22 pages The Origins of a Living Document

Uncle Tom’s Cabin – Fiction as a Catalyst for Fact

The Origins of a Living Document

Stage Night

North and South Polarized: Critics Respond

The Abolitionist Debates

The Tom Caricature

The Greatest Impact

The Origins of a Living Document

In her own words, Harriet Beecher Stowe was compelled to pen Uncle Tom’s Cabin “….because as a woman, as a mother, I was oppressed and broken-hearted with the sorrows and injustice I saw, because as a Christian I felt the dishonor to Christianity -because as a lover of my country, I trembled at the coming day of wrath.”1 Stowe was born in Litchfield, Connecticut on June 14th, 1811. Her strong moral convictions may be attributed to the fact that she was raised as the daughter of a well-known Congregationalist minister, Lyman Beecher.

Harriet was the seventh of nine children, which certainly implies an instilled sense of tolerance, fairness and sharing throughout her upbringing. Her brother Henry was also a popular preacher as well as a leader of the abolitionist movement. Ms. Stowe was privileged to be an educated woman, attending school and later teaching at the Hartford Female Academy, which was founded by her sister Catherine Beecher in 1823. While teaching, she wrote stories and created illustrations for local journals. Throughout her lifetime, she would publish more than thirty works, but it was Uncle Tom’s Cabin that made her a household name. Harriet Stowe’s real exposure to the issue of slavery and views on abolition came firsthand in Cincinnati where she later taught, and where she encountered fugitive slaves and learned about life on the other side of the Ohio River, spawning the impetus for Uncle Tom’s Cabin.2

Initially serialized in 1851 in over 40 installments over a period of ten months in the weekly anti-slavery newspaper The Washington National Era for with Ms. Stowe received remuneration of $300, then published in 1852 as a book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin was an immediate success, selling 10,000 copies within days and nearly 1.5 million worldwide, rivaling in sales for its time only the bible (Boydston, Kelley, Margolis).3 The notion of the abolition of slavery during the time of Ms. Stowe’s novel was by no means a consensus: in fact, it was a topic of significant debate.

The Southern plantation owners deftly clung to the economics of their ability to utilize slaves as farm workers, while the majority of Northern abolitionists favored an end to the de-humanizing practice of engaging in the commerce of human beings. Ms. Stowe, intending to expose the historical truth of slavery’s horrors, opened Pandora’s proverbial box on the issue and started a movement in society and the arts that adapted the text of Uncle Tom’s Cabin as its own, spawning differing views, slants on characters and an overall plethora of versions of the original story.

Introduction

Uncle Tom’s Cabin emerged as a novel, but soon transformed itself into a cultural icon whose text was created and recreated by its readers, adapters, and its foremost opponents, polarizing the abolitionist debate. The responses to and adaptations of the text provided a means by which the novel assumed a principal role in American culture through various media: the theatre, film, posters, paintings, follow-on writings, essays and press coverage. The way its readers articulated and reconstructed the text brought on a range of social and political meanings and results.

In what way did this text change the traditional relationship between reader and the novel? The reader became the author, interpreter, director, actor, witness and part and parcel of the story. The story, instead of being about life, became life, and life in turn became its own version of the story. In this context of slavery, religion, melodrama, and family crisis, Uncle Tom’s Cabin can be viewed as a cultural pattern instead of an isolated work. Almost as soon as it was published as a novel, Stowe’s story was adapted for the American stage; from 1852 until well into the twentieth century, adaptations of Uncle Tom’s Cabin were among the most popular productions that a theater company could stage. Stowe, however, never condoned nor participated in developing the productions, nor did she earn any money from these adaptations.

