws of his country. But George reminded the man of his own fourth of July speeches when he extols government deriving its power from the consent of the governed. But there was no such consent asked for, nor possible for America's dark children. This state of landless, non-citizenship was reinforced by the infamous Dred Scott decision. With no voting power, no constitutional protection, no right to petition the government for grievances – and with no rights that the white man was bound to respect, the troubles of Frederick Douglass at the American Embassy in England were quite plausible. Douglass was told, when attempting to gain the documentation of this citizenship from the embassy that he might travel to France, that he was not a citizen of the United States. For him and then, and those of similar color the injustice of this denial of country is sharpened by the works of Mrs. Stowe. In regards to future political solutions, other criticisms can be made concerning the ideology espoused during the narrative at the end of the story. Mrs. Stowe espouses black colonization doctrine, but only after the liberated slaves have received education and humanitarian comfort by sympathetic Northerners. Yet one is reminded of the example she herself gave, enter interactions with the orphaned slave child known only as 'Topsy', and the Northerner Ms. Ophelia. Any and all attempts to civilize the unruly, mischievous little girl were doomed to failure – because Topsy knew that the people attempting to educate and control her were not truly concerned for her welfare. Ms. Ophelia on principle opposed slavery, yet she shrank at the prospect of any actual physical contact, or interaction with the little black girl. Only the example of Little Eva allowed her to feel affection for those she had previously looked down upon – only by that investment of emotion was she been able to reach the little black orphan. One then cannot avoid wondering, upon reading Mrs. Stowe's suggestion of colonization whether she is violating her on principle, does she think black Americans unworthy of these United States? Or is there a sort of paternalistic expectations that we cannot flourish amidst the white population? The exact extent of her paternalism is not readily apparent. There are other instances of condescension, however. Mrs. Stowe often asserts, during her direct author addresses to the audience that blacks have a more emotional and sensitive nature, suggested by her statement that the instinctive affections of that race (Negroes) are 'peculiarly strong'. Or her suggestion that cooking is an 'indigenous talent' of the African race. There is also the case where she waxes eloquent by describing the Negro as : “an exotic of the most gorgeous and superb countries of the world and he has, deep in his heart a passion for all that is splendid, rich, and fanciful; a passion which, rudely indulged by an untrained taste draws on them the ridicule of the colder and more correct white race." (5) It might be easy to find fault with her assumptions of certainty concerning the emotional character, and defining traits of an entire race of people. Yet again, while Mrs. Stowe is not truly an unbiased, unprejudiced observer – virtually no one in her century was either. And thus, Uncle Tom's Cabin finds itself in the curious position of utilizing popular prejudice as a way to fight popular prejudice. And for the place and time in which it was written, it was arguably just what was needed. REFERENCES 1. Harriet Beecher Stowe Center. 2011. "Uncle Tom's Cabin, Slavery, and the Civil War." Copyright © 2011 Harriet Beecher Stowe Center. All Rights Reserved. 2011. http://www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org/utc/ Accessed 11/12/2011. 2. Michael Winship, Michael. 2007. "Uncle Tom's Cabin: History of the Book in the 19th-Century United States" This essay derives from a presentation at the June 2007 Uncle Tom's Cabin in the Web of Culture conference, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, and presented by the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center (Hartford, CT) and the Uncle Tom's Cabin & American Culture Project at the University of Virginia. 2007. 3. Harriet Beecher Stowe Center. 2011. "Impact of Uncle Tom's Cabin, Slavery, and the Civil War." Copyright © 2011 Harriet Beecher Stowe Center. All Rights Reserved. http://www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org/utc/impact.shtml. Accessed 11/12/2011. 2011. 4. Douglass, Frederick. 1883. The Autobiography of Frederick Douglass. Wilder Publications (November 24, 2008) ISBN - 978-1604592344. 1883. 5. Stowe, Harriet Beecher. 1852. Uncle Tom's Cabin: Or, Life Among the Lowly. Oxford University Press (July 21, 2011) ISBN. 978-0199841431. 1852. Read More