What Is Slavery In Uncle Tom's Cabin

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Recommended: History of slavery and its impact on US society

History 1000 Saturday Class May 10, 2014
Views on American Slavery Based on the Novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin
1. In Uncle Tom’s Cabin, on one hand, slaves had a relatively stable life and were treated rather fairly when their master’s family was affluent, but, on the other hand, when the master dies their lives were uncertain. They lacked the real security that only the abolition of slavery could offer. Harriett Beecher Stowe was appalled by the injustice done to the illiterate and exploited descendents of African Americans by her contemporary society and government. Slaves were treated as livestock by the slaveholders. Slaves were one of their main investments. A prime field hand would cost about $1200 then. The Southern societies had culturally accepted this practice of slaveholding because their plantations depended on slave labor to cultivate them. Majority of the slaveholders did not physically abuse slaves because this would lessen the slaves’ good will and willingness to work. Some of the slaveholders were benevolent to their slaves as treatments depicted by Stowe in the Shelby and St. Claire estates. Mr. Arthur Shelby and Mr. Augustine St. Claire were faithful to their wives and did not father any mulatto children. Mrs. Emily Shelby was kinder to her house hold slaves as we see how she raised Eliza and treated Uncle Tom and Aunt Chloe. Mrs. Shelby raised Eliza as a Christian lady and married her to a good man named George Harris. Eliza’s child Harry had a good childhood as we see in his singing and dancing and mimicry of other people in front of Mr. Shelby and slave trader Mr. Haley. Augustine St. Clare’s affluence and noble character bestowed on the slaves comparatively an easy life. His daughter Evangel...

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... was a democratic expression of popular will. She blames the Southern regions of the country most for slavery’s continued existence. Historically this statement would not be true. The plantations in the Southern states depended on slave labor to cultivate their crops. The businesses and industry in the Northern states depended on the Southern production for their manufacture and trade. Colonization in the context of slavery is transplanting all emancipated slaves in to a new country Liberia in Africa. Real-life whites advocated it because they had racial prejudice about slaves. Real-life blacks did not like this idea. By the time of this novel, slaves had been living in this country for over a century and lost connections with their ancestral land. They did not want to lose their American culture and acquiring a new African culture would be difficult for them.

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