Stage Night

The chronicle of the trail from the first adaptation of the Uncle Tom’s Cabin in print to the living, breathing persona of the stage reveals a production that caught on like wildfire, as evidenced by the following listing of stage performances and subsequent press reviews that occurred throughout the United States between 1852 and 1928:4

First New York Production, National Theatre, 1852

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre06at.html” [“a serious & mischievous blunder”]

New York Herald (September 1852)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre02bt.html” “A New Thing”

The Liberator (October 1852)

First Boston Production, Boston Museum, 1852

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre03at.html” Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Boston Commonwealth (November 1852)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre02at.html” Uncle Tom’s Cabin at a Boston Theatre

Ohio Anti-Slavery Bugle (16 November 1852)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre02dt.html” [“a disgrace to Boston”]

Quincy Patriot (December 1852)

Aiken Dramatization, National Theatre, New York, 1853

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre45at.html” 25 Notices

The Spirit of the Times (July 1853 – May 1854)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre08at.html” “Uncle Tom” among the Bowery Boys

New York Times (July 1853)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre02ct.html” “Uncle Tom” on the Stage

The Liberator (August 1853)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre10at.html” A Great Change in a Short Time

New York Evening Post (August 1853)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre04at.html” Abolition Dramatized

New York Tribune (August 1853)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre08bt.html” The Anti-Slavery Drama

National Anti-Slavery Standard (20 August 1853)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre06bt.html” 2 Notices [Aiken’s Renumeration]

New York Herald (September 1853)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre09at.html” [A Visit to the National Theatre]

New York Atlas (16 October 1853)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre04et.html” 3 Notices

New York Tribune (October 1853)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osad04bt.html” JUBILEE ADVERTISEMENT

The New York Tribune (10 November 1853)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre21at.html” Editor’s Table

Knickerbocker Magazine (February 1854)

Other Aiken Dramatizations

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre01at.html” National Theatre, Philadelphia

National Era (October 1853)

Barnum’s Dramatization

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre04bt.html” Uncle Tom at Barnum’s

The New York Tribune (15 November 1853)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osad04at.html” ADVERTISEMENT

The New York Tribune (16 November 1853)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre04ct.html” “Uncle Tom” at Barnum’s

The New York Tribune (17 November 1853)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre04dt.html” “Uncle Tom” at Barnum’s

The New York Tribune (December 1853)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre02ft.html” American Museum, New York

The Liberator (16 December 1853)

Other New York Productions

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre45ct.html” Uncle Tom’s Cabin at the St. Charles

Spirit of the Times (September 1853)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre04ft.html” Uncle Tom at the Bowery

New York Tribune (17 January 1854)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre45bt.html” T.D. Rice as Tom at Bowery

Spirit of the Times (21 January 1854)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre45dt.html” 4 Notices: Christy’s Burlesque Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Spirit of the Times (May – June 1854)

Southern Productions

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre02et.html” Theatre, Charleston

The Liberator (16 December 1853)

Civil War Productions

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre04gt.html” Winter Garden Theatre

The New York Tribune (26 February 1862)

New York Productions

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre06ct.html” Niblo’s Garden Theatre

New York Herald (13 January 1875)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre06et.html” Park Theatre

New York Herald (23 May 1877)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre05ct.html” Mrs. Howard at New Broadway Theatre

New York Times (16 January 1877)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre06ft.html” Mrs. Howard at Grand Opera House

New York Herald (16 October 1877)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre05dt.html” Booth’s Theatre

New York Times (19 February 1878)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre06gt.html” Booth’s Theatre

New York Herald (19 February 1878)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre06ht.html” Mrs. Howard at Fifth Avenue Theatre

New York Herald (April 1878)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre05et.html” Mrs. Howard at Fifth Avenue Theatre

New York Times (April 1878)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre05ft.html” Olympic Theatre

New York Times (21 October 1879)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre05gt.html” Booth’s Theatre

New York Times (30 December 1880)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre05ht.html” C.H. Smith’s Double Mammoth at Niblo’s Garden

New York Times (23 May 1882)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre05it.html” John P. Smith at Grand Opera House

New York Times (26 June 1888)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre05jt.html” Byrne & Wallack’s Version at Grand Opera House

New York Times (18 December 1888)

Brady’s 1901 “Revival” http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osar13bt.html” Stage Doings for the New Week [with illustration]

New York World (March 1901)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osar06at.html” Calendar for the Week

New York Herald (March 1901)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre06dt.html” Uncle Tom Back at the Old Stand

New York Herald (March 1901)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre05kt.html” William A. Brady’s Revival at Academy of Music

