Uncle Tom's Cabin

When Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly was first published in 1852, no one—least of all its author, Harriet Beecher Stowe—expected the book to become a sensation, but this anti-slavery novel took the world by storm. It was to become the second best-selling book in the world during the nineteenth century, second only to the Bible, and it touched off a flurry of criticism and praise. Stowe had written the novel as an angry response to the 1850 passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, which punished those who aided runaway slaves and diminished the rights of fugitive as well as freed slaves. Hoping to move her fellow Americans to protest this law and slavery in general, Stowe attempted to portray "the institution of slavery just as it existed." Indeed, Uncle Tom's Cabin was nearly unique at the time in its presentation of the slaves' point of view.

In its early years as a nation, the United States gradually became divided into two main regions, the North and South. These regions were growing increasingly more different in terms of their economic systems and ways of life. By the 1830s, the North was becoming urban and industrial, employing free labor. The South was evolving into a more agrarian, or agricultural, culture that depended upon slave labor. The two regions were beginning to share less and less, and they began to disagree over the issue of slavery.

Following the Mexican War (1846-48), America grew by one-fifth through westward expansion. Congress was forced to confront the issue of slavery as it determined whether the newly acquired areas would be free states or slave states. Out of Congress's deliberations came the Compromise of 1850, which included five provisions concerning slavery, one of which was a more severe Fugitive Slave Law. This law radically diminished the rights of free blacks and required anyone who knew about a fugitive slave to return the slave to his or her owner. The Fugitive Slave Law appeased Southern slaveholding states but infuriated Northern abolitionists who believed they should be free to help their fellow men and women escape from the bonds of slavery. Enraged by the passage of what she saw as an unjust law, Stowe was moved to write Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Although the entire novel is about slavery, it directly addresses the Fugitive Slave Law in chapter nine, "In Which It Appears That a Senator Is But a Man." Here Senator Bird is at home, fresh from the Congressional vote on the Compromise of 1850. Readers discover through conversations with his kind-hearted wife that he voted in favor of this piece of legislation. His wife chides him for what she sees as his immoral vote: "You ought to be ashamed, John!… It's a shameful, wicked, abominable law, and I'll break it, for one, the first time I get a chance; and I hope I shall have a chance, I do!" The senator defends himself by claiming that "it's not a matter of private feeling—there are great public interests involved, there is such a state of public agitation rising, that we must put aside our private feelings." Ultimately, the senator's beliefs are put to the test when runaway slave Eliza and her little Harry appear in his kitchen, desperately seeking shelter and aid. Senator Bird, who is in truth a humane man, is touched by Eliza's plight and decides to help Eliza and Harry to escape. The journey toward freedom of Eliza, Harry, and eventually Eliza's husband, George, enables Stowe to show the injustice of the Fugitive Slave Law, as the runaways are constantly being chased by hired slave hunters, even after reaching free American territory. Escaped slaves are not truly free until they reach Canada.

Slavery is often mistakenly thought to have been universal in the antebellum period, but in 1860, slaves were held by only about one third of all white Southern families. Contrary to popular belief, only a small number of slaveholders owned more than fifty slaves to work on their large plantations. Most slave-owning families did not own large plantations and held twenty slaves or fewer.

Life in slavery meant a life of restrictions with no civil rights. Slaves had no control over their own lives and were considered property, just like cattle or other livestock. They were often sold at slave auctions, where they could be inspected from head to toe by potential buyers. Slave families were not recognized as valid. Though slaves might marry each other, slave marriages were not considered legal, and husbands and wives could be sold away from each other. Slave mothers and their young children could also be separated from each other, although a law supposedly prohibited this practice. Many slaves did not have adequate food, housing, or clothing, and many slaves were subject to physical abuses such as beatings or rapes in spite of laws limiting such mistreatment. Slave women were powerless to oppose their owners' sexual exploitation and often bore children fathered by their white owners.

In order to survive the oppression of slavery, slaves created a whole culture for themselves apart from mainstream American culture. For instance, slave songs, also called spirituals, sustained the slaves with images of the Promised Land, freedom, and God's protection and love. Folk tales and other oral lore often reflected tales brought by earlier slaves from Africa. These tales might center on such mischievous characters as Br'er Rabbit who were smart enough to trick their oppressors. Slaves living together on a farm or plantation often formed close-knit communities, particularly shown in Stowe's novel with Uncle Tom, Aunt Chloe, and their fellow slaves at the Shelbys. These human connections helped to sustain them as long as they were together.

