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 Imagining America White Characters' Viewpoints on Emancipation and Integration Uncle Tom's Cabin and African Colonization Should They Stay or Should They Go? Conclusion Works Cited

The Missing Black Perspective

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Stowe claimed to have known many free African-Americans and former slaves, and actually argued against African colonization in the final chapter of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, urging her fellow Northern Christians to welcome former slaves into their society. If so, why did Stowe not write any free black characters in Uncle Tom’s Cabin? A slave’s life after escaping to freedom is a much a part of the slave narrative as enslavement. Perhaps, as previously written, Stowe believed African-Americans were and would always be unhappy in America because of racial discrimination and the possibility of being captured and enslaved—but that was not always the case. Frederick Douglass wrote in his first autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845), that when he first set foot in a free state he felt “the highest excitement I ever experienced”, like he had “escaped a den of hungry lions” (Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, 87). As with anyone who moves to a new place (and for Douglass, he might as well have moved to another world), he struggled to find employment, housing, and build a social circle, but he thrived as a free man. Douglass was a prolific writer and public speaker; he wrote three autobiographies, founded three newspapers, and served as the editor for The New National Era. Douglass’ story is far from typical, but it is an example of how former slaves could and did become successful and a respected part of their new communities.

Harriet Jacobs, another former slave and author of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861), was also able to find peace and contentment as a free person. Jacobs did not lead a public life as Douglass did; for decades critics contested that her autobiography was a fake, written by her editor Lydia Maria Child. What mattered the most to Jacobs was being able to reunite with her two children, who she had been separated from for many years as she hid in her grandmother’s attic in an attempt to escape her obsessive master. As with Douglass, Jacobs struggled to find her footing in a new place, but eventually found employment as a domestic servant and built a network of friends to support her. At the close of her autobiography she was looking to purchase her own home and was optimistic about her future.

Both Douglass and Jacobs experienced racial discrimination and feared recapture; Douglass fled to the United Kingdom and remained there for two years until his friends raised the funds to purchase his freedom. Jacobs spent ten months in England as an extended vacation. Both Douglass and Jacobs loved the United Kingdom, where they treated as equal, honorable human beings, without regard to their race—but they eventually returned to America.

Douglass and Jacobs took the North (in particular Northern Christians) to task on its tacit approval of slavery and discrimination against free people of color. Douglass had a great deal to say about the subject in the appendix to his first and autobiography and his 1852 speech “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July”. Douglass’ writing in his first autobiography often took an atheistic tone, and in the appendix Douglass clarified that he was a Christian, though he had much contempt for “the Christianity of this land” (Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, 93), by which he meant Christianity that claimed to preach unconditional love and acceptance of all while approving of the enslavement of an entire race. Douglass primarily pointed his accusations at Southern, slaveholding Christians, though all supporters of slavery claiming to call themselves “Christians”. Jacobs made similar accusations in her autobiography, and implored Northern Christians to help their black brethren in the South by pushing for the abolition of slavery.

For all its faults, America was Douglass’ and Jacobs’ home. One of the reasons Douglass split with his longtime friend and fellow abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison, was their different interpretations of the American Constitution. Garrison contended that the Constitution was a pro-slavery document, but Douglass remained firm in his belief that it was a “glorious liberty document” (Douglass, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July”, 127). Douglass was a great believer in the founding American principles of freedom, justice, and equality and maintained that when the Constitution was originally written, slavery was not mentioned anywhere in the document and instead affirmed the fundamental rights of all men. Douglass was against African colonization and asserted that the United States was African-Americans’ natural home, and appealed to both black and white Americans to reimagine America where citizenship was based on identification with American values and not skin color (Myers). Jacobs did not write about integration in her autobiography, but adapted well to her new community and was loved and respected.

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