Uncle Tom's Cabin - A Few Thoughts

I just finished reading this classic American novel byHarriet Beecher Stowe, and though I have no intention of trying to do a full review of it I would like to mention a few thoughts about it.

First of all, what words describe this book? Sad, sickening, astounding are a few that came to mind. Amazing, interesting, heart- breaking, heart-warming - those are a few more.

It's a book of slavery, race, faith, family, departures and arrivals, loss, love, belief. It tries to show differences in how a Southern character and his Northern cousin perceive slavery and slaves and ho living in a new locale provides her with a different view.

I did think that there were too many "happy coincidences" at the end of the story, but that's a small nit to pick. The story was very readable, though some of the scenes tough to read, with so much sadness and bigotry often dominating. It is easy to see how and why this book stirred up so much controversy when it came out, with how the author describes some of the slaveholders, salve traders and slave catchers, not to mention her gripping word pictures of the shaves themselves, particularly Tom and his family. 

I am glad I finally re-read this story. It took me longer to finish than I wish it had, but it was worth the effort. It is no new scholarly account of the war or the coming of the war, but I think it still is a valuable telling of various parts of mid nineteenth century life in the United States, particularly in the border and deep southern states. 

Religion and faith, family and friendship, buying and selling, departure and reunion, freedom and slavery - all themes found throughout Stowe's influential and still interesting work. If any readers of this entry have not read it, or have not done so recently, I certainly suggest you consider doing so. It is a fascinating perspective on the United States of so many years ago.

Now reading: Uncle Tom's Cabin

I read this famous novel in college, 20+ years ago (yikes!) and finally picked it up again recently. My reading is going rather slowly, I admit, mostly at lunch while at work and on the bus to and from work, but, wow! What a disgusting story, even at the start. I know "disgusting" is not a great word but as I started reading it, that was the first thought that came to mind.

I knew what the story was about and why it was so controversial, but I guess I had forgotten the specifics. On one hand, I can understand why I would forget such details due to time mainly, but I'm kind of sad that I had not remembered more of it. I guess reading it in college, with many other such assignments and a less mature than now (hopefully :) ) mind probably provides a reasonable explanation, but I do wish I had remembered more about this story.

It is very good reading, even when I struggle through the dialects in which Mrs. Stowe wrote many of the conversations and I am happy to have started reading it again. It is a powerful story of slavery and many of the different types of characters involved in it. That it is based in Kentucky and obviously concerns the northern Kentucky and Cincinnati areas does make it a bit more personal to me, especially as I ride a bus across the Taylor-Southgate Bridge that spans the Ohio River, one of the major boundaries between potential freedom and slavery in the mid 1800s and in this story.

I hope I can convince myself to read it more frequently and focus on this story, but I also want to think about what I'm reading and not just glance over words on a page. I know it is a novel and is fiction, but slavery was a real part of this country, this state, this region and even my family.

Families were split up, people were hurt and millions of African-Americans were treated like cattle or pieces of furniture or other such property. This story is re-opening my eyes to one period view of that institution and its affects on so many people no matter how young, old or innocent. I imagine I'll have at least one or two more entries about this book as I get deeper into it and ponder the issues it raises and the stories it tells.

courtesy http://www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org

Back into the Reading Mode

One reason my posting has not been as frequent in recent weeks is I have not done as much reading. I cannot offer any good explanations as to why, other than using my Ipad more often and not being very comfortable with e-books yet (though I have finished most of one such book, though in very piece-meal fashion over several weeks.)

I am, however, ready to get back into doing more reading and finding more ideas for discussion. The book I just started is The. H.L. Hunely: The Secret Hope of the Confederacy by Tom Chaffin. It is a nice coincidence that I started this just before the recent news about the submarine's spar was revealed.Hopefully I can get through this book in a timely fashion and offer some thoughts on it, and maybe even try to analyze how this recent news may change or affect what the author offers in this book.

I also have Mrs. Lincoln by Catherine Clinton on my shelf. I have had it for quite a while, but my recent viewing of Lincoln has made me curious to read this account of the First Lady's turbulent life. That will probably be the next one I read (though I still have quite a few that have been sitting on my shelf for a while.)

Also, as I walked through a Barnes & Noble's store a few weeks ago, I saw they had copies of Uncle Tom's Cabin for sale. I did not buy one as I have at least one copy at home, but I think maybe I need to read this again. I read it in college, but that was about 20 years ago and though I'm not a big fan of reading the same book multiple times (or seeing the same movie more than once) this may be a book worthy of an exception to that ideal (just as Lincoln may be the exception for movies). I think I still have my college copy here as well as a nicer hardback version like the one I saw in the store, so maybe this will be another one I read this year.