In addition to discussing the plight of slaves in the United States, Stowe also reveals how women were viewed around the time of the Civil War. In the mid-nineteenth century, the home was the heart of American society. Women's work as housewives and mothers was considered valuable. The domestic novel, a genre that focused on housewives and their sphere, became extremely popular as well. Regarded as the spiritual and moral caretakers of their families, women also extended this moral guardianship outside the home to help the less fortunate. Many theologians of this period believed that the home was the most appropriate place for children's religious education and that mothers were responsible for training the future citizens of America. Thus housewives and mothers carried a certain amount of weight within American culture, as they were thought to possess a moral authority.

Growing up in the United States, Stowe also would have seen the lives of men and women touched by a renewed interest in religion. The first half of the nineteenth century saw a period of religious fervor known as the Second Great Awakening. The original Great Awakening of the eighteenth century had resulted in greater emphasis on the role of the individual in religion. Evangelical leaders of the Second Great Awakening exhorted followers to find personal redemption through Christ. Those who had been redeemed were inspired to look beyond themselves and to try to improve society. Reform movements emerged, calling for the end of such social problems as prostitution, alcoholism, and slavery.

Slavery took many rights away from the enslaved. The loss of the basic right to have an intact family—and especially for parents and children to be together—was perhaps its cruelest effect. Stowe targeted her white female audience in addressing this denial of human rights, knowing she would find empathy in a group that was devoted to family and home. In Uncle Tom's Cabin, she emphasizes the slaves' right to family by focusing on the destructive effect slavery has on several slave families. Speaking for Stowe, Mrs. Shelby asks her husband not to sell Harry and Uncle Tom because she believes slave families should be allowed to stay together. On her deathbed, little Eva tells her father that the slaves love their children as much as he loves her. Through Eliza's courageous escape with Harry across the frozen Ohio River, the tearful separation of Uncle Tom from his wife and children, and Cassy's devastating story about her children being sold away from her, Stowe powerfully demonstrates that slaves are human beings who need, desire, and deserve family attachments. By pairing white mothers like Mrs. Bird, Rachel Halliday, and Ruth Stedman with Eliza, Stowe contrasts the white mother's right to love and enjoy her children with the black mother's powerlessness to do the same.

Uncle Tom's Cabin explores the power of love, specifically love of God and love of family. A mother's love for her children is built up in the novel as the most powerful kind of love. This portrayal serves Stowe well when she depicts the anguish of slave mothers who are torn from their children.

A mother's love can be transformative: witness Eliza summoning the courage and strength to cross the river on the floating ice cakes. Her love for her child makes her almost superhuman. Love of God is also portrayed as being transformative. Although they are but a lowly slave and an innocent child, Tom's and Eva's powerful love of God raises them to the stature of Christ in their capacity for love, forgiveness, and moral valor. They die like saints, with Eva giving out locks of her hair like religious icons to her loved ones and Tom being tortured and killed by those who are galled by his faith. Love and prayer are the two most potent forces in the world of the novel.

Throughout the book, religion and faith play a central role. A character's relation to Christianity—believer, lapsed believer, nonbeliever—is part of how that character is defined. Eliza, Tom, Mrs. Shelby, Eva, and Ophelia are all described as dedicated Christians, and they are mostly good. George, Augustine St. Clare, and Cassy are basically good in spite of their inability to believe in Christianity (they are presented as having justifiable excuses not to believe). Simon Legree's complete lack of religious faith is connected to his depravity. Christianity is linked in the novel to morality, humaneness, and generosity. The Christian faith of slaves gives them courage and the strength to go on. Tom's and Eva's religious convictions transform them into Christlike figures, and their deaths, like Christ's, are meant to be redemptive. Although she dies of tuberculosis, Eva appears almost to give her life for the anti-slavery cause, as slavery pains her so profoundly. Tom converts Sambo and Quimbo to Christianity as he dies at their hands. In using religion to define her characters and her cause, Stowe speaks directly to her nineteenth-century audience. Slaves portrayed as pious—devoted to divine worship—and even saintly would be more sympathetic to that audience; abolitionists often questioned how slaveholding and Christianity could coexist.

