Uncle Tom's Cabin Unit of Study
Attitudes and Uncle Tom's Cabin Lesson Plan
By David J. Cope

Overview

By examining primary and secondary sources, the students will individually and in groups come to a consensus about Stowe's promotion of the African Colonization Movement in the novel and how it was a determining factor for many northern whites involved in the antislavery movement. Through selected excerpts from the book and personal experience, students will confront the role of racial stereotyping in the 1800s and today.

Time Required

Three to four days, including background readings and discussions

Materials Needed

• Internet access to these sites:


• http://www.iath.virginia.edu/utc/uncletom/uthp.html
• http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/history/history.htm
• http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html


• Handouts:


• "Attitudes Towards Blacks in Uncle Tom's Cabin"
• "The African Colonization Movement"
• "George Harris and Colonization in Uncle Tom's Cabin"

The Lesson

Anticipatory Set

1. Have the students write on a piece of scrap paper their mental images of Sub-Saharan Africa.


2. List their responses on the board.


3. Then using the list, have the class distinguish between established facts and observations by asking them the following questions"


• What factors played into your knowledge and perceptions?
• How could the items on the list lead to positive and negative attitudes towards Africa and Africans?
• How do attitudes become stereotypes?

Procedures

1. Inform the class that Harriet Beecher Stowe has often been criticized for perpetrating racial stereotypes in Uncle Tom's Cabin. While this may have been unwitting on her part, many individuals find certain passages extremely offensive. Distribute the "Attitudes Towards Blacks" handout to each student.


1. After a brief period of silent reading of the handout, have each student create a composite of the African/slave according to Harriet Beecher Stowe. Ask students how Stowe's picture reinforced the prevailing stereotypes.


2. Divide the class into groups of four or five. Have each group read the selection "Attitudes Towards Africa." Then, have each group write a comparative essay based on Stowe's vision and the class version from the Anticipatory Set. Ask students how Stowe and the class reinforce prevailing stereotypes.


3. Have a volunteer read the first passage from the "Attitudes Towards Owners" section aloud. Ask the class what Harriet Beecher Stowe's purpose was in this portion. Then, have a volunteer read the next two passages. Ask students: How did Stowe support/not support her original thesis from these passages?


4. Mary Henderson Eastman, a self-styled "member of one of the [First Families of Virginia] F.F.V's, as a mother, and as a Christian," wrote the most widely read "anti-Tom" novel, Aunt Phillis's Cabin or Southern Life As It Is. In Chapter Ten, she writes:

   ...the very appearance of the slaves themselves show their want of truth. Look at their sound and healthy limbs, hear the odd, but sweet and musical songs that arrest the traveler as he goes on his way; listen to the ready jest which is ever on his lips, and see if the slavery which God has permitted in all ages to exist, is as is here described; and judge if our fair Southern land is tenanted by such fiends as they are represented to be, by those who are trying to make still worse the condition of a mass of god's creatures, born to a life of toil, but comparative freedom from care.

   Tell the students to review the "Attitudes" handout and discuss the diversity of opinion between the two authors. Ask them: What is the intent of both passages?



2. Begin the class session with either or both openers:


1. Ask the students to list all of the names that they are known by in school, then answer these questions:


• Who uses these names?
• Does everyone call you the same name or are some specially used?
• Do your teachers and friends call you differently? Why?


2. Put the following quote on the board: "Sticks and stones may break my bones but names can never hurt me." Discuss the "truthfulness" of this statement by asking what names hurt members of the class. Discuss the fact that Harriet Beecher Stowe used common stereotypical "slave names" in Uncle Tom's Cabin, for instance:


1. In Chapter One, Mr. Shelby says, "Come here, Jim Crow...Now, Jim, show this gentleman how you can dance and sing." Assign students to research the origin of the name Jim Crow and its effects from the PBS website http://www.jimcrowhistory.org.


2. Sam, a slave, describes himself as "a riden' round de country--boots blacked--pass in his pocket--all grand as Cuffee." Relate the actual story of Cuffee to the class, as follows:

   Paul Cuffee, a free black sailor, merchant and wealthy ship owner, supported the idea of free blacks colonizing in Africa. He felt that Sierra Leone provided the perfect place for this settlement and convinced the British government to back the idea. He offered to transport the freed slaves to Sierra Leone and invested $4,000 of his own money. Early in 1816, Cuffee set sail with 38 free blacks. However, a year after the successful voyage, Cuffee fell ill and died before he could further his plans.

   Then, ask students: How do positive role models like Cuffee turn into stereotypes? What examples can the class think of today?



