Final Project Main Menu Introduction Exploring Integration and Free Black Perspectives in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin Imagining America White Characters' Viewpoints on Emancipation and Integration 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

The Ending

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Uncle Tom’s Cabin has an interesting and rather bittersweet ending for the black characters. Tom, the novel’s namesake, has died—beaten to death by his cruel, alcoholic master. Tom’s wife, Chloe, and children were freed by George Shelby, Tom’s former master’s son, but Chloe chose to stay on the plantation where she had worked most of her life and accept a position as a paid servant. Ophelia and Topsy returned to Vermont, where Topsy grew into a cultivated young woman. Augustine St. Clare’s former slaves remained enslaved, sold to unknown masters and mistresses. George, Eliza, and Harry successfully escaped to Canada and were reunited with George’s long-lost mother, Cassy, and sister, Emily. The family later departed for Liberia.  

What’s interesting about the ending of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (and what has drawn considerable criticism) is the fate of the black characters. No black character in Uncle Tom’s Cabin is shown living a free, independent, and fulfilling life in the United States, at the ending or in any other part of the novel. The black characters are, in some way, bound by—or bound to--white people or whiteness, as if Stowe could not imagine a future where African-Americans had successfully integrated into “white” society and whiteness was not the central figure of African-American lives. This unwillingness to imagine a free future for her black characters is conveyed through their fate at the end of the novel and the attitudes of white characters towards emancipation and integration.
Sometimes the bondage is literal, as with the minor black characters who are still enslaved at the end of the novel. Other times this bondage is figurative, expressed by a black character’s choice to remain dependent on a white character for basic necessities, employment, or social acceptance. Chloe chose to work for her former mistress after being given her freedom, and Topsy was still living with Ophelia as her adopted daughter. Chloe and Topsy chose to stay even though they have the option of leading an independent life.

Bondage to whiteness is less conspicuous and is expressed by black characters espousing ideas typically associated with white abolitionists—mainly African colonization in Liberia and Protestant Christianity—even if embracing these ideas is detrimental to the characters. Tom is the most prominent example: up until his death, Tom remained by his master’s side, serving him faithfully and caring for the master’s spiritual wellbeing even as he himself suffered. Tom accepted whatever hand his master dealt him, convinced that God would protect and deliver him—this being the same God whose words Tom, by his own admission, had trouble reading, and often relied on white characters to help him interpret.

Bondage to whiteness is in the very language of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, indicated by the white characters’ attitudes towards emancipation integration. The white characters that do support emancipation are not strong enough in their convictions to free their slaves or integrate them into their communities. At every turn, white economic interests and social mores trump black dignity and desires.

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