172 Inventing Americas: 1800–1865so in her first essay on the subject, titled “Immediate Emancipation” and published
in 1845. After the passing of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850, which required
Northerners to help slaveholders recover escaped slaves, Stowe’s sister-in-law wrote
to her saying that, if she had Stowe’s talent, she would write something that would
“make this whole nation feel what an accursed thing slavery is.” Harriet’s response
was simple and immediate. “I will write something,” she declared, “I will if I live.”
Fired into life by this, and by a vision she had during communion of a slave being
beaten to death, she composed the scene in Uncle Tom’s Cabin in which the hero of
her book, Uncle Tom, is killed by Simon Legree.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin started out, according to Stowe’s intention, as a series of
sketches, published in the National Era, an antislavery magazine, in 1851. Her aim,
she told the editor of the magazine, was “to hold up in the most lifelike and graphic
manner possible Slavery.” “There is no arguing with pictures,” she explained, “and
everybody is impressed by them, whether they mean to be or not.” The response was
immediate, and so positive that the series, meant originally to last for fourteen
weeks, was stretched out eventually to ten months. Then, when the book was
published in 1852, it sold 10,000 copies in a few days, 300,000 copies in the first year,
and became an international bestseller. No other book had ever sold so well, apart
from the Bible. So successful and influential was it that, in the middle of the civil
conflict between the Union and the Confederacy, President Abraham Lincoln was
reported to have remarked that Stowe was “the little lady who wrote the book that
made this great war.” The main story, however, is simple. Uncle Tom, a faithful and
saintly slave, is sold by his owners, the Shelby family, when they find themselves in
financial difficulties. Separated from his wife and children, he is taken south by a
slave trader; aboard ship on the Mississippi, he saves the life of Eva St. Clare, known
as little Eva, and is bought by her father, Angel St. Clare, out of gratitude. Tom is
happy at the St. Clare plantation, growing close to Eva and her black playmate Topsy.
But, after two years, Eva dies and then so does St. Clare. Tom is sold to the villainous
Simon Legree, a cruel and debauched Yankee. The patience and courage of Tom,
despite all the brutal treatment meted out to him, bewilder Legree. Two female slaves
take advantage of Legree’s state of mind, and pretend to escape; and, when Tom
refuses to reveal their whereabouts, a furious Legree has him flogged to death. As
Tom is dying, “Mas’r George” Shelby, the son of Tom’s original master, arrives, to
fulfill his pledge made right at the beginning of the novel, that he would one day
redeem the old slave. It is too late for Tom; however, Shelby vows to fight for abolition
and, as a first step, he frees the slaves on his own plantation, telling them that they
can continue to work for him as “free men and free women.” Woven in and around
this main plot are a number of subsidiary episodes, involving a host of characters.
The most important of these episodes concern Eliza Harris, a beautiful “mixed race”
woman, her husband George, who lives as a slave on another plantation, and their
son Harry. George is the son of a slave mother and a white father “from one of the
proudest families in Kentucky.” He is said to have inherited “a set of European
features, and a high indomitable spirit” from his father; he has, we are told, “only a
slight mulatto tinge” – and he preaches resistance, defiance. At one point, forGGray_c02.indd 172ray_c 02 .indd 172 8 8/1/2011 7:54:42 AM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 54 : 42 AM