New York Times (March 1901)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre05lt.html” [Brady’s UTC & Ibsen’s “Ghosts”]

New York Times (March 1901)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osar13ct.html” [“UTC will entertain 20,000 each week”] [with illustration]

New York World (10 March 1901)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre05mt.html” Brady’s Revival at Academy of Music

New York Times (10 March 1901)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osar48at.html” “breaking all records”

The Billboard (23 March 1901)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre05nt.html” Brady’s Revival at Grand Opera House

New York Times (December 1901)

Abercrombie’s UTC Co. http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre82at.html” Utica Herald (5 November 1880)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre84at.html” Greencastle Press (28 April 1881)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre83at.html” Glen’s Falls Daily Times (16 May 1881)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osar85at.html” Waterville Times (22 September 1881)

Other Productions

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre54bt.html” Howard Athenaeum, Boston

Boston Globe (March 1880)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre51bt.html” Chicago Museum

Chicago Tribune (July 1884)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre81at.html” Cox Theater

Cincinnati Times-Star (12 November 1928)

North and South Polarized: Critics Respond

One of the most widely quoted and outspoken critics of the theatrical debut of Stowe’s conception is James Gordon Bennet of the Herald who stated the following in his September 1852 review:

The furore which it has thus created, has brought out quite a number of catchpenny imitators, pro and con, desirous of filling their sails while yet the breeze is blowing, though it does appear to us to be the meanest kind of stealing of a lady’s thunder. This is, indeed, a new epoch and a new field of abolition authorship — a new field of fiction, humbug and deception, for a more extended agitation of the slavery question — than any that has heretofore imperiled the peace and safety of the Union.”5

The North primarily used images of the brutality of slavery in their depiction of Stowe’s chronicle. Both in text and drawings the Union drew on the grotesque physical evils of slavery to rally support for Emancipation. The power of the visual spectacle opened the eyes of Northerners once ignorant to the evils of slavery.

The harsh Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, was one of the factors which impelled Harriet Beecher Stowe to write Uncle Tom’s Cabin. This bust image of Anthony Burn, whose trial under the Act touched off riots and protests by abolitionists and citizens of Boston in 1854, was drawn from a daguerreotype. The print depicts scenes from his life. 6

Perhaps because of the immediate impact of physical pain and the accessibility of sympathy achieved through the medium of art and narrative that the Northerners relied chiefly on this image to convey their point. Bennet’s review expounds on this point:

The success of Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a novel, has naturally suggested its success upon the stage, but the fact has been overlooked, that any such representation must be an insult to the South — an exaggerated mockery of Southern institutions — and calculated, more than any other expedient of agitation, to poison the minds of our youth with the pestilent principles of abolitionism

In the progress of these varied scenes we have the most extravagant exhibitions of the imaginary horrors of Southern slavery. The negro traders, with their long whips, cut and slash their poor slaves about the stage for mere pastime, and a gang of poor wretches, handcuffed to a chain which holds them all in marching order, two by two, are thrashed like cattle to quicken their pace. Uncle Tom is scourged by the trader, who has bought him, for “whining” about his bad luck (Bennet).”

It is interesting that Bennet hails from New York, because he is tremendously concerned with not offending the South and is not one of the most outspoken proponents for abolition. Yet his comments set the stage for the debate that rages, and clarifies the emotions surrounding the intensity of the issues at hand:

The institution of Southern slavery is recognized and protected by the federal constitution, upon which this Union was established, and which holds it together. But for the compromises on the slavery question, we should have no constitution and no Union — and would, perhaps, have been at this day, in the condition of the South American republics, divided into several military despotisms, constantly warring with each other, and each within itself. The Fugitive Slave Law only carries out one of the plain provisions of the constitution. When a Southern slave escapes to us, we are in honor bound to return him to his master. And yet, here in this city — which owes its wealth, population, power, and prosperity, to the Union and the constitution, and this same institution of slavery, to a greater degree than any other city in the Union — here we have nightly represented, at a popular theatre, the most exaggerated enormities of Southern slavery, playing directly into the hands of the abolitionists and abolition kidnappers of slaves, and doing their work for them. What will our Southern friends think of all our professions of respect for their delicate social institution of slavery, when they find that even our amusements are overdrawn caricatures exhibiting our hatred against it and against them? (Bennet)”

