HBS---Uncle Tom's Cabin

Daniel Goldfield (2011) wrote a book on Harriet Beecher Stowe titled America Aflame; Stowe was an evangelical Christian who was fiercely anti-slavery.

In a church service in 1851, "She experienced a vision: a white man wielding a whip onto an old slave, beating him until the black man died.  The vision became Tom.  The book became a retelling of the crucifixion in family terms."

For Stowe, "Here was an institution---human bondage---that also destroyed the family, stifled free expression, and contradicted the nation's self-evident truths of equality and dignity.  America must purge itself of sin."

Her sister-in-law wrote: "If I could use a pen as you can, I would write something that would make this whole nation feel what an accursed thing slavery is."  Harriet replied : "I will write something.  I will if I live."

Uncle Tom's Cabin "was not an anti southern book.  Slavery existed due to not only southern forbearance but to northern complicity as well.  Northern men, northern mothers, northern Christians have something more to do than denounce their brethren in the South; they have to look to the evil among themselves."

HBS got two out of three right, better than most white Americans.  She understood the evil of oppression--slavery; she understood that the oppressed, the slaves, needed freedom from their bondage; but she did not take the next biblical step---justice for the freed slaves---40 acres and a mule.  Without justice, the freed slaves soon lost their freedom.

Freedom is good, very good, a necessary step; but freedom alone is not good enough.  Jubilee justice is also required.