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Uncle Tom's Cabin Unit of Study
The Peculiar Institution in Uncle Tom's Cabin Lesson Plan
By David J. Cope
Overview
In this lesson, students will study primary and secondary sources to discover the role of the "institution" of slavery in the U.S. antebellum culture and Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Time Required
Three to four days, including background readings and discussions
Materials Needed
The Lesson
Anticipatory Set
Give the students the following scenario: Your parents are upset with your recent grade in social studies. To get you back on the academic track, they ground you for the weekend. However, the football team is on its way for the conference championship and plays your school's traditional rival this Friday evening. What strategies will you use to persuade your parents to allow you to break the grounding and attend the game? How have you developed those strategies? Have they worked in the past?
Procedures
- Place this Frederick Douglass quote on the board. "The most unwise thing which, perhaps, was ever done by slaveholders, in order to hide the ugly features of slavery, was the calling in question, and denying the truthfulness of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Explain to the class that Harriet Beecher Stowe took great care in presenting slavery as an "institution" that affected everyone rather than just attacking individuals or the South as a whole. To make her point, Stowe portrayed various parts of the institution throughout the novel.
- Give each student a copy of the "Harriet Beecher Stowe Looks at the Peculiar Institution" handout(link to below). After a period of silent reading, divide the class into two groups: (1) abolitionists and (2) slave traders. Have both groups research the Fugitive Slave Law that prompted Stowe to write Uncle Tom's Cabin. Then, have both groups develop arguments based on the law and using the readings as to whether Eliza Harris should be apprehended and returned to her master. Establish a Point/Counterpoint format with you as the moderator and the groups debating that proposition.
- Augustine St. Clare said that, "Whipping and abuse are like laudanum (an alcoholic tincture of opium); you have to double the dose as the sensibilities decline." To justify the inclusion of the whipping house in Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe included in her Key the following description of whipping house supplied by Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, Julia Ward Howe's husband:
Entering a large paved courtyard around which ran galleries filled with slaves of all ages, sexes and colors, I heard the snap of a whip, every stroke of which sounded like the sharp crack of a pistol. I turned my head and beheld a sight which absolutely chilled me to the marrow of my bones and gave me, for the first time in my life, the sensation of my hair stiffening at the roots. There lay a black girl, flat upon her face, on a board, her two thumbs tied and fastened to one end, her feet tied and drawn tightly to the other end, while a strap passed over the small of her back, and, fastened around the board, compressed her closely to it. Below the strap she was entirely naked. By her side, and six feet off, stood a huge Negro with a long whip which he applied with dreadful power and wonderful precision. Every stroke brought away a strip of skin.... A shocking part of this horrid punishment was its publicity, as I have said; it was in a courtyard surrounded by galleries which were filled with colored persons of all sexes --runaway slaves committed for some crime, or slaves up for sale.
Ask students to answer the following:
- Why would masters us a whipping house?
- Why would people go to a whipping house as a viewer?
- Why would the whipping house employ a black as the punisher?
- Discuss the similarities and differences between Howe's account and Stowe's depiction.
- Discuss with students the following facts. Slaves developed defense mechanisms to counteract the cruelties and injustices of the Peculiar Institution. Stowe addresses one of these during the episode when Eliza flees the Shelby plantation to avoid her child from being sold. The slave trader, Haley, discovers that Eliza fled over night and insists that the owner, Mr. Shelby, assist in her capture. Shelby employs a number of his slaves in the task, who, with Mrs. Shelby's complicity, delay the undertaking, giving Eliza a distance advantage. After the successful diversion, Sam, the slaves' leader, explains how he survives on the Shelby plantation:
Chapter Six: "I 'se 'quired what ye may call a habit o' bobservation, Andy. It's a very 'portant habit, Andy; and I 'commend yer to be cultivation' it, now yer young. Hist up that hid foot, Andy. Yer see, Andy, it's bobservation makes the difference in niggers. Didn't I see which wasy the wind blew dis yer mornin'? Didn't I see what Missis wanted, though she never let on?"
Chapter Eight: "Dat ar was conscience, Andy; when I thought of gwine arter Lizy, I railly spected Mas'r was sot dat way. When I found Missis was sot the contrar, dat ar was conscience more yet, --cause fellers allers gets more by stickin' to Missis' side...."
Chapter Six: "We oughtenter overlook nobody, Andy, cause the smartest on us get tripped up sometimes."
Ask the class how Sam's method of observation worked and in what ways does it match their handling of uncomfortable situations with their parents.
Assessment
Assess students through observations made during the class discussions and through the written assignments and projects provided in the Procedures section.
Interdisciplinary Links
The lesson on slavery as an institution 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
The Peculiar Institution in Uncle Tom's Cabin Lesson
Handout: Harriet Beecher Stowe Looks at the Peculiar Institution
Chapter Ten:
"In order to appreciate the sufferings of the negroes sold south, it must be remembered that all the instinctive affections of that race are peculiarly strong. Their local attachments are very abiding. They are not naturally daring and enterprising, but home --loving and affectionate. Add to this all the terrors with which ignorance invests the unknown, and add to this, again, tha sell to the south is set before the negro from childhood as the last severity of punishment. The threat that terrifies more than whipping or torture of any kind is the threat of being sent down river. We have ourseleves heard this feeling expressed by them, and seen the unaffected horror with which they will sit in their gossiping hours, and tell frightful stories that 'down river,' which to them is
'That undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveler returns."
Chapter Twenty-Four:
"We hear often of the distress of the negro servants, on the loss of a kind master; and with good reason, for no creature on God's earth is left more utterly unprotected and desolate than the slave in these circumstances."
"It was about a fortnight after the funeral (of Augustine St. Clare), that Miss Ophelia busied one day in her apartment, heard a gentle tap at the door. She opened it, and there stood Rosa, the pretty young quadroon, whom we have before often noticed, her hair in disorder, and her eyes swelled with crying.
'O, Miss Feely,' she said, falling on her knees, and catching the skirt of her dress, 'do, do go to Miss Marie for me! Do plead for me? She's goin' to send me out to be whipped, look there!' And she handed to Miss Ophelia a paper. ...
'You see, Miss Feely,' said Rosa, 'I don't mind the whipping so much, if Miss Marie or you was to do it; but, to be sent to a man! and such a horrid man, --the shame of it, Miss Feely!'
Miss Ophelia well knew that it was the universal custom to send women and young girls to the whipping-houses, to the hands of the lowest of men, --men vile enough to make this their shameful profession, --and there to be subjected to brutal exposure shameful correction."
Chapter Thirty:
"A slave warehouse! Perhaps some of my readers conjure up horrible visions of such a place. They fancy some foul, obscure den, .... But no, innocent friend; in these days men have learned the art of sinning expertly and genteelly, so as not to shock the eyes and senses of respectable society. Human property is high in the market; and is, therefore, well fed, well cleaned, tended, and looked after, that it may come to sale sleek, and strong, and shining."
"The dealers in the human article make scrupulous and systematic efforts to promote noisy mirth among the, as a means of drowning reflection, and rendering them insensible to their condition. The whole object of the training to which the negro is put, from the time he is sold in the northern market till he arrives south, is systematically directed towards making him callous, unthinking, and brutal."
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