Uncle Tom's Cabin
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1852)
“The novel that Abraham Lincoln supposedly said started the Civil War — a sentimental masterpiece that weaponized empathy to dismantle the moral foundations of American slavery.”
Short Summary
Arthur Shelby, a Kentucky slaveholder in financial trouble, sells two enslaved people: Uncle Tom, a deeply religious middle-aged man, and Harry, the young son of Eliza Harris. Eliza flees north with Harry, eventually reuniting with her husband George and escaping to Canada. Tom is sold down the river — first to the kind but ineffectual Augustine St. Clare in New Orleans, where he bonds with the angelic child Eva, then after Eva's and St. Clare's deaths to the brutal Simon Legree on a Louisiana cotton plantation. Tom refuses to betray two escaped women and is beaten to death by Legree's overseers, dying as a Christian martyr. George Shelby arrives too late to save Tom but frees his own enslaved people in Tom's memory.
Detailed Summary
The novel opens on the Shelby plantation in Kentucky, where Arthur Shelby, a relatively humane slaveholder, faces financial ruin. To settle debts, he agrees to sell Uncle Tom — his most loyal and valuable enslaved man — and Harry, the four-year-old son of Eliza Harris. Eliza overhears the arrangemen...