The book that awakened the conscience of so many men and women to the iniquity of slavery and played such a significant role in the liberation of slaves in the United States would be considered, ironically, from the 1960s onwards (by leaders of the civil rights and African American emancipation movements), as a racist work perpetuating the submission of black people.
The reason lies mainly in its protagonist, Uncle Tom. ‘Uncle Tom’ is, in the USA, an insult one can hurl at a black person, since the character is not a rebellious leader, a Spartacus, as the African American movement would have wished, but a martyr, docile and pious, who accepts all punishments as penance and forgives all his enemies.
However, Tom is a man of extreme nobility, without a trace of servitude, with physical courage and supreme self-sacrifice, who recognizes the ignominy of slavery and does not accept it in any way, but rejects violence as a form of resistance and is incapable of lying even to the vilest of men—not out of fear, but out of self-respect.
Tom is a saint, whereas the African Americans of the twentieth century were looking for a hero. It is evident that this passivity would not receive political approval from activists, just as Harriet Beecher Stowe's depictions of black people, with all their benevolence and angelic qualities, could not avoid being denounced as paternalistic. But few books can boast of having had such a significant influence on the lives of so many millions of people and on the history of the United States itself.
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Harriet Beecher Stowe was born in 1811 in the USA. She was the daughter of the evangelical preacher Lyman Beecher and worked as a teacher for a few years. Her first publication was a geography book for children. In 1836, she married a theology professor, Calvin Stowe. Throughout her life, Harriet wrote religious poems, travel books, stories for local newspapers, and novels for children and adults. She met and corresponded with Lady Byron, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Mary Ann Evans.
‘Uncle Tom's Cabin, ‘ her best-known book, became a powerful symbol of freedom: its exaltation of anti-slavery principles helped precipitate the American Civil War. After the publication of this book, Harriet was invited to speak about slavery in America and Europe. In 1856, she published a second novel on the subject, ‘Dred.’ Harriet lived her entire life in an environment of extreme devotion and strong anti-slavery convictions, rooted in a vehement Christian faith in the equality of all men.
The abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe died at the age of 85 in 1896 in Hartford, Connecticut.
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