The anonymous author of a publication called The Liberator responds to Bennet’s review:

Strange, is it not? A few years since, and the crowd at the National would have mobbed an anti-slavery speaker. Now it cheers — ’rounds of applause,’ we are told, follow the representation of the play nightly, and, at the most popular theatre in New York, no play has had such a run as Uncle Tom

Bennett is a Satanic wag. The gravity with which he affects to regard such a play as ‘not according to good faith to the Constitution, or consistent with either of the two Baltimore platforms,’ is inimitable as a stroke of satire.”7

The Abolitionist Debates

And so it began, the great national debate for and against slavery. If Uncle Tom’s Cabin was not the seed for this great debate, it was certainly fertilizer. The novel became a vehicle for both Northerners and Southerners to communicate and grapple with the issues of the time. The Southern effort to placate the evils of slavery conversely used the image of the “happy darkie.” In contrast to the Northern visuals and gruesome descriptions of slave beatings and whippings, the “happy darkie” is always dancing and singing. In fact, the black face minstrelsy shows became the most popular form of mass entertainment in both the north and south. White men would blacken their faces with cork and perform songs of the “the good old days on the plantation.” The insinuation is that the only unhappy slaves are those that run away to the North and are unable to survive.

All up and down de whole creation,

Sadly I roam,

Still longing for de old plantation

And for de old folks at home.

Chorus:

All de world is sad and dreary

Ebery where I roam

Oh! darkies how my heart grows weary,

Far from the old folks at home.

All round de little farm I wander’d,

When I was young,

Den my happy days I squander’d,

Many de songs I sung.

When I was playing wid my brudder,

Happy was I,

Oh! take me to my kind old mudder,

Dere let me live and die.8

This sample from one of the white minstrel groups, though their primary purpose was entertainment, propagated very distinct stereotypes. It served the white community in that it appeased any guilt over slavery they might be feeling by showing cheerful slaves dancing and singing, and as evident in this song living in a family environment. However, in many accounts of slavery, most notably Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the separation from family and the displacement resulting, cannot escape a central role in the stories. In this particular song, the presence of the mother and brother can be accounted for by either naivety or assumption that most slaves were left in family groups or assimilated into the families already present on the plantations. Not only does this song serve both to portray life on the plantation in a positive light, but also to warn the slave community of the loneliness and desperation they will fell should they attempt to leave “de good old folks at home.”

Similarly the accent of the language used is indicative of the prejudice in the writer. Although the race of the writer is unknown to me at present, it seems probable, pending confirmation from further research, that it was written by a white man or else composed by a black man and put to paper by a white man. The translation from the auditory language of slaves to paper reveals the prejudice. The unnecessary change of “the” to ” de” proves gratuitous and unnecessary. The purpose of this change and the abbreviation of “ed” to ” ‘d” is a tool of the Southerner to distinguish himself, his intelligence, and mode of communication superior and different to the that of the slave.

Interestingly, in the recreation and translation of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the novel, into the play the meaning is changed by the fusion of different elements and influence. The story was “seized by popular culture, and people ran away with it and basically did what they wanted to with it,” says Kathleen Hulser, curator of a new exhibition, “Reading Uncle Tom’s Image: a Reconsideration of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 150-Year-old Character and His Legacy,” which premiered at the New York Historical Society.9 “The Uncle Tom that we know as an insult – as an old man who is meek, submissive, doesn’t stick up for himself, desexualized – that really isn’t who the person is in the novel. It’s who he became on stage.”

If ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ is anything, it is – and has always been – a Rorschach test for a reader’s feelings about slavery in general and black people in particular,” writes Dr. Johnson in his introduction to the new edition. “It transcended the category of literature to become that rarest of products: a cultural artifact; a Rosetta stone for black images in American fiction, theater, and film – not so much a novel, one might say, as an experience inseparable from the events that precipitated the Civil War.”

