Custom term paper on The role of religion in Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Today, the African Methodist Episcopal Church is the second largest Methodist union in the U.S.A. (about 1,2 million members). It publishes four periodicals, including The Christian Recorder. Apart from to the extensive program of evangelization in the country, the church has a great missionary work in Africa and the West Indies (Campbell 348-56).

3. Religion in Uncle Tom’s Cabin

The painful blow to the slave myth about “promised land” for black slaves in the Southern states was made in 1852 by Harriet Beecher Stowe’s book “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, which immediately became one of the first national bestsellers and a real “Bible” of abolitionism. Every word of the writer was unconditionally accepted as the truth, even though she belonged to the most odious abolitionist circles, and, above all, she expressed what she herself thought about the South, and what others wanted to hear from her. Having met Harriet Beecher Stowe Abraham Lincoln joked that she was the little woman who had caused the great war, meaning the Civil War of 1861-1865 (Morgan 34-41).
Harriet Beecher Stowe was born and grew up in a believing family. Her father was a devoted Calvinist and a conservative, and her five brothers were priests in the Presbyterian Church. Harriet grew up in a pious, puritanical atmosphere in the State of Connecticut. Then her father was appointed rector of Lane Theological Seminary, and the Beechers moved to Cincinnati (Ohio). Here she first saw slavery. She married Professor Calvin Stowe, who supported her literary pursuits (Sizer 236-43).
In fact, this book was the world’s first bestseller. In the United States in the first two years of publishing 300 thousand copies of the novel were issued (with the population 13 times smaller than today), and in England and other European countries the number of copies published was 2 500 000, which was a huge circulation for those times.
In the novel brought the idea that slavery was a great injustice in the country, which demonstratively aspired to embody democracy and universal equality. In her book, the author rejects violence and warns that America will not avoid public unrest, unless the government and society in general take the most urgent steps to free slaves (Thornburg 35-37). custom term paper
Slavery led to racism, which naturally reached its peak in the South. After all, for the planters the Blacks were their property, and when human rights come into conflict with the rights of property, the property prevailed. People from the African continent were even denied in human nature. Being a private property, a slave was equal to a horse or cart. But diminishing the slave’s status was not enough, it was necessary to deprive him of the desire for freedom. The religious preachers were doing the job.
Ministers of religion called the Blacks to humility and resignation to their destiny. They tried to convince the Blacks that there was no way out of slavery for them, that recalcitrant slaves would be brought to curse and go to hell. Only obedience, patience, and implementation of the covenants of the church would give a slave a possibility to go to heaven, where there are no poor or rich, no slaves or slave-owners. Distorting the Bible text, racists argued that the Blacks were direct descendants of Ham, Cain and other negative characters of the Scripture. The very color of skin, in their opinion, showed that even if a Black man was a man at all, he was a second class man, created to obey to the White man (Irons 118-23).
The popularity of the book is explained by the ability of the writer to reach the human heart. One of the book’s characters, Senator Byrd, voted for the Fugitive Slave Act. But fate brings him to those to whom the law was aimed. An abstract political conviction of the senator faced the real embodiment of the law. He could not refuse to help a person with beseeching eyes and trembling hands. He helped the fugitives hide, thus violating the law. The senator did not expect that a runaway slave may be a desperate mother or a helpless child. The writer several times resorted to such a method; it makes the reader move from abstraction to life. It creates the impression of real desperation, shows readers the slavery not as a political or social issue, but as a problem of concrete people (Thornburg 57-64).
The writer herself was the true representative of the population of the Puritan New England. She said that the idea of the novel came to her during the serving in the church: she had a vision of an old slave dressed in rags, who was whipped. Later she added that the novel was inspired and written by God. She was guided by a religious desire to change life for the better. At that time, romanticism changed, the time came when the main attention was paid to the feelings. Love and family virtues were the most valuable. Stowe’s novel violently attacked slavery for the most part because it destroyed families.
Uncle Tom, the protagonist of the book, is a black slave, a true Christian martyr, who works for the benefit of his master Saint-Clair, tends to draw him to the right way, praying for the soul of Saint-Clair, when he dies. Uncle Tom is murdered when he protects women slaves. Slavery is described as evil, but not for political or philosophical reasons, but mostly because it separates families, destroys the natural parental love and fundamentally contradicts Christianity. The most touching scenes depict the despair of a woman slave, who is powerless to help her crying baby, and a father, who is sold separately from the rest of his family. These were the crimes against the holy family love (Thornburg 97-105).
Harriet Beecher Stowe defines Uncle Tom, as a true Christian, fully respectful of the Gospel commandments. His motto is “be patient and keep hoping”. The expression “he’s a real Uncle Tom” in the colloquial language has long ago become a byword. It symbolizes not reacting to evil with violence and forgiving, infinite gentleness. However, Tom does not obey his destiny. He is always ready to fight for the right to remain faithful to his moral principles of his religion. He has tremendous courage and faith in the ultimate victory of goodness and the truth. Tom dreams of freedom. And he is free because he has faith, hope and love (Beecher Stowe 13-25).
The U.S. Congress accepted the act giving the slave-owners the right to pursue runaway Negroes throughout the country, as well as providing punishment for hiding runaway slaves. Harriet was shocked by such a law, which she believed contradicted Christian morality. The people in the Northern states had risen for the abolition of slavery before. And then, a turning point came. Abraham Lincoln wrote the Emancipation Proclamation. But the Southern states refused to subordinate to the new law, and resigned from the United States, creating the Confederation. A fierce firefight between North and South began, which led to the war in which an estimated 600 thousand people were killed (Morgan 185-89).

