Final Project Main Menu Introduction Exploring Integration and Free Black Perspectives in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin The Ending The Fate of Black Characters at the Close of Uncle Tom's Cabin Uncle Tom's Cabin and African Colonization Should They Stay or Should They Go? The Missing Black Perspective African-American Perspectives on Integration and Colonization Conclusion Works Cited

Imagining America

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The ending of Uncle Tom’s Cabin paints a picture of a racially segregated America, in which the black characters are still subservient to the white characters or out of the country entirely. With the exception of George Shelby at the end of the novel, none of the slaveholders freed their slaves. Simon Legree and Marie St. Clare were thoroughly opposed to emancipation; Marie would have gladly beat and brutalized her slaves if her husband and daughter had not impeded her. Even the more moderate slaveholders, Augustine St. Clare and Arthur Shelby, did not make any efforts to free their slaves despite their abhorrence of the institution. Augustine St. Clare talked at length about how slavery was a plague upon mankind and caused him great emotional distress, but never made any effort to free his slaves (or make provisions for their wellbeing after his death), because to do so in the South would mean social and, above all, economic ruin.

Arthur Shelby loved Tom dearly and hated to separate Harry from his mother, but if he did not sell his two most valuable slaves the Shelby family would fall into bankruptcy. Emily Shelby, Arthur’s wife, tried to persuade her husband to back out of the deal with Haley (the slave trader) until she learned how dire their financial situation was. Like Augustine, Emily Shelby also hated slavery and never wanted to own slaves, but hoped she could make the best of the abominable situation she had been born into, “make the condition of mine [being a slave of the Shelby family] better than freedom.” (Stowe 31). However much Augustine, Arthur, and Emily despised slavery, their hatred was not enough to push them to action.

The white characters that did not own slaves were not very much attracted to the idea of integrating free African-Americans. Ophelia St. Clare, Augustine’s cousin and housekeeper, opposed slavery on religious grounds but did not particularly like African-Americans, seeing them as a sort of wild, uncouth people, even if they had a Western education or Christian upbringing. Much like other contemporary white northerners, Ophelia saw slave misbehavior as a personal shortcoming rather than the product of a brutal system, and projected this attitude onto African-Americans as a whole. Ophelia balked at being put in charge of Topsy, a slave girl Augustine bought for Ophelia as a present and as a chance for her to prove that Northerners were really as accepting of African-Americans as they said they were. Topsy was unpredictable and mischievous, and rarely listened to Ophelia, who was organized and disciplined in every aspect of her life. Ophelia was often short and distant with Topsy. Only after Evangeline befriends Topsy and tearfully persuades her to be “good” (that is, behave the way Ophelia and other white Protestant Christians would have wanted her to) does Ophelia begin to accept her. 

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