The growing popularity of the minstrel groups fused itself into in the play. In the book the only dancing and singing occurs when little Harry and Topsy dance and when the Legree demands his slaves to sing and dance for him. However, by the 1870s, singing and dancing slaves appear repeatedly. In the Cabin Company production, there was dancing outside Tom’s cabin, the opening of the play, and on the auction block. The influence of the popularity of the songs of the “happy darkie” transforms Tom’s suffering into an entertaining spectacle. By 1890, Stowe’s copyright ends and new versions of the story emerged changing the original message even more adding more dancing in some and even erasing the dying infant in the hands of Prue.

Could these changes in the translation of the text to theater serve to actually erase guilt for both Northerners and Southerners? These same play posters and those in newspapers (from the Harry Birdoff Collection) claim historical accuracy, a notion the book did not. The poster for the Cabin Company advertises the play as “Instructions in American History” and “An Educational Experience.”

The argument for the value of truth in the novel is not present. In Stowe’s very own sequel A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1853), she announces her intention to “exhibit [slavery] in a living dramatic reality.” Though much of the novel is inspired by her observations on an actual plantation, she now has an enhanced appreciation for the power of fiction.

The Tom Caricature

According to the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia10, “The Tom caricature, as with the Mammy Caricature, was born in ante-bellum America in the defense of slavery. How could slavery be wrong, argued its proponents, if Black servants, males (Toms) and females (Mammies) were contented, loyal servants? The Tom is presented as a smiling, wide-eyed, dark skinned server: fieldworker, cook, butler, porter, or waiter. Unlike the Coon, the Tom is portrayed as a dependable worker, eager to serve. Unlike the Brute, the Tom is docile and non-threatening to Whites. (Crow)”

Stowe’s Tom was a religious character of humility whose purist nature is forgiving and thus elevated to the status of martyr. Stowe attributes these characteristics to all blacks, and illustrates this point in certain circumstances. For instance, when Mr. Shelby, Tom’s first Master is kind, his “innate spirituality flourishes” (Crow). In spite of growing adversity, s.a., being sold to a new master, and ultimately to a cruel man, Tom is steadfast and strong, maintaining his spiritual values and choosing death over weakening to his new Master’s demands.

Legree intends to make Tom an overseer. Tom is ordered by Legree to flog a woman slave. Tom refuses. Legree strikes him repeatedly with a cowhide lash. Again, he tells Tom to beat the woman. Tom, with a soft voice, says, “the poor crittur’s sick and feeble; ‘twould be downright cruel, and it’s what I never would do, nor begin to. Mas’r, if you mean to kill me, kill me; but, as to my raising my hand agin anyone here, I never shall, — I’ll die first.”11

In the immediate years following the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, several proslavery novels were written which contradicted the abolitionist theme. Yet the most subtle and powerful distortion of Stowe’s portrayal of slavery occurred in the theater. By 1879 there were at least forty-nine traveling companies performing Uncle Tom’s Cabin throughout the United States.12 The stage versions, often called Tom Shows, differed from Stowe’s book in significant ways. In some instances the brutality was ignored completely. Slaves were depicted as “happy darkies” living under a benevolent, paternalistic system. The stage Toms represented a major, and demeaning, departure from the original Uncle Tom.

Patricia Turner, author of Ceramic Uncles & Celluloid Mammies, wrote:

Further marked inconsistencies are discernible between the values and principles of the reconstructed Uncle Tom and Stowe’s original hero. Both are devout, stalwart Christians. Both are unflinching in their loyalty. But the reconstructed Uncle Toms are passive, docile, unthinking Christians. Loyal and faithful to white employers, they are duplicitous in their dealings with fellow blacks. Stowe’s Tom is a proactive Christian warrior. He does more than accept God’s will, he endeavors to fulfill it in all of his words and deeds. He is loyal to each of his white masters, even the cruel Simon Legree. Yet his allegiance to his fellow slaves is equally strong.”13

In misinterpreting strength for weakness, Tom’s actions of remaining non-rebellious and passive even though he is sold, abused, and ultimately killed as portrayed by minstrel actors and the “Tom” caricature of the happy servant on stage has conjured a negative connotation for the name “Uncle Tom” and “Tom” among African-Americans.

