Uncle Tom's Cabin
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Uncle Tom's Cabin
45 chapters
3.92from 246,793 ratingson Goodreads
A Kentucky farmer in debt sells two of the people he owns. Eliza takes her child and runs north across the ice of the Ohio; Tom is sold south, and goes from one master to another until he reaches Simon Legree. Published in 1852, it sold more copies than any American novel had, and made the argument that changed what the North thought slavery was.
About the book
Serialised from 1851 and published as a book in 1852, Uncle Tom’s Cabin opens with a Kentucky farmer settling his debts by selling two people: Eliza’s small son, and Tom, a middle-aged man trusted with the whole farm. Eliza takes the child and crosses the breaking ice of the Ohio on foot. Tom is taken down river, first to the household of the indulgent St Clare and his daughter Eva, and finally, when that ends, to the cotton plantation of Simon Legree. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote it in direct response to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which made it a federal crime for a northerner to help a person escaping. It outsold every American novel of the century, was adapted into hundreds of unauthorised stage versions she never controlled, and its central figure has since become a term of abuse — a history worth knowing before reading the book that made the North argue.
Characters
Tom — Protagonist
A middle-aged, deeply religious man sold south to clear his owner’s debts, and never resold homeward.
Eliza Harris — Fugitive
A young mother who crosses the ice of the Ohio with her child rather than let him be taken.
George Harris — Eliza’s husband
An inventor hired out by his owner, who escapes in disguise and will not be taken back alive.
Eva St Clare — Child
The frail daughter of Tom’s second owner, whose friendship with him is the book’s moral centre.
Augustine St Clare — Owner
A charming New Orleans gentleman who knows the system is indefensible and postpones acting on it.
Simon Legree — Antagonist
A Red River planter who buys people to work them to death, and who keeps no overseer but himself.
Miss Ophelia — Cousin from Vermont
A northern abolitionist forced to notice her own disgust at the people she argues on behalf of.
Topsy — Child
A neglected girl bought to be Ophelia’s experiment, who says she was never born but just grew.
About the author
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) was an American writer and abolitionist, born into a famous family of New England preachers and the mother of seven children. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which made it a crime for a northerner to help someone escaping slavery, is what made her write: Uncle Tom's Cabin ran as a serial the following year and sold three hundred thousand copies in its first American year, more than any novel had. The story that Lincoln greeted her as the little woman who made this great war is almost certainly apocryphal, but it records accurately what the book was taken to have done.