Uncle Tom's Cabin

In the mid-19th Century an American woman, Harriet Beecher Stowe, wrote a book that may have been as influential as any written in the next 100 years. Abraham Lincoln was reputed to have said, “So this is the little lady who started this great [Civil] war.” It was, in fact, after the Bible the best-selling book of the 19th Century.

I have read this book and can see why it should be on every American’s must-read list even now. One’s education is incomplete without it.

One of the things I appreciated about the book—and was criticized, of course, as being naïve by our sophisticated skeptics—was the clear demarcation, the black and white contrast, so to speak, between the philosophies and attitudes of morally driven versus secularly or selfishly driven people. In the case of the overarching theme of the book, it was the abolitionists verses the sympathizers of slave-holding. But it was also a depiction, vis-à-vis of two entirely different approaches to life and living and the values associated with the circumstances people find themselves in, or, for those who have a choice, choose to embrace. In the process of creating characters, stereotypes were created, but an honest evaluation of Mrs. Stowe’s purpose shows that they were done for good reason, precisely not to create prejudice or deeper discrimination.

The interaction and contrast between two minor characters of the novel clearly shows an example of polarities that exist between people, why they arose, and the consequences of diametrically different world views. Marie St. Clare, the pampered wife of a slave owner, and Miss Ophelia, the slave owner’s new-England bred cousin give voice to two markedly different attitudes. Hear their interchange:

Slave owner’s wife Marie: “You don’t know what a provoking, stupid, careless, unreasonable, childish, ungrateful set of wretches they are.”

New England cousin Ophelia: “Don’t you believe that the Lord made them of one blood with us?”

Marie: “No, indeed not I! A pretty story, truly! They are a degraded race.”

Ophelia: “Don’t you think they’ve got immortal souls?”

Marie: “ O, well, that, of course—nobody doubts that. But as to putting them on any sort of equality with us, you know, as if we could be compared, why, it’s impossible! “[Take my servant Mammy, she] has a kind of obstinacy about her, in spots, that everybody don’s see as I do.”

Ophelia: “Has she children?”

Marie: “Yes, she has two.”

Ophelia: “I suppose she feels the separation from them?” [She was sold and taken away from her husband and children.]

Marie: “Well, of course, I couldn’t bring them. They were little dirty things—I couldn’t have them about; and, besides, they took up too much of her time; but I believe that Mammy has always kept up a sort of sulkiness about this.” “Mammy couldn’t have the feelings that I should…as if Mammy could love her little dirty babies as I love Eva! You’ll find, when you come to manage, that there’s no getting along without severity,--they are so bad, so deceitful, so lazy.”

Ophelia: “I think you slaveholders have an awful responsibility upon you. I wouldn’t have it for a thousand worlds. You ought to educate your slaves, and treat them like reasonable creatures—like immortal creatures that you’ve got to stand before the bar of God with.”

Marie: “As I said before, they are a degraded race, and always will be, and there isn’t any help for them; you can’t make anything of them if you try.” “There’s no way with servants but to put them down, and keep them down.” “You must make ‘em know their place!”

Well. Though this book is not de Tocqueville, it is a critique of American society that every American must come to grips with.

As with many things, if one strips away the gray subtleties and self-justifications and excuses and rationalizations, there is black and white, good and bad, right and wrong and we all, at the core know it.