4. Conclusion

In war, one of Harriet’s sons was badly wounded in the head and began to suffer memory loss. Then he disappeared, having gone to round the world trip. Harriet Beecher Stowe knew both the greatest glory, and the greatest sorrow, but it was always a great comfort for her to know that her novels played an important role in the liberation of black slaves. To difficult to believe that some 150 years ago, in a country that for many is an example of democracy, in a country obsessed with political correctness, there was slavery. Blacks and Whites lived side by side. But ones had the right to sell the others.

Works Cited:

Beecher Stowe, H. Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Wordsworth Editions Ltd. 1999. Print.
Campbell, J. T. Songs of Zion: African Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States and South Africa. The University of North Carolina Press. 1998. Print.
Chireau, Y.P. Black Magic: Religion and the African American Tradition: Religion and the African American Conjuring Tradition. University of California Press. 2003. Print.
Duitsman-Cornelius, J. Slave Missions and the Black Church in the Antebellum South. University of South Carolina Press. 1998. Print.
Haynes, S.R. Noah’s Curse: The Biblical Justification of American Slavery (Religion in America). OUP USA. 2002. Print.
Irons, C. F. The Origins of Proslavery Christianity: White and Black Evangelicals in Colonial and Antebellum Virginia. The University of North Carolina Press. 2008. Print.
McClain, W. B. Black People in the Methodist Church: Whither Thou Goest? Abingdon Press,U.S. 1993. Print.
Mitchell, H. H. Black Church Beginnings: The Long-hidden Realities of the First Years. William B Eerdmans Publishing Co. 2004. Print.
Morgan, J.-A. Uncle Tom’s Cabin as Visual Culture. University of Missouri Press. 2007. Print.
Sizer, L. C. The Political Work of Northern Women Writers and the Civil War, 1850-1872 (Civil War America). The University of North Carolina Press. 2000. Print.
Thatcher, A. The Savage Text: The Use and Abuse of the Bible (Blackwell Manifestos). WileyBlackwell. 2008. Print.
Thornburg, T. and Thornburg, M. Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” (Cliffs Notes). John Wiley & Sons. 2000. Print.