Discussions of moral principles in Uncle Tom's Cabin converge in the central issue of slavery. Basically, the novel asks, is human slavery right or wrong? It is not difficult to see that the novel portrays the practice of slavery as immoral. Slavery breaks apart loving families, degrades both slaves and their owners, and robs human beings of their freedom. While the novel presents not only an obviously evil, immoral master in Simon Legree, it also gives readers so-called "kind" masters like Mr. Shelby and St. Clare. However, it points out that, kind or not, a master is still a master, and one human being should not be allowed to own another.

More subtle than the blatant anti-slavery theme in the novel is the treatment of attitudes toward slavery. Here, Stowe presents some gray moral areas. What about the people who believe slavery is wrong and do not practice it but who despise blacks? And what about slaveholders who are uncomfortable with owning slaves but do not know what to do about it? In conversations about slavery between St. Clare and Ophelia, St. Clare asserts there is something immoral about the way Northern Christians condemn slavery but do not want anything to do personally with the blacks themselves. In St. Clare himself, Stowe expresses the difference between belief and action. He is troubled about the enslavement of blacks and believes that blacks are treated inhumanely, yet he does not free his own slaves. George Shelby and Little Eva are in a sense yardsticks for morality in the novel. Both characters truly love the black slaves in their families, vehemently oppose slavery, and attempt to persuade the adults around them to condemn slavery and free their slaves. As children, George and Eva are powerless to effect real change—George will finally free the Shelbys' slaves when he grows up—but they are moral in that they believe in what is right (according to the moral code of the novel) and they live by their beliefs.

In the world of Stowe's novel, characters are defined in large part by the color of their skin. Along with this stereotype, Stowe herself is guilty of a certain kind of racism. While white characters are not necessarily all good, as illustrated by the likes of slave trader Haley and Simon Legree, slave hunters Loker and Marks, and Alfred St. Clare and his son Henrique, the virtue of black characters is related to the lightness or darkness of their skin. For example, slave mother Eliza Harris, set up as a model of piety and moral integrity, is a quadroon (one-quarter black), so light-skinned as to be almost white. Her husband, George, an admirable example of honor and decency, is also light-skinned, as is their son, Harry. Stowe presumes that her white nineteenth-century reader will be better able to identify with the Harris family because they look so much like her own. Stowe depends upon that identification of reader with character for the success of her novel. Darker-skinned figures, like Topsy, Aunt Chloe, and Black Sam, seem more like stock characters. They are simple, speak in dialect rather than standard English, and are more comic than heroic. Tom, although dark-skinned, is noble in his Christian humility and patience, but he is also characterized as simple, innocent, and uneducated.

Stowe uses her white characters not so much as vessels of racism but more as mouthpieces of racist attitudes. In particular, Augustine St. Clare's conversations with others on the subject of slavery bring up many facets of the problem of racism. When he debates the issue of slavery with his Northern cousin Ophelia, readers see how hypocritical she is. While she opposes the institution of slavery, she also personally dislikes blacks. When St. Clare discusses their slaves with his wife, Marie, readers see Marie's belief that blacks are suited only for slavery. St. Clare's conversations about race with his brother Alfred reveal Alfred's position that the white race is meant to be dominant. While St. Clare's various discussions on racism often read like the texts of political debates, readers can see that Stowe is using these dialogues to shore up her anti-slavery message.

Following three slaves and their experiences in and out of slavery, Stowe's novel deals with the effects of slavery on both blacks and whites in the antebellum, or pre-Civil War South. The title character in the book, Tom, is a slave who lives first with the Shelbys of Kentucky, then with the St. Clares of New Orleans, and finally on the plantation of Simon Legree in Louisiana. At the Shelbys, where Tom holds the affectionate name of Uncle Tom, he is married to Chloe, and they have three children. Stowe tried to show in this novel how slaves were capable of creating loving, Christian families, just like free whites. Uncle Tom's cabin is all hearth and family, with Chloe cooking at the stove, the children tumbling about on the floor, and Tom bouncing the baby on his knee. Tom is a converted Christian, and he is looked up to by the other slaves as a religious figure. He succeeds in converting others to his beloved Christianity. At the St. Clares, Tom and little Eva share a powerful belief in God and heaven.

Unfortunately for Tom, his life changes for the worse when his master, Arthur Shelby, decides to sell him. Tom was given to Mr. Shelby when Arthur was a baby; Mr. Shelby is Tom's first master. As the novel opens, Shelby is reluctantly making arrangements to sell Tom to Haley, the slave trader. Shelby is what is known in the world of slavery as "a kind master," and his reluctance to sell Tom reveals him to be "a man of humanity." Mr. Shelby's wife, Emily, a woman of "high moral and religious sensibility and principle," tries to convince her husband not to sell Tom and little Harry, the son of Eliza. She has raised Eliza from girlhood and has treated her as a particular favorite. Representative of the novel's strong domestic and moral emphasis, Mrs. Shelby feels it is important to allow slave families to stay together. Mr. Shelby cares about Tom, but his financial difficulties make it impossible for him not to make this sale: he needs the money that valuable Tom will bring.

When Eliza overhears the plan to sell Tom and Harry, she decides to run away from the plantation with Harry and to take the "underground railroad" to freedom in Canada. Famous for her desperate flight across the frozen Ohio River by jumping barefoot along sheets of ice, Eliza is the novel's central symbol of motherhood. A refined and religious young slave woman owned by the Shelbys, Eliza is married to George Harris, a light-skinned slave on a neighboring plantation. Their only child, Harry, is the center of Eliza's life. Eliza risks everything to protect and to keep him. The fact that Eliza is of mixed blood and light-skinned would have made it even easier for the typical nineteenth-century reader to feel her plight. As she escapes, Eliza is helped by Rachel and Simeon Halliday, a Quaker family, as well as by Senator John Bird and his wife, Mary. Ironically, Senator Bird voted for the Fugitive Slave Law in Congress, for which his wife chastises him. When runaway slave Eliza Harris and her little child Harry come to their house seeking shelter, the senator is moved by her plight and changes his mind about the law, helping her to escape capture.

Meanwhile, Uncle Tom's saintly character is revealed as he accepts the indignity of being sold "down the river" to New Orleans. On the steamboat, Uncle Tom makes friends with a little girl named Eva St. Clare, who is as good-hearted as he is. When Uncle Tom saves Eva after she falls into the river, her father, Augustine St. Clare, agrees to purchase him in gratitude. Uncle Tom is taken to the St. Clare plantation where he lives a relatively easy life as the head coachman. Tom feels fortunate to have St. Clare as a master. Sensitive, kind and contemplative, St. Clare adores his daughter, Eva; tolerates his demanding wife, Marie; enjoys debating political issues with his cousin Ophelia; and indulges his slaves. Reflecting his name, St. Clare is "gay, airy, [and] handsome," but he is something of a fallen idealist. As a very young man, St. Clare's nature had been one of "romantic passion," but the defining event of St. Clare's life was his loss, through misunderstanding, of his one true love. To his cousin's consternation, St. Clare refuses to read the Bible or to call himself a Christian. In spite of the fact that he is a "heathen" slave owner, St. Clare has surprisingly humanitarian views that come to light when he discusses slavery and race relations with Ophelia, Marie, or his brother Alfred.

St. Clare's daughter, Eva, is the joy of his life. Unfortunately, her beauty is only matched by her poor health. Little Eva's full name, Evangeline, is a pointed reference to her evangelism, an activity which she shares with Tom. Eva befriends Tom and inspires love in all who know her. Often discussed as "Christlike," Eva does not seem meant for this world. She is described as being "spirit-like," with "large, mystic eyes," is capable of converting even the seemingly amoral Topsy, a slave in the St. Clare household, to Christianity, and is persistent in her talks about going to heaven. She feels deeply for her fellow creatures, particularly those less fortunate than herself, such as her family's slaves. She often speaks to her father, mother, and cousins Henrique and Ophelia about her abomination of slavery. Just before she is to die, Eva calls all the members of the household to her bedside to tell them she is dying, to implore them to become Christians, and to give each of them a lock of her hair as a keepsake. Her deathbed scene, one of the most famous in literature, is the height of Victorian domestic melodrama, with Little Eva struggling for breath as her loved ones surround the bed, tears streaming down their faces. Before she dies, Eva makes her father promise to free all of his slaves. St. Clare tells Tom that he is going to be freed, but the old slave prefers to stay with him in order to convert him to Christianity. When St. Clare dies unexpectedly before freeing the slaves, his wife sells the slaves at public auction. Uncle Tom is bought by the villainous Simon Legree.

