Document Type

Article

Publication Title

NWSA Journal

Publisher

John Hopkins University Press

Publication Date

Fall 1995

First Page

24

Last Page

34

Issue Number

3

Volume Number

7

Abstract/ Summary

Harriet Beecher Stowe's treatment of race in Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) and the colonization scheme with which she ends the novel have long been its most controversial features. Colonization was a term then in use for returning African Americans to Africa as a solution to the race/slavery problem. Stowe concludes Uncle Tom's Cabin by sending most of the surviving black characters—George, Eliza, their children, George's sister Emily, and Eliza's mother, Cassy to Africa where George dreams of founding a Christian republic. In a lengthy letter George explains his colonizationist ambitions: "On the shores of Africa I see a republic." "I want a country, a nation, of my own. I think that the African race has peculiarities, yet to be unfolded in the light of civilization and Christianity, which, if not the same with those of the Anglo-Saxon, may prove to be, morally, of even a higher type."

Citation/Publisher Attribution

Donovan, J. (1995). A Source for Stowe's Ideas on Race in "Uncle Tom's Cabin". NWSA Journal, 7(3), 24-34.

Publisher Statement

©1995 NWSA Journal

Version

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In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted.