Uncle Tom's Cabin

Tom lies gravely injured and praying in his crude hut when Cassy enters. She gives him water to assuage his feverish thirst. She lays out a cool bed for him, and he painfully rolls onto it. 

Cassy begs him to give up; it is no use trying to be morally upright in Legree’s captivity. Cassy tells him that God never listens to slaves; she does not believe there is a God, or if there is, he has sided against the slaves of America. 

Cassy has been owned by Legree for five years. On his isolated plantation, they are not even offered the meager protection from excessive cruelty afforded to slaves by law. Legree can do whatever he likes, up to and including murder. Cassy chastises Tom’s faith; to her, “all was darkness and horror” (512). However, he refuses to give into the cruelty that shaped Sambo and Quimbo into the monsters that they are. He has lost everything: Chloe, his children, young Master George, Eva, Augustine, and freedom. He refuses to lose Heaven as well. Cassy realizes he is right and collapses in mental anguish. 

Tom asks her to retrieve his Bible and read to him. Tom compares the tribulations of slaves to the suffering of Christ before and during the crucifixion. Cassy remains doubtful that Tom’s piety can hold up under such cruel conditions, but he resolves to die rather than give into wickedness and sin. 

Thinking of Emmeline brings Cassy to recount her life’s story to Tom. She grew up the beloved daughter of a rich white man and his slave. Her father never got around to freeing his wife and daughter, so when he suddenly died, Cassy was sold with the rest of his property. A handsome young man, Henry, bought her; Cassy quickly fell in love with him. For seven years, Cassy lived with him. They never married because he said it would be too difficult, but they were faithful to each other. They had two children, Henry and Elise. 

Henry’s cousin eventually introduced him to a white woman. Henry then sold Cassy and their children to pay for gambling debts that he had accumulated carousing with the cousin. She was bought by another man, who threatened to sell her children if she did not obey him. He sold them anyway. He told her that whether or not she ever saw them again depended on her behavior.

One day, she ran into Henry, who was to be whipped at a calaboose. He broke away and embraced her, but the men in the crowd dragged him off. She begged her new master to buy back Henry, but he refused. Cassy fell into a swoon, and when she woke up, she had been sold to a brothel. 

A gentleman named Captain Stuart took a liking to her, eventually bought her, and promised to try to redeem her children. However, Henry had been sold upriver and Elise’s master refused to sell her. She bore a child to Stuart, but, resolving never to birth a child into slavery again, she gave it laudanum. The child passed away in its sleep. Stuart died of cholera soon after, and Cassy was sold again and again until being bought by Legree. 

Cassy no longer believes God will help them. She tells Tom to rest as much as he can, arranges his bedding to be as comfortable as possible, and leaves the hut.

Legree sits drinking punch in his decrepit sitting room. He is angry that Tom will be out of commission for at least a week. Cassy enters and reprimands him. She reminds Legree that he is afraid of her. Cassy’s indominable nature makes her “a sort of object of dread to Legree, who had that superstitious horror of insane persons which is common to coarse and uninstructed minds” (526).

Cassy tells Legree that she does not think he can break Tom in. Sambo enters and gives Legree something he had found on Tom’s person while beating him: George’s silver dollar and the lock of Eva’s hair, which “twined itself around Legree’s fingers” (527). Legree is horrified and throws the coin out the window and the hair into the fire. Cassy and Sambo leave.

The hair reminds Legree of his mother, a pious woman with the same color hair, whom he abandoned for a life of sin. His mother died while he was away, but she sent him a letter praying for him and forgiving him. This aroused great horror in his sinful heart. The letter came with a lock of her hair, which twined itself around his fingers, just like Eva’s did.

To distract himself, Legree decides to find Emmeline. However, when he hears her singing a hymn from a distance, he is filled with horror. He calls in Sambo and Quimbo to dance, sing, and drink with him to distract him from the trepidation of his soul.

Cassy enters Emmeline’s room. Emmeline is scared and asks Cassy about the possibility of escape. Cassy scoffs at the notion. She cites Legree’s cruelty, noting a place on the property “where you can see a black, blasted tree, and the ground all covered with black ashes. Ask anyone what was done there and see if they will dare to tell you” (534). She advises Emmeline to take up drinking to cope with Legree. They discuss suicide, which would be an attractive option were it not for the fear of Hell. 

Legree, meanwhile, passes out from his carousing. His dreams are wracked with remorse and fear, brought on by the remembrance of his mother that Eva’s hair excited in him. He dreams of a veiled figure at his bedside and feels the hair twining around his fingers. The figure throws off its veil: it is his mother. He wakes, screaming. He pours himself more brandy, and Cassy enters.

Cassy advises him to leave Tom alone. She tells him that it will be a waste of money to beat Tom to death. Tom is such a good worker that, during a critical picking time, it is foolish to have incapacitated him. Legree agrees to let him off with the beating that he has received but wants him to apologize and promise to do his will. Cassy says Tom will not. This angers and confuses Legree. 

Legree visits Tom to chide him. He forces Tom to get up and beg his pardon; Tom politely refuses. He promises to refuse any immoral thing Legree wants him to do. Legree threatens to burn Tom alive. Tom says “after ye’ve killed the body there an’t no more ye can do. And O, there’s all ETERNITY to come” (539). The word “eternity” sends a jolt of terror and rage through Legree.

Legree promises to make Tom capitulate and nearly strikes him down, but Cassy stops him Legree promises Tom future persecution and leaves. Cassy warns Tom that Legree is serious.  

Tom Loker recuperates in Aunt Dorcas’s house on a Quaker settlement. Loker, reformed under their care, advises the Quakers to dress Eliza up as a man to evade detection. Loker resolves to turn his talents for tracking to hunting wolves and other dangerous animals for the benefit of the Quakers.

Jim and his mother travel separately. Eliza, George, and Harry travel in secret to a hospital in Sandusky. Eliza cuts her hair short; she disguises herself as a young man. She quiets George’s fears that they will be caught just shy of freedom. He allows her to convince him that God is on their side.

Once on the boat bound for Canada, they become aware that Marks is there, searching for them. However, their disguises protect them. Marks leaves, and the boat launches for Canada.

The little family disembarks on the northern shore, and they are free.