3. Harriet Beecher Stowe used colonization of blacks in Africa as a major solution to the problem of freed slaves in Uncle Tom's Cabin. Give each student a copy of "The African Colonization Movement." After a brief reading time, discuss how the colonization movement played into antebellum racial attitudes. (This issue also appears in the lesson "Religion and Uncle Tom's Cabin, Procedure 3.) Read George Harris' comments in the "George Harris and Colonization in Uncle Tom's Cabin" handout and decide whether they reinforce the era's racial stances about Africa from the "Colonization" handout.


1. In Aunt Phillis's Cabin, Eastman takes up the colonization issue, "The Jews ever turn their eyes and affections toward Jerusalem, as their home; so should the free colored people in America regard Liberia. Africa, once their mother country, should in its turn, be the country of their adoption." She continues, "Good men assist in colonizing the, and the creator may thus intend to christianize benighted Africa." How do these statements support Harriet Beecher Stowe's vision in Uncle Tom's Cabin?


2. M.L. Delaney wrote a critical letter to Frederick Douglass' Paper asking, "Is not Mrs. Stowe a Colonizationalist? Has she avowed, or at least subscribed to, and recommended their principles in her great work on Uncle Tom.... Is it any evidence that she has any sympathy for his thrice-morally, crucified, semi-free brethren anywhere, or of the African race at all...?" Mrs. Stowe may "be all that we desire. It may be; but he who can believe such things, has stronger faith and confidence then I, in our American people." Frederick Douglass answered, "He says she is a colonizationist [note the different spelling]; and we ask what if she is." "We recognize friends where ever we find them." He then says that he does not object to the colonization of Africa but to the intent of it, because those who promote it "have not sufficient faith in the people of the United States to believe that the black man can ever get justice with their hands on American soil." Ask students these questions:
• What are Delaney's and Douglass' arguments for and against Harriet Beecher Stowe?
• How were Douglass' arguments about colonization proved or disproved by later U.S. actions.


4. Using the website http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html, have the students research the history of Liberia and the basic economic facts and conditions of the country. Ask them to find a current events article on Liberia. Tell the class they should analyze how the history of the country affects Liberia today and note whether George Harris' premonitions have been realized.

Assessment

Assess students through observations made during the class discussions and through the written assignments and projects provided in the Procedures section.

Related Works

The web page "Slave names in Pennsylvania," located at http://www.afrolumens.org/slavery/names.html

Interdisciplinary Links

The lesson on attitudes related to Uncle Tom's Cabin allows for great interdisciplinary links with the English curriculum and character education.

This lesson was submitted by David J. Cope, honors teacher at Titusville Senior High School, Titusville, Pennsylvania.

Uncle Tom's Cabin Unit of Study
Attitudes and Uncle Tom's Cabin Lesson
Handout One: Attitudes Towards Blacks in Uncle Tom's Cabin

Section One: Attitudes Towards African Americans

Chapter Ten:

"This nerves the African, naturally patient, timid and unenterprising, with heroic courage, and leads him to suffer hunger, cold, pain, the perils of the wilderness, and the more dread penalties of re-capture."

Chapter Fifteen:

"The Negro, it must be remembered, is an exotic of the most gorgeous and superb countries of the world, and he has, deep in his heart, a passion for all that is splendid, rich, and fanciful; a passion which, rudely indulged by an untrained taste, draws on them the ridicule of the cold and more correct white race."

Chapter Twenty:

"They (Eva and Topsy) stood the representatives of their races. The Saxon, born of ages of cultivation, command, education, physical and moral eminence; the African (sic), born of ages of oppression, submission, ignorance, toil, and vice!"

Chapter Twenty-Three:

"The Anglo Saxon is the dominant race of the world and is to be so. Well, there is a pretty fair infusion of Anglo Saxon blood among our slaves, now."

Section Two: Attitudes Towards Africa

Chapter Sixteen:

"If ever Africa shall show an elevated and cultivated race, --and come it must, some time, her turn to figure in the great drama of human improvement, --life will awake there with a gorgeousness and splendor of which our cold western tribes faintly have conceived. ... In all these they will exhibit the highest form of the peculiarly Christian life, and, perhaps, as God chasteneth whom he loveth, he hath chosen poor Africa in the furnace of affliction, to make her the highest and noblest in that kingdom which he will set up...."

Chapter Thirty-Eight:

"And this, oh Africa! Latest called of nations, --called to the crown of thorns, the scourge, the bloody sweat, the cross of agony, --this is to be thy victory; by this shalt thou reign with Christ when his kingdom shall come on earth."

Preface:

"In this general movement, unhappy Africa at last is remembered; Africa, who began the race of civilization and human progress in the dim, gray dawn of early time, but who, for centuries, has lain bound and bleeding at the foot of civilized and christianized humanity, imploring compassion in vain."

