Uncle Tom's Cabin - Fiction as a Catalyst for Fact The Origins of a Living Document

Stage Night

North and South Polarized: Critics Respond

The Abolitionist Debates

The Tom Caricature

The Greatest Impact

The Origins of a Living Document

In her own words, Harriet Beecher Stowe was compelled to pen Uncle Tom's Cabin "....because as a woman, as a mother, I was oppressed and broken-hearted with the sorrows and injustice I saw, because as a Christian I felt the dishonor to Christianity -because as a lover of my country, I trembled at the coming day of wrath."1 Stowe was born in Litchfield, Connecticut on June 14th, 1811. Her strong moral convictions may be attributed to the fact that she was raised as the daughter of a well-known Congregationalist minister, Lyman Beecher.

Harriet was the seventh of nine children, which certainly implies an instilled sense of tolerance, fairness and sharing throughout her upbringing. Her brother Henry was also a popular preacher as well as a leader of the abolitionist movement. Ms. Stowe was privileged to be an educated woman, attending school and later teaching at the Hartford Female Academy, which was founded by her sister Catherine Beecher in 1823. While teaching, she wrote stories and created illustrations for local journals. Throughout her lifetime, she would publish more than thirty works, but it was Uncle Tom's Cabin that made her a household name. Harriet Stowe's real exposure to the issue of slavery and views on abolition came firsthand in Cincinnati where she later taught, and where she encountered fugitive slaves and learned about life on the other side of the Ohio River, spawning the impetus for Uncle Tom's Cabin.2

Initially serialized in 1851 in over 40 installments over a period of ten months in the weekly anti-slavery newspaper The Washington National Era for with Ms. Stowe received remuneration of $300, then published in 1852 as a book, Uncle Tom's Cabin was an immediate success, selling 10,000 copies within days and nearly 1.5 million worldwide, rivaling in sales for its time only the bible (Boydston, Kelley, Margolis).3 The notion of the abolition of slavery during the time of Ms. Stowe's novel was by no means a consensus: in fact, it was a topic of significant debate.

The Southern plantation owners deftly clung to the economics of their ability to utilize slaves as farm workers, while the majority of Northern abolitionists favored an end to the de-humanizing practice of engaging in the commerce of human beings. Ms. Stowe, intending to expose the historical truth of slavery's horrors, opened Pandora's proverbial box on the issue and started a movement in society and the arts that adapted the text of Uncle Tom's Cabin as its own, spawning differing views, slants on characters and an overall plethora of versions of the original story.

Introduction

Uncle Tom's Cabin emerged as a novel, but soon transformed itself into a cultural icon whose text was created and recreated by its readers, adapters, and its foremost opponents, polarizing the abolitionist debate. The responses to and adaptations of the text provided a means by which the novel assumed a principal role in American culture through various media: the theatre, film, posters, paintings, follow-on writings, essays and press coverage. The way its readers articulated and reconstructed the text brought on a range of social and political meanings and results.

In what way did this text change the traditional relationship between reader and the novel? The reader became the author, interpreter, director, actor, witness and part and parcel of the story. The story, instead of being about life, became life, and life in turn became its own version of the story. In this context of slavery, religion, melodrama, and family crisis, Uncle Tom's Cabin can be viewed as a cultural pattern instead of an isolated work. Almost as soon as it was published as a novel, Stowe's story was adapted for the American stage; from 1852 until well into the twentieth century, adaptations of Uncle Tom's Cabin were among the most popular productions that a theater company could stage. Stowe, however, never condoned nor participated in developing the productions, nor did she earn any money from these adaptations.

Stage Night

The chronicle of the trail from the first adaptation of the Uncle Tom's Cabin in print to the living, breathing persona of the stage reveals a production that caught on like wildfire, as evidenced by the following listing of stage performances and subsequent press reviews that occurred throughout the United States between 1852 and 1928:4

First New York Production, National Theatre, 1852

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre06at.html" ["a serious & mischievous blunder"]

New York Herald (September 1852)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre02bt.html" "A New Thing"

The Liberator (October 1852)

First Boston Production, Boston Museum, 1852

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre03at.html" Uncle Tom's Cabin

Boston Commonwealth (November 1852)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre02at.html" Uncle Tom's Cabin at a Boston Theatre

Ohio Anti-Slavery Bugle (16 November 1852)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre02dt.html" ["a disgrace to Boston"]

Quincy Patriot (December 1852)

Aiken Dramatization, National Theatre, New York, 1853

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre45at.html" 25 Notices

The Spirit of the Times (July 1853 - May 1854)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre08at.html" "Uncle Tom" among the Bowery Boys

New York Times (July 1853)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre02ct.html" "Uncle Tom" on the Stage

The Liberator (August 1853)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre10at.html" A Great Change in a Short Time

New York Evening Post (August 1853)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre04at.html" Abolition Dramatized

New York Tribune (August 1853)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre08bt.html" The Anti-Slavery Drama

National Anti-Slavery Standard (20 August 1853)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre06bt.html" 2 Notices [Aiken's Renumeration]

New York Herald (September 1853)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre09at.html" [A Visit to...

