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Final ProjectMain MenuThe EndingThe Fate of Black Characters at the Close of Uncle Tom's CabinImagining AmericaWhite Characters' Viewpoints on Emancipation and IntegrationUncle Tom's Cabin and African ColonizationShould They Stay or Should They Go?The Missing Black PerspectiveAfrican-American Perspectives on Integration and ColonizationConclusionWorks CitedCaitlin Downey521f243cb92cfaab1942063a8e5df11231bf5acc
Introduction
12016-12-13T12:56:15-08:00Caitlin Downey521f243cb92cfaab1942063a8e5df11231bf5acc141107Exploring Integration and Free Black Perspectives in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabinplain2016-12-16T07:40:11-08:00Caitlin Downey521f243cb92cfaab1942063a8e5df11231bf5accHarriet Beecher Stowe wrote her first novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), to shed light on the horrors of African chattel slavery and, in the tradition of the sentimental novel, inspire her readers to action for the abolition of slavery. However, her novel is missing a crucial component: the free African-American experience. Excluding one man who made a brief appearance near the middle of the novel, all of the black characters in Uncle Tom’s Cabin are slaves. At the end of the novel, these characters are either dead, still enslaved, working as hired help for their former masters, or have immigrated to Africa. None of the black characters are shown living fulfilling, independent in the United States, integrated with white Americans. In the last chapter of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Stowe wrote that she was acquainted with several free African-Americans and that they thriving in their new homes. Why, then, are no free black characters included in her novel? And why are her white characters hesitant to support emancipation? Autobiographies of former slaves, such as Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, show that free African-Americans were able to successfully integrate into “white” society and lead happy, satisfying lives, undeterred by prejudice.