by Beachbumwriter

Created on: September 24, 2011

Although Uncle Tom’s Cabin was fiction, it portrayed the actual sins of slavery.  Many slaves escaped with the help of white people in the community who refused to submit to the sinful laws of the country.  The famous underground railroad was used to shuttle slaves to the north, and at night, slaves would use the north star as their guiding light toward freedom.  Congress had passed the Fugitive Slave Act that required citizens to assist slave holders in finding their fugitives.  Brave men and women would hide fugitives in their homes and smuggle them to safer areas such as Boston or Canada.

Slave holders demanded by the power of the whip that their slaves work within their fields and homes.  Laws were passed allowing for slaveholders to beat their slaves to death without penalty.  Overseers who were black or white would run large plantations and would cruelly treat slaves who did not work hard enough or who attempted to run away. 

Beautiful mulatto women were auctioned at a high price for slaveholders’ mistresses.  Their children from these relations were not treated like family and were auctioned off or worked as slaves within their households.  White wives to husbands who had slave mistresses suffered in silence knowing what their husbands were doing, or they would abuse their slave servants who they suspected involved in such relations. 

Slave women were forced to give up their babies and families were broken up as a norm. Families suffered when their children were sold never to be seen again alive.  Husbands and wives forcefully broken apart, or forced to be put together for mating without any concern for past or present relationships that the two slaves may have with others.  Slaves were treated as animals who could leave one wife and get another after being sold off.

Slaves were not allowed to read, write or study religion unless their master authorized it.  Slaves were to be kept ignorant so they would be more dependent upon their master and were less likely to revolt.  Slaves were not allowed to congregate for fear of revolt. 

In Uncle Tom’s Cabin, St Clare reflected on the result of such brutality while considering Topsy’s behavior.  Topsy was stripped from her mother, raised by her slave trader until old enough to be sold to masters who brutally beat her for her short life.  By the time she was purchased by St Clare, she was a young girl of eight years old with behavior problems.  This sad reality could be true since although slavery was the theme in the fictional Uncle Tom’s Cabin, at the same time, it was the reality for slaves prior to the Civil War. 

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