“While you require me to deny the humanity of the negro, I wish to ask whether you of the south yourselves, have ever been willing to do as much? The great majority, south as well as north, have human sympathies, of which they can no more divest themselves than they can of their sensibility to physical pain. These sympathies in the bosoms of the southern people, manifest in many ways, their sense of the wrong of slavery, and their consciousness that after all, there is humanity in the negro” (Potter 353).

We easily could compare this 1854 observation by Abraham Lincoln to the views on slavery and southern culture Harriet Beecher Stowe expresses in her 1852 novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Yet Lincoln, candidate and winner of the Presidency for the Republican Party in 1860, opposed slavery for reasons entirely different than Stowe—reasons that paralleled the division of opinions on the white South, southern culture, and slavery between Stowe and the Republican Party.

The Republicans’ actual concern with the plight of enslaved blacks in the south is questionable at best. The Republican Party recognized slavery as a powerful political issue that could be exploited and their concern for those suffering under the system may have been secondary. For a long time the once economically dominant Kings of Cotton, or the large plantation owners, of the South had controlled national politics, especially the executive branch. As new classes emerged in the North out of the trade stimulated by Southern cash crops, they naturally wanted more political power as their economic prominence increased. They became more distrustful of what they called the “Slave Power.” The ‘slave oligarchs’ had forced a minority will on the North for too long, culminating with the Fugitive Slave Act and the Dred-Scott decision, allowing political parties to disintegrate into sectional interests. Thus arose the harshly anti-Southern Republican party. The Republican Party, however, never criticized white Southerners as a whole. They attacked the large slave-holding plantation owners who comprised a very small percentage of the population, yet through economic and political power had managed to convince peers who had few or no slaves that the expansion of slavery was critical. Critiques lobbed at the plantation owners were often moral, but these attacks often had political overtones. In 1856, Charles Sumner, a prominent Republican summed up his thinking on the possibility of exploiting the Kansas issue:

“For a long time my desire has been to make an issue with the slave oligarchy; & provided this can be had I am indifferent to the special point selected. Of course, at this moment Kansas is the inevitable point. In protecting this territory against tyranny we are driven to battle with the tyrants, who are the oligarchs of slavery” (Holt 189).

This is a perfect political maneuver in a situation where politics had become purely sectional: the South, the political enemy, was responsible for anti-republican actions in and outside of the government, and the tyranny of the few over the many. For the previous eighty years, the North had shown disinterest in the South’s behaviors, but when its behaviors interfered with the flow of the political system, the behaviors presented a new threat, and the response was the Republican party.
Slavery was the issue that separated the North and South, Democratic and Republican parties alike. Naturally, as Holt says, to succeed in politics one’s party must become “a vehicle for negative reference group behavior”, thus the Republican party demonized slavery and the South (184). And so the line blurs: did the Republican party truly oppose slavery, or did it just oppose the Southerners who had so long manipulated the government in the face of a Northern majority, and used the issue to rally voters around its party? The more extreme wings of the Republican Party found slavery morally deplorable and abolition was a serious sentiment, but for the politicians of the party, slavery was the issue they could use to put slave power out of business. William Seward, a Republican New York senator, was an artist at vilifying the South. He thought an ‘irrepressible conflict’ existed between slavery and free labor, with the far-fetched but politically inciting idea slaveholders trying to spread slavery to the North. He declared finally that “the designs of the slaveholders can and must be defeated…. The Democratic party must be permanently dislodged from the Government,” because the Democratic party “is identical with the Slave Power” (Holt 211). Thus, in one sweeping statement, Seward denounced slavery as an economically unsound institution with Southern conspirators trying to spread it to the North. Who were those un-American, anti-republican conspirators? Why, the Democratic party, or “the Slave Power” in Seward’s eyes, and also the opponents of Seward’s Republican party.