Charles
Spirit of the Times (September 1853)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre04ft.html" Uncle Tom at the Bowery

New York Tribune (17 January 1854)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre45bt.html" T.D. Rice as Tom at Bowery

Spirit of the Times (21 January 1854)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre45dt.html" 4 Notices: Christy's Burlesque Uncle Tom's Cabin

Spirit of the Times (May - June 1854)

Southern Productions

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre02et.html" Theatre, Charleston

The Liberator (16 December 1853)

Civil War Productions

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre04gt.html" Winter Garden Theatre

The New York Tribune (26 February 1862)

New York Productions

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre06ct.html" Niblo's Garden Theatre

New York Herald (13 January 1875)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre06et.html" Park Theatre

New York Herald (23 May 1877)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre05ct.html" Mrs. Howard at New Broadway Theatre

New York Times (16 January 1877)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre06ft.html" Mrs. Howard at Grand Opera House

New York Herald (16 October 1877)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre05dt.html" Booth's Theatre

New York Times (19 February 1878)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre06gt.html" Booth's Theatre

New York Herald (19 February 1878)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre06ht.html" Mrs. Howard at Fifth Avenue Theatre

New York Herald (April 1878)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre05et.html" Mrs. Howard at Fifth Avenue Theatre

New York Times (April 1878)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre05ft.html" Olympic Theatre

New York Times (21 October 1879)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre05gt.html" Booth's Theatre

New York Times (30 December 1880)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre05ht.html" C.H. Smith's Double Mammoth at Niblo's Garden

New York Times (23 May 1882)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre05it.html" John P. Smith at Grand Opera House

New York Times (26 June 1888)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre05jt.html" Byrne & Wallack's Version at Grand Opera House

New York Times (18 December 1888)

Brady's 1901 "Revival" http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osar13bt.html" Stage Doings for the New Week [with illustration]

New York World (March 1901)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osar06at.html" Calendar for the Week

New York Herald (March 1901)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre06dt.html" Uncle Tom Back at the Old Stand

New York Herald (March 1901)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre05kt.html" William A. Brady's Revival at Academy of Music

New York Times (March 1901)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre05lt.html" [Brady's UTC & Ibsen's "Ghosts"]

New York Times (March 1901)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osar13ct.html" ["UTC will entertain 20,000 each week"] [with illustration]

New York World (10 March 1901)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre05mt.html" Brady's Revival at Academy of Music

New York Times (10 March 1901)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osar48at.html" "breaking all records"

The Billboard (23 March 1901)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre05nt.html" Brady's Revival at Grand Opera House

New York Times (December 1901)

Abercrombie's UTC Co. http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre82at.html" Utica Herald (5 November 1880)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre84at.html" Greencastle Press (28 April 1881)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre83at.html" Glen's Falls Daily Times (16 May 1881)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osar85at.html" Waterville Times (22 September 1881)

Other Productions

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre54bt.html" Howard Athenaeum, Boston

Boston Globe (March 1880)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre51bt.html" Chicago Museum

Chicago Tribune (July 1884)

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/revus/osre81at.html" Cox Theater

Cincinnati Times-Star (12 November 1928)

North and South Polarized: Critics Respond

One of the most widely quoted and outspoken critics of the theatrical debut of Stowe's conception is James Gordon Bennet of the Herald who stated the following in his September 1852 review:

The furore which it has thus created, has brought out quite a number of catchpenny imitators, pro and con, desirous of filling their sails while yet the breeze is blowing, though it does appear to us to be the meanest kind of stealing of a lady's thunder. This is, indeed, a new epoch and a new field of abolition authorship -- a new field of fiction, humbug and deception, for a more extended agitation of the slavery question -- than any that has heretofore imperiled the peace and safety of the Union."5

The North primarily used images of the brutality of slavery in their depiction of Stowe's chronicle. Both in text and drawings the Union drew on the grotesque physical evils of slavery to rally support for Emancipation. The power of the visual spectacle opened the eyes of Northerners once ignorant to the evils of slavery.

The harsh Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, was one of the factors which impelled Harriet Beecher Stowe to write Uncle Tom's Cabin. This bust image of Anthony Burn, whose trial under the Act touched off riots and protests by abolitionists and citizens of Boston in 1854, was drawn from a daguerreotype.…