Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

First published: 1851–52, serial; 1852, book

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Social realism

Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century

Locale: Kentucky and Mississippi

Principal Characters

• Uncle Tom, a slave
• Mr. Shelby, a plantation owner
• George Shelby, his son
• Haley, a slave dealer
• Eva St. Clare, the daughter of a wealthy southerner
• Simon Legree, a planter
• Eliza, a runaway slave
• Harry, her son
• Topsy, a young slave

The Story

Because his Kentucky plantation is encumbered by debt, Mr. Shelby makes plans to sell one of his slaves to his chief creditor, a New Orleans slave dealer named Haley. The dealer shrewdly selects Uncle Tom as partial payment on Shelby’s debt. While Haley and Shelby are discussing the transaction, Harry, the son of another slave, Eliza, comes into the room. Haley wants to buy Harry too, but at first Shelby is unwilling to part with the child. Eliza hears enough of the conversation to be frightened. She confides her fears to George Harris, her husband, a slave on an adjoining plantation. George, who is already bitter because his master has put him to work in the fields when he is capable of doing better work, promises that someday he will have his revenge on his hard masters. Eliza has been brought up more indulgently by the Shelbys, and she begs George not to try anything rash.

After supper, the Shelby slaves gather for a meeting in the cabin of Uncle Tom and his wife, Aunt Chloe. They sing songs, and young George Shelby, who has eaten his supper there, reads from the Bible. In the big house, Mr. Shelby signs the papers making Uncle Tom and little Harry the property of Haley. Eliza, upon learning her child’s fate from some remarks made by Mr. Shelby to his wife, flees with Harry, hoping to reach Canada and safety. Uncle Tom, hearing that he has been sold, resigns himself to the wisdom of Providence.

The next day, after Haley discovers his loss, he sets out to capture Eliza. She has a good head start, however, and Mrs. Shelby purposely delays Haley’s pursuit by serving a late breakfast. When Eliza catches sight of her pursuers, she escapes across the partially frozen Ohio River by jumping from one piece of floating ice to another, with young Harry in her arms. Haley hires two slave catchers, Marks and Loker, to track Eliza and Harry through Ohio. If they catch her and her son, they are to be given Eliza as payment for their work. They set off that night.

Eliza and Harry, on the run, find shelter in the home of Senator and Mrs. Bird. The senator takes them to the house of a man known to aid fugitive slaves. Uncle Tom, however, is not so lucky. Haley makes sure that Tom will not escape by shackling his ankles before taking him to the boat bound for New Orleans. When young George Shelby hears that Tom has been sold, he follows Haley on his horse. George gives Tom a dollar as a token of his sympathy and tells the slave that he will buy him back one day.

At the same time, George Harris begins his escape. Light-skinned enough to pass as a Spaniard, he appears at a tavern as a gentleman and takes a room there, hoping to find help through the Underground Railroad before too long. Eliza is resting at the home of Rachel and Simeon Halliday when George Harris arrives in the same Quaker settlement.

On board the boat bound for New Orleans, Uncle Tom saves the life of young Eva St. Clare, and in gratitude Eva’s father purchases the slave from Haley. Eva tells Tom that he will now have a happy life, for her father is kind to everyone. Augustine St. Clare is married to a woman who imagines herself sick and therefore takes no interest in her daughter, Eva. St. Clare had gone north to bring his cousin, Miss Ophelia, back to the South to provide care for the neglected and delicate Eva. When they arrive at the St. Clare plantation, Tom is made head coachman.

Meanwhile, Loker and Marks are on the trail of Eliza, George, and Harry. They catch up with the fugitives, and in a fight George wounds Loker. Marks flees, and the Quakers who have been protecting the runaways take Loker along with them and give him medical treatment.

Unused to lavish southern customs, Miss Ophelia tries to understand the South. Shocked at the extravagance of St. Clare’s household, she attempts to bring order out of the chaos, but she receives no encouragement. Indulgent in all things, St. Clare is indifferent to the affairs of his family and his property. Uncle Tom lives an easy life in the loft over the stable. He and little Eva become close friends, with St. Clare’s approval. Sometimes St. Clare has doubts regarding the morality of the institution of slavery, and, in one of these moods, he buys an odd, pixie-like slave child, named Topsy, for his prim and proper New England cousin to educate.

Eva grows increasingly frail. Knowing that she is about to die, she asks her father to free his slaves, as he has so often promised he will one day do. After Eva’s death, St. Clare begins to read his Bible and to make plans to free all his slaves. He gives Topsy to Miss Ophelia legally, so that the spinster might rear the child as she wishes. Then, one evening, while trying to separate two quarreling men, he receives a knife wound in the side and dies shortly afterward. Mrs. St. Clare, who inherits all his property, has no intention of freeing the slaves, and she orders that Tom be sent to the slave market. At a public auction, Tom is sold to a brutal plantation owner named Simon Legree.

Legree drinks heavily, and his plantation house has fallen into ruin. He keeps dogs for the purpose of tracking runaway slaves. At the plantation’s slave quarters, Tom is given a sack of corn for the week; he is told to grind it himself and bake the meal into cakes for his supper. At the mill where he goes to grind the corn, Tom aids two women, and in return, they bake his cakes for him. He reads selections from the Bible to them.

For a few weeks, Tom quietly tries to please his harsh master. One day, while picking cotton, he helps another slave, a woman who is sick, by putting cotton into her basket. For this act, Legree orders him to flog the woman. When Tom refuses, Legree has him flogged until he faints. A slave named Cassy comes to Tom’s aid. She tells Tom the story of her life with Legree and of a young daughter who had been sold years before. Then she goes to Legree’s apartment and torments him. She hates her master, and she has power over him. Legree is superstitious, and when Cassy talks, flashing her eyes at him, he feels as though she is casting an evil spell. Haunted by the secrets of his guilty past, he drinks until he falls asleep. By the next morning, however, he has forgotten his fears, and he knocks Tom to the ground with his fist. Meanwhile, far to the north, George and Eliza and young Harry are making their way slowly through the stations on the Underground Railroad toward Canada.

Cassy and Emmeline, another slave, are determined to make their escape. Knowing the consequences if they should be caught, they trick Legree into thinking they are hiding in the swamp. When Legree sends dogs and men after them, they sneak back into the house and hide in the garret. Legree suspects that Tom knows where the women have gone and decides to beat the truth out of him. He has Tom beaten until the slave can neither speak nor stand. Two days later, George Shelby arrives to buy Tom back, but he is too late—Tom is dying. When George threatens to have Legree tried for murder, Legree mocks him. George strikes Legree in the face and knocks him down.

Still hiding in the attic, Cassy and Emmeline masquerade as ghosts. Frightened, Legree drinks harder than ever, and George Shelby is able to help them escape. Later, on a riverboat headed north, the two women meet a lady named Madame de Thoux, who says that she is George Harris’s sister. With this disclosure, Cassy learns also that Eliza, her daughter who had been sold years before, is the Eliza who married George and, with him and her child, has escaped safely to Canada. These relatives are reunited in Canada after many years. In Kentucky, George Shelby frees all of his slaves in the name of Uncle Tom.

Bibliography

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