The theatre version of Tom segued to the film industry. The Uncle Tom depicted on the silver screen deviated from Stowe’s original to an even larger degree. For example, in 1903, Edwin S. Porter directed a twelve-minute version of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

This was the first Black character in an American film; ironically, Uncle Tom was played by a nameless White actor colored with blackface makeup. Porter’s Uncle Tom, like the Toms on stage, was a childlike, groveling servant. In 1914, a Black actor, Sam Lucas, was allowed to play the Uncle Tom role in a film. His advanced age — he was seventy-two — helped perpetuate the perception that Uncle Tom was old and physically weak. (Crow)”

The idyllic creation of other “Tom” personas in the film industry followed. In early American movies, the Tom character was a staple of the movie screen and, later, television shows. In the 1909 silent short film titled Confederate Spy, Uncle Daniel, a Tom character, is caught and brought before a Union firing squad as a spy in the South. He has no regrets facing death because he “did it for massa’s sake and for little massa.”14 In For Massa’s Sake (1911), a former slave is so attached to his former master that he sells himself back into slavery to help pay the White man’s debts.

The still popular Gone With the Wind (1939) included the Tom character Pork, who fulfilled the submissive stereotype of the black subservient character to the wealthy white landowner. The Tom character moved from the films themselves to product advertisement. The list of Toms who have been used to sell products is too long to detail here. One of the most memorable and lasting commercial Toms is “Rastus,” the Cream of Wheat Cook. “Rastus was created in 1893 by Emery Mapes, one of the owners of North Dakota’s Diamond Milling Company. He wanted a likable image to help sell packages of “breakfast porridge.” 15 Maples, a former printer, remembered the image of a Black chef among his stock of old printing blocks. He made a template of the Black chef and named the product Cream of Wheat. The original logo showed a Black chef holding a skillet in one hand and a bowl of Cream of Wheat in the other.16

Many of those advertisements are, by today’s standards, racially insensitive. For example, a 1915 Cream of Wheat poster shows “Uncle Sam” looking at a picture of Rastus holding a bowl of the cereal. The caption reads “Well, You’re Helping Some!” The ad contained a subtle underlying notion that the blacks were not significantly contributing to the war effort.

Originating from these variations from the original Uncle Tom, in many African-American communities today the term “Uncle Tom” is a derogatory slur used to imply that a Black person is humiliatingly subservient to White people. The modern use is a perversion of Stowe’s original portrayal of the slave’s plight. According to Crow, the contemporary use of the slur has two variations. “Version A is the Black person who is a docile, loyal, religious, contented servant who accommodates himself to a lowly status. Version B. is the ambitious Black person who subordinates himself in order to achieve a more favorable status within the dominant society. In both instances, the person is believed to overly identify with Whites, in Version A because of fear, in Version B. because of opportunism. This latter use is more common today. ”

Uncle Tom,” unlike most anti-Black slurs, is primarily used by Blacks against Blacks. (Pilgrim)17 Its synonyms include “oreo,” “sell-out,” “uncle,” “race-traitor,” and “White man’s negro.” It is an in-group term used as a social control mechanism. Garth Baker-Fletcher has said,

The “Uncle Tom” appellation is the feared curse of every African-American who is compelled to work under whites, while simultaneously holding a position of authority over other African-Americans. Thus “Uncle Tom” can be pulled out by blacks as a superior ideological weapon to enforce patterns of racial unity against the perceived threats of a white boss.”18

In the 1960s, when Muhammad Ali’s black opponents in the ring insisted on calling him Cassius Clay and refused to address him by his new Muslim name, Ali fought back with words as well as punches. In February 1967, Ali’s opponent was Ernie Terrel. At the pre-fight press conferences Terrel repeatedly called Ali by his given name: Cassius Clay. Ali promised to beat Terrel until he addressed him properly. In a fight which Sports Illustrated described as “a wonderful demonstration of boxing skill and a barbarous display of cruelty,” Ali beat Terrel while shouting, “What’s my name, “Uncle Tom,” what’s my name?”19