Section Three: Attitudes Towards Owners

Chapter One:

"Whoever visits some estates there, and witnesses the good-humored indulgence of some masters and mistresses, and the affectionate loyalty of some slaves, might be tempted to dream the oft-fabled poetic legend of a patriarchal institution, all that...."

Chapter Eleven:

"Tell her (Eliza) one thing," said George; "it's my last wish, if she can get to Canada, to go there. No matter how kind her mistress is, --no matter how much she loves her home; beg her not to go back, --for slavery always ends in misery. Tell her to bring up our boy a fee man, and then he won't suffer as I have."

Chapter Eight:

"Well, Sam," said Mrs. Shelby, "as you appear to have a proper sense of your errors, you may go now and tell Aunt Chloe she may get you some of that cold ham that was left of dinner today. You and Andy must be hungry." "Missis is a heap too good for us," said Sam, making his bow with alacrity, and departing."

Uncle Tom's Cabin Unit of Study
Attitudes and Uncle Tom's Cabin Lesson
Handout Two: The African Colonization Movement

After Paul Cuffee's successful trip to Sierra Leone, Reverend Robert S. Finley began a serious movement for free black to colonize in Africa. In 1816, Finley held meetings in Washington D.C., receiving widespread support form Henry Clay, Andrew Jackson, Daniel Webster, and Francis Scott Key. The majority of the attendees came from slave-holding states and saw the deportation of free blacks as a continuation of white supremacy. Clay stated, "Of all classes of our population the most vicious is that of the free colored."

Associate Supreme Court Justice Bushrod Washington became the American Colonization Society's first president. President James Monroe, a chief supporter of the Society, convinced Congress to appropriate $100,000 towards the cause. This effort by the President earned him the capital's name of the new country of Liberia: Monrovia.

To the surprise of many of the American Colonization Society's organizers, free blacks opposed the idea. In 1817, 3,000 gathered in Philadelphia to protest the idea. Thus, it wasn't until 1820 that the Society put into practice its plan.

The Society organized the first expedition with the ship "Elizabeth," and President Monroe ordered that the U.S.S. Cyane accompany it. On January 31, 1820, the Elizabeth set sail from New York with 86 emigrants. Only one-third were men, the rest being their wives and children. The voyage lasted only six weeks but ran into disaster in Africa. Poor planning and worse weather caused the initial venture to be determined a failure. For the next ten years, only 1,430 blacks settled in Liberia.

However, politics in the United States spurred the effort on. In 1831, Nat Turner's Revolt caused such a backlash against free blacks that over 1,000 emigrants departed for Liberia. Additional thousands took advantage of the Society's offer of a better life, and, in 1841, Joseph Jenkins Roberts, an 1829 emigrant from Virginia, became the American Colonization Society's first black Governor of Liberia and then its president in 1848.

Colonization continued as a policy through the Civil War. Lincoln proposed in his first address to Congress that captured slaves should be freed and sent outside of the United States. While the cost of shipping to Liberia proved prohibitive during the War, Lincoln advocated a colony in Panama to mine coal for northern industry. This scheme failed, and, with the close of the War, the colonization movement died.

Uncle Tom's Cabin Unit of Study
Attitudes and Uncle Tom's Cabin Lesson
Handout Three: George Harris and Colonization in Uncle Tom's Cabin

In Chapter Forty-Three of Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe's most defiant slave and freedman, George Harris, writes a letter to some friends where he expresses his opinions about Africa.

"On the shores of Africa I see a republic, --a republic formed of picked men, who, by energy and self-educating force, have, in many cases, individually, raised themselves above a condition of slavery."

"I grant that this Liberia may have subserved all sorts of purposes...Doubtless the scheme may have been used, in unjustifiable ways, as a means of retarding our emancipation. But the question to me, Is there not a God above all man's schemes?"

"In these days, a nation is born in a day."

"The whole splendid continent of Africa opens before us and our children. Our nation shall roll the tide of civilization and Christianity along its shores, and plant there might republics...."

"We have more than the rights of common men; --we have the claim of an injured race for reparation. But, then, I do not want it: I want a country, a nation, of my own."

"To the Anglo-Saxon race has been intrusted the destinies of the world, during its pioneer period of struggle and conflict.... I look for another era to arise."

"I trust that the development of Africa is to be essentially a Christian one."

"I go to my country, --my chosen, my glorious Africa!"

"I go to Liberia, not as to an Elysium of romance, but as to a field of work. I expect to work with both hands, to work hard; to work against all sorts of difficulties and discouragements; and to work till I die. This is what I go for."

Harriet Beecher Stowe ends the Harris story with, "George, with his wife, children, sister, and mother, embarked for Africa, some few weeks after. If we are not mistaken, the world will yet hear from him there."