The slave era made a mark in American history that has also been dissected and reflected in American literature. An examination of three literary works expressing views on slavery shows how the authors use their characters in different ways to point out the inhumanity and moral poison of slavery for blacks and whites alike.
Probably the best-known abolitionist novel is Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, a work much parodied because of its overly dramatic structure known primarily from a play version. Interestingly, the main character in the book has come to be seen as a detrimental stereotype so that to be an "Uncle Tom" is now a derogatory term, though Stowe meant for the character to represent the best she saw in black people. Stowe was a white woman and social revolutionary committed to the abolitionist cause, and this novel created great controversy when first published, supposedly even contributing to the onset of the Civil War.
The novel thus takes place before the Civil War in an era when slavery was being questioned by some in the North but was accepted in the South as a necessary institution. The Shelby plantation is run by a more kindly man than many slaveowners, but this fact does not protect his slaves when he is faced with financial problems and has to sell Uncle Tom and Harry. This will separate harry from his mother, Eliza, but the owner feels he has no choice. He also seems to have little choice in the market he chooses, since Haley is a particularly brutal slave trader. Eliza takes Harry and runs away. What has caused so much concern among blacks ever after is that she tries to get Uncle Tome to go with them, but he refuses on the grounds that he owes something to the master. Yet Tom suffers greatly in the novel for his decision, so it can hardly be said that Stowe was trying to claim that slaves did owe their masters loyalty in spite of the way they were captured, sold, and treated.
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