Today, the term “Uncle Tom” is still considered a strong insult among African-Americans. In contemporary literature, two black authors published “The American Directory of Certified Uncle Toms: Being a Review of the History, Antics, and Attitudes of Handkerchief Heads, Aunt Jemimas, Head Negroes in Charge, and House Negroes Against the Freedom Aims of the Black Race.” In the book, Richard Laurence and James Lowe20 charge a number of prominent African-Americans, including Oprah Winfrey and Secretary of State Colin Powell, with being “Uncle Toms,” or traitors to their race.21

The elements from Minstrel shows overshadowed the performances of the Uncle Tom plays, particularly with the characterizations of Topsy and Tom, until the character of Uncle Tom was “transformed into a symbol of black obsequiousness rather than Christian humility. Drained of its moral power, Stowe’s story was reduced to mere melodrama.” 22

It wasn’t always so. Uncle Tom originated as one of the most widely regarded and highly sympathetic characters in American literature. The novel had “a great impact on people’s notions of the evils of slavery,” said Thomas Gosset, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Culture. “Many Northern soldiers in the Civil War had read it,” he says.23 Much later, writer Langston Hughes would call “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” America’s “first protest novel.”24 Hughes, a prominent black writer and poet, poignantly wrote:

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore

And then run?

..Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

The Greatest Impact

Stowe, as a woman of her time, mirrored the racial and political biases of her day. Her contemporary, Frederick Douglass, the famous African-American abolitionist, recognized the book as an important weapon against slavery. Perhaps the most significant influence that can be attributed to Uncle Tom’s Cabin is its purported influence on the advent of the Civil War. In Love and Theft by Eric Lott, Lott sees the dramatization of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, among other minstrel forms, as an incarnation of racial and class politics in the 1850s. He goes so far as to state that the question exists as to whether Uncle Tom’s Cabin onstage was “a cause or just a mirror of the political division that would lead to the Civil War” (232).25

This suspicion came to fruition when Harriet Beecher Stowe met Abraham Lincoln at the White House, where the President exclaimed: “So, this is the little lady who wrote the big book that made this great war.”26 The meeting at which Lincoln is recorded as having spoken these, or similar, words to Stowe occurred in November 1862, just over eighteen months into the Civil War. It was the only occasion on which they ever met. Stowe had thought war unlikely even as late as 1860, 27 but when it did come she welcomed it as a holy crusade against the institution of slavery. In an article of April 1861 in The Independent, she wrote: “It is one part of the last struggle for liberty — the American share of the great overturning which shall precede the coming of Him whose right it is -who shall save the poor and needy, and precious shall their blood be in his sight.” 28

The impact of Uncle Tom’s Cabin on the political and economical times of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were just the beginning of the influence of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s words on society. For a book that’s never been out of print, that recently celebrated its 150th anniversary, that continues to be a staple of the high school syllabus, and is a permanent part of the American cultural landscape, Uncle Tom’s Cabin has influenced racial norms in this country in a timeless fashion.

Before, during, and long after the Civil War ended, Uncle Tom’s Cabin inspired not only painters, authors, the press, media, theater and film, but stretched to all kinds of popular entertainment, from ballads and minstrel acts to nursery rhymes and card games. And, with its vivid pictorial qualities and astonishing effect on readers, Uncle Tom’s Cabin is considered an American classic that represents a factual account of a time in American history, through both the text in the novel and the life that was breathed into its characters for decades to come.

Works Cited

Harriet Beecher Stowe Center. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin at 150. http://www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org/programs/uncle.shtml

Women in History. “Harriet Beecher Stowe biography.” Lakewood Public Library. Friday, 17 January 2003. http://www.lkwdpl.org/wihohio/stow-har.htm

Jeanne Boydston, Mary Kelley, Anne Margolis. “The Limits of Sisterhood: the Beecher sisters on women’s rights and women’s sphere.” 1988

University of Virginia, Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities; “Reviewing Uncle Tom Onstage. http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/rvhp.html

Bennet, James Gordon (unsigned). “The Herald.” New York: 3 September 1852

Ohio Historical Society, 1982 Velma Ave., Columbus, OH 43211.1998, http://www.ohiohistoricalsociety.org

Unsigned). “The Liberator.” Boston. 8 October 1852

Foster, Stephen. Old Folks at Home, “Ethiopian Melody,” as sung by Christy’s Minstrels. New York. Fifth, Pond & Co., 1851.