Simon Legree is Tom's final master, the brutal owner of a desolate Louisiana plantation whose slaves are abused and hopeless. Legree's name, which calls up images of greed, has become synonymous with evil and cruelty. His plantation represents the worst conditions that slavery can create: he beats, under feeds, overworks, and bullies his slaves. He does not give them proper housing or warm enough clothing and does not allow those slaves who are religious to look to God as a power higher than him. Legree attempts to corrupt Tom by enticing him with power over the other slaves, but Tom's Christian faith enables him to resist. Tom's resistance infuriates Legree, and he threatens to kill Tom for not recognizing him—instead of God—as his master. Legree's need for power and control over his slaves has made him a depraved monster, and his corruption exemplifies the demoralizing effects of slavery on slave owners.

While on the plantation, Tom meets Miss Cassy. A slave owned by Legree, Cassy has been Legree's mistress since she came to his plantation as a young girl. Cassy befriends Tom after he was bought by Legree. Strong and dignified in spite of her enslaved state, Cassy calls herself "a lost soul" and tells Tom she does not believe in God. She is angry and bitter about her enslavement. Her two children were taken from her and sold, and she killed a third in its infancy to keep it from growing up in slavery. Cassy and young Emmeline, a fellow slave, finally escape from the plantation together after Tom dies and make their way to Canada. Cassy is reunited with Eliza Harris, whom she discovers to be her long-lost daughter.

As a slave to Legree, Tom's faith is put to the ultimate test when he comes under Legree's power: The fiendish Legree vows to corrupt Tom, asking him "An't I yer master?… An't yer mine, now, body and soul?", to which Tom replies, "My soul an't yours, Mas'r!… It's been bought and paid for by one that is able to keep it.…" Legree is unable to disturb Tom's religious convictions.

When Tom dies at the hands of Legree and his henchmen, Quimbo and Sambo, his death is Christlike as he forgives his tormentors as well as converting them even as his blood drips from their hands. In the meantime, George Shelby, the son of Uncle Tom's original owner, has been searching for him ever since he was sold down the river. George finds Uncle Tom in time to bid him farewell before he dies. In a fury, George threatens to charge Legree with murder, but Legree points out that no white person will convict another for killing a slave. George realizes sadly that Legree will go unpunished. But George vows to do "what one man can do to drive out this curse of slavery from my land!" He returns to Kentucky and frees all of his slaves, calling on them to "be as honest and as faithful a Christian as Tom was.

Uncle Tom's name has become synonymous in American culture with fawning and flattering behavior, particularly on the part of a black person towards a white person. Tom is indeed the gentle, devoted, trustworthy slave to his kind masters, Shelby and St. Clare, but these qualities stem more from his Christian beliefs than from a self-serving lack of dignity. Viewed in the context of the entire novel, which relies heavily for its success on the nineteenth-century reading audience's Christianity, Tom serves as a symbol of the support and sustenance that Christianity provides for some even in the most dire of circumstances.

The third-person ("they," "he," "she") omniscient, or all-seeing narrative, point of view is necessary to Stowe's novel, as the novel follows simultaneously the activity of several characters in different places. The point of view occasionally shifts to second-person ("you") for the purpose of drawing the reader into the story at moments of high emotion. For instance, during the description of Eliza's flight with Harry from the Shelbys, the narrator suddenly confronts the reader: "If it were your Harry, mother, or your Willie, that were going to be torn away from you by a brutal trader, tomorrow morning … how fast could you walk?" Since the success of Uncle Tom's Cabin depends upon the reader's ability to empathize with the characters—and particularly the black slaves—these shifts into second-person point of view are crucial to Stowe's purpose. The omniscience of the narrator also enables the reader to empathize with the characters by showing the reader the emotions and motivations of the characters. When readers learn how Tom feels upon hearing that St. Clare plans to free him, they can feel compassion for him: "He felt the muscles of his brawny arms with a sort of joy, as he thought they would soon belong to himself.…"