After those three, I still have many more on my shelves, and will probably look for other purchases too. I just hope I do actually read them and not just let them sit on the shelf, looking pretty and collecting dust.

Kentucky's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" Law

While reading Creating a Confederate Kentucky: The Lost Cause and Civil War Memory in a Border State, by Anne Marshall, I have read a lot of fascinating information and am really enjoying this book. I will post a full review soon, but something I read today, in chapter 7, really struck me as being an especially sad episode in my state's history and I felt the need to comment on it.

The controversy was in the early 1900s in Lexington, where an opera house in Lexington showed a play called Uncle Tom's Cabin, a traveling play based on Harriet Beecher Stowe's famous novel.

A local chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) decided they were offended by this book, which they claimed offered a false portrayal of slavery, and did not show the true nature of the institution and the happiness it created for both slave and master. They believed that seeing props of slaves in chains would have a negative effect both on their children, whose ancestors were supposedly being insulted by this mis-portrayal of slavery and on young blacks who would get a false impression of how their parents and relatives thought of their bondage (and thus might become angry and make the UDC's perception of racial harmony in Lexington disappear.)

The UDC started a public protest, trying to pressure the opera-house owner to stop hosting this play, and other chapters of this group, from other cities in Kentucky and from other states, became involved in it. This play, however, was very popular, playing in front of large audiences, and was quite profitable for this gentleman, despite the protests, and he resisted this pressure and continued to let this show take place in his building. 

After realizing their protest had failed, the UDC adopted a different tactic a couple of years later, and started pressuring legislators around the state to do that. By this time, Kentucky had been well-established in people's minds and memories as a Confederate state, and many former Confederates and Confederate supporters held key offices, so the UDC had a significant amount of influence in powerful places.

In 1906, the state passed a law, stating in part that it would be illegal for any theater or similar building to present a show that "is based upon antagonism alleged formerly to exist, between master and slave, or that excites race prejudice." (See page 170 of this book.)

Basically, the UDC, the supporters of the Confederacy, and those who remembered slavery and the antebellum times as being all happy and gay, made it illegal to have any show that portrayed slavery negatively or that may be seen as insulting their ancestors and lifestyles. Thus, even though slavery had been banned for about 40 years, its supporters were able to have the 1st Amendment abolished within Kentucky, at least on this one subject dear to their hearts and memories.

As the book shows, however, any show that portrayed blacks negatively or based on stereotypes the UDC favored, were permitted to be performed even with this law in effect. (For instance, years later the controversial film Birth of a Nation was allowed to be shown in a theater, apparently largely due to it being a new medium that did not truly exist when the law was passed.)

Frankly, though I'm upset I did not know this had happened, I find it quite embarrassing that my state, in which many of my ancestors were living at this time, could pass such a terrible law. It is also interesting, perhaps fascinating, that slavery created so much controversy four decades after its demise that its defenders had to resort to violating the US Constitution in order to pursue their pro-southern and pro-Confederate agenda, as they pretended that  Kentucky had been a happy-go-lucky, unanimously southern-supporting commonwealth of people, where masters happily ruled and slaves gladly served,  although such a place never existed except in their minds, literature and dreams. (Sorry for the run-on sentence, but it's the best way I can think to express how the UDC was trying to imagine Kentucky's past.)

I've always realized that Kentucky has always had troubles regarding racial equality and has never been progressive at all in this area, but it still surprises me to see such an action taken by the state itself.  I guess it's not much different than other laws requiring segregation, but its so clearly a violation of the most basic American right that it stuns me that this law passed and went into effect.

Previous controversies like the gag order in Congress in the 1830s, or whether the US Postal Service would deliver copies of Stowe's book or other novels are somewhat understandable in that they occurred while slavery existed, but to see such censorship decades after slavery's demise really caught me off guard and, frankly, is a bit upsetting.I do not know if it is totally appropriate for me to admit to such an emotional reaction to this, but this revelation really disgusts me.

I am also surprised that I had not heard of that law before and that a quick google search shows no results for this law, though the novel itself is a popular topic. Even my copy of the The Kentucky Encyclopedia fails to include an entry about this statute.

If anybody knows of more information about this law or how long it lasted, please let me know about it. Marshall's book only mentions it on pages 170 and 171. I will try to find the source listed in her notes section as a starting place for this search.