Husler, Kathleen: “Reading Uncle Tom’s Image: a Reconsideration of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 150-year-old Character and His Legacy,” New York Historical Society. http://www.nyhistory.org/

The Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia. http://www.ferris.edu/news/jimcrow/tom.January 2003

Stowe, Harriet Beecher. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Modern Library Edition. New York: Random House, 1985. 439.

Turner, Particia A. “Ceramic Uncles & Celluloid Mammies: Black Images and Their Influence on Culture.” New York: Anchor Books, 1994. 78.

Bogle, op.cit. 6.

The name Rastus is probably derived from Eratus, both were fairly common names for American Blacks at the end of the 1800s. Rastus appears in many anti-Black jokes before the 1960s.

Siegel, Martin A.”Classic trademarks put best faces forward,” Marketing News. July 6, 1992, v.26, n.14, 17.

Pilgrim, David. Professor of Sociology. Ferris State University. December 2000. http://www.ferris.edu

Baker-Fletcher, Garth. “Xodus Musings: Reflections on Womanist Tar Baby Theology”

Lamb, Gregory. “What We’ve Made of Uncle Tom.” Christian Science Monitor. http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1029/p17s02-legn.html,29 October 2002

Richard Laurence and James Lowe. “The American Directory Of Certified Uncle Toms.” Lushena Books. March 2002

Lamb, Gregory. “What We’ve Made of Uncle Tom,” Christian Science Monitor, http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1029/p17s02-legn.html.29 October 2002

New York University. “American Literature 1.” Fall 2002. http://www.nyu.edu/classes/amlit/amlect21.htm

Gossett, Thomas F. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Culture.” Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1985.

Hughes, Langston, 1952, Harriet Beecher Stowe Center, http://www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org/programs/uncle.shtml

Lott, Eric, “Love and Theft,” New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. 314.

Adams, John R., “Harriet Beecher Stowe; Updated Version.” Boston. Twayne Publishing. 1989.

Ammons, Elizabeth. “Stowe’s Dream of the Mother-Savior: Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Women Writers before the 1920s.” New Essays on “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Edited by Eric J. Sundquist. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986: 155-195.

Anchor, Robert. “Narrativity and the Transformation of Historical Consciousness.” Clio 16, no. 2. 1987. 121-137.

Works Consulted

Collected Poems of Harriet Beecher Stowe.” Ed. John M. Moran, Jr. ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance 49. 1967. 1-100.

Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin; Presenting the Original Facts and Documents Upon Which they Story is Founded Together with Corroborative Statements Verifying the Truth of the Work.” 1853. Port Washington: Kennikat P, 1968.

Low, Marston, Low and Searle. “Women in Sacred History; a Series of Sketches Drawn from Scriptural, Historical, and Legendary Sources.” London: New York: Ford and Co. 1874.

Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe, compiled from her letters and journals by her son, Charles Edward Stowe.” 1889. Detroit: Gale Research Co., 1967.

Structure and Theme in the Novels of Harriet Beecher Stowe.” American Transcendental Quarterly 24. 1974. 50-55.

Allen, Peter R. “Lord Macaulay’s Gift to Harriet Beecher Stowe: The Solution to a Riddle in Trevelyan’s Life.” Notes and Queries 17. 1970. 23-24.

Ashton, Jean W. “Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Reference Guide.” Boston: Hall, 1978.

Harriet Stowe’s Filthy Story: Lord Byron Set Afloat.” Prospects: Annual of American Culture Studies 2. 1976. 373-84.

If Ever I Get to Where I Can’: The Competing Rhetorics of Social Reform in Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” American Transcendental Quarterly 4.2. June 1990. 135-147.

Miller, Randall M. “Mrs. Stowe’s Negro: George Harris’ Negritude in Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Colby Library Quarterly 10. 1974. 521-26.

Stowe’s Black Sources in Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” American Notes and Queries 14. 1975. 38-39.

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