In addition to using a third-person narrator, Stowe also sets her novel during a turbulent time in the United States. Uncle Tom's Cabin is an anti-slavery novel, and the time and place of the novel provide a historically accurate context for considering the issue of slavery. The antebellum period in American history was characterized by slaveholding in Southern states. Stowe wrote her novel during this period in angry response to the practice of slavery. The novel is set primarily in Kentucky and Louisiana, which were slave states. Kentucky is across the Ohio River from the free states, so setting part of her novel in Kentucky allowed Stowe to show slaves escaping to free territory. Once in free territory, escaped slaves such as Eliza encounter the injustice of the Fugitive Slave Law—Stowe's incentive for writing the novel—as readers see her chased by hired slave hunters. Tom is sold "down the river" to New Orleans, where he resides in relative peace with the St. Clares. After Tom is sold to Simon Legree, he experiences slavery at its worst. "Down the river" had a special, dreadful significance for slaves farther north, as it represented the distant unknown and the hard, hot work of the large plantations.

Uncle Tom's Cabin is considered by critics to be an excellent example of sentimental fiction, a genre that formed from efforts of abolitionists to outlaw slavery. Attempting to win readers' emotions, the writers of sentimental novels concentrated on life in the home and family, an experience to which most readers, particularly white Northern women, could relate. Extending Christian love to the oppressed characters becomes a major theme in sentimental fiction. In writing her emotional book about slavery, Stowe learned about slave life by talking to former slaves and by reading a great deal, including slave narratives and anti-slavery tracts.

For more information about the life of slaves in their own words, look for Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Written by Himself. In his autobiography, first published in 1845, Douglass tells of his life as a slave in the American South, the cruelty of Christian slaveholders, and how, after learning to read, he finally was able to escape to freedom. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, written in 1861 by Harriet Jacobs, is the first slave narrative written by an African-American woman. Jacobs tells of the particular problems experienced by women in slavery—sexual exploitation and the separation of mother and children—and makes emotional appeals to her white female reading audience.

To counter claims that her descriptions of slavery were inaccurate, Stowe wrote a companion book to Uncle Tom's Cabin. Originally published in 1854, The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin presents Stowe's own source book of facts for Uncle Tom's Cabin that she compiled to corroborate her claims and to demonstrate to skeptical readers that all of the characters and events in the novel were based upon actual people and phenomena of slavery.

Directed by William Robert Daly, the 1914 silent film version of Uncle Tom's Cabin starred Mary Eline, Irving Cummings, and Sam Lucas. Lucas was one of the first African-American actors to appear in a leading movie role. Another film version of Uncle Tom's Cabin (Onkel Tom's Hutte) was made in Yugoslavia in 1969 by Hungarian director Geza von Radvanyi and stars John Kitzmiller, O. W. Fischer, Herbert Lom, and Gertraud Mittermayr.

A made-for-television version of Stowe's novel, directed by Stan Lathan, appeared in 1987. This version stars Avery Brooks, Kate Burton, Bruce Dern, Paula Kelly, Phylicia Rashad, Kathryn Walker, Edward Woodward, Frank Converse, George Coe, and Albert Hall.

Following its publication in 1852, Uncle Tom's Cabin inspired numerous stage adaptations all around the world. In 1994, Garland Publishing published a new edition of George L. Aiken and George C. Howard's six-act musical play, Uncle Tom's Cabin, which was originally published by Samuel French in the 1850s.

Few writers, particularly nineteenth-century female writers, can say that their work changed the course of a nation. But that is exactly what Harriet Beecher Stowe did when she wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin. Stowe's sentimental novel about the injustice of slavery and the benefits of Christian love became an immediate best-seller in 1852. Moreover, many people, including Abraham Lincoln, claim that her anti-slavery book helped start the Civil War. When he met Stowe in 1862, Lincoln said, "So you're the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war!"

1. Research mid-nineteenth-century American views of motherhood and domesticity, and compare those views to Stowe's portrayal of mothers and motherhood.
2. Look at actual nineteenth-century slave narratives written by both women and men. In what ways were slavery different for each sex?
3. In what ways had slavery been built into an economic necessity in the agrarian antebellum South? Why might slaveholders sympathetic to the slaves' plight not have freed their slaves?
4. Read Stowe's 1854 The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin. In this work, does Stowe answer critics complaints that her account of slavery is inaccurate? Explain why or why not.