Stowe, on the other hand, had no concern for the South’s politics. Rather she was interested in critiquing the Christian values of the South and of slaveholders. Two characters provide the insight into Stowe’s problems with southern culture and white Southerners. The first is Simon Legree, a dreadfully violent and malignant plantation owner who cares only for what gives him pleasure. He lashes Tom repeatedly, taking a perverse delight in doing so. Legree does not hesitate to let his temper get the best of him, seemingly desiring the blood of his slaves. He also takes a fifteen-year old slave mistress whom he rapes and keeps an older slave mistress named Cassy. Legree drinks, is extremely materialistic, and most importantly, has forsaken his bond with God. He revels in the pain he inflicts on others, and simply put, is the embodiment of evil in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The second character is Marie St. Claire, the husband of Augustine St. Claire and the stereotypical spoiled antebellum Southern woman. She is selfish and consumed by greed, leading her to eventually forsake her dead husband’s wishes and sell the slaves. Though she shows no decency, Stowe suggests slavery and the wealth it has created have distorted her way deeply. Like the Republicans, Stowe does not disparage the whole South: Mr. and Mrs. Shelby are honest, Christian, and try their best to keep the slaves together. Augustine St. Claire renounces slavery and promises to give freedom to all his slaves. The lesson Stowe teaches in Uncle’s Tom Cabin is not a denigration of southern culture. Some of the worse characters in the novel have Northern origins, and she is careful to not demonize the entire South. Both the Republican Party and Stowe hoped that the South would see the inherent evil of slavery, though the Republicans and Stowe diverged on the nature of that evil.
The Republicans and Stowe’s target audiences also indicate the disparity between the twos critiques of the South. Republicans spoke to enfranchised white males who viewed not only Southern white culture, but black culture as well, with contempt and fear. Although Lincoln was a great man of his time, he was a part of an extremely racist northern society that regarded blacks as an inferior race before the Civil War and would treat blacks harshly following their liberation. Lincoln, in the fourth Douglas-Lincoln debate of 1858, stated in regards to black and whites: “that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which will ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality” and “And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together, there must be the position of superior & inferior. I am as much as any other man in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race” (Bartleyby Fourth Joint Debate at Charleston). Men are susceptible to the fallacies of their time. Lincoln and the Republican Party were no different. Racism was a prevalent among both northern and southern men. What separates heroes from men is the hero’s ability to rise above the prejudices of his time. Lincoln was a shrewd politician and an intelligent man and historians have long apologized for his racist attitude as merely a means to achieve a political ends to leave his place in history as a hero in tact. However, one most realize that the racial attitudes of the 1850’s, both in the north and south, would be offensive and repugnant today.
Lincoln and the Republican Party knew that northerners, especially lower-class workers, already racist, feared the impact black migration might have on white employment. To the question of what would become of slaves residing in the South if they were emancipated, Potter says Lincoln “in fact, had no satisfactory answer” (345). Yet discussion of the consequences of abolitionism never came to the fore during the 1860 election campaign. The issue might have kept Lincoln and the Republicans out of office if the Whig party, increasingly more concerned with self-destruction than successful electioneering, had focused on it. The Republicans were willing to walk the fine line of denouncing slavery in the South as a moral, social, and economic wrong while still putting blacks on an almost sub-human level to attract prejudiced white Northern voters. The Republicans showed slight concern for blacks, and blew where the wind took them on racial attitudes to attract the most votes and put their candidates in office.
In contrast, Stowe spoke to women who did not have the right to vote. The women were less concerned with the effects of black migration and more with the deleterious affects of slavery, and they were more open to the idea of toleration of blacks. The most women-oriented message of Uncle Tom’s Cabin is the affect of slavery on family life and how little some white southerners cared about the disruption of slave families. Mr. Shelby, who is in deep debt, must choose between selling Tom and the child Harry; otherwise, he must give up the entire estate to Dan Haley, a slave trader. Tom is the husband of Aunt Chloe and the father of three children. Harry is the child of Eliza, a slave who had previously lost two children during birth and is extremely protective of her only child. Eliza is distraught and frantic at the prospect of losing another child; Chloe is equally worried for her husband and urges Tom to run away. These two scenarios directly appeal to the deep attachment women universally have to child and husband, relationships that elicit sympathy regardless of race. Yet Haley, the slave trader, is unmoved by the impact of his business has on slave families. His motivation is solely about profit. To Haley, slaves are not humans, only mere property. With the emphasis on maternal relationships, family and religion, Uncle Tom’s Cabin clearly strikes themes critical to women. In an era when women were more religious than men, oversaw the house, and managed the family, the idea of slavery as a home wrecking, decadent institution driven by the greed of white male southerners was the perfect tactic to arouse women.

Stowe does not put blacks on an equal level as whites, but does attribute several positive qualities to them that many whites found offensive. In the preface of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Stowe describes the white race as the “dominant race, who have been their conquerors.” Likewise the novelist describes the black race as “so essentially unlike the hard and dominant Anglo-Saxon race, as for years to have won from it only misunderstanding and contempt” (3 4). In the story, Tom becomes the prototypical Christianized black in Stowe’s eyes: hardworking, pious, and loyal, he never lifts a finger in anger and always stays true to his beliefs. He is simple and devout. While modern African-Americans view his passivity to his abusive white overseers with contempt, his passivity is really symbolic for his love of God akin to Jesus’ suffering, and a central point to building his character as the Christ figure. Tom is, in fact, much better than all the white male characters in Uncle Tom’s Cabin who each engage, in some way, in one of the seven deadly sins. Thus Stowe subtly conveys the idea that blacks can make for much better Christians than whites. Although Stowe does not place blacks on an equal footing with whites, her portrayal of blacks as God-fearing, family loving Christians was a concept sympathetic to most white females and insidious to most white males.

The Republican Party and Harriet Beecher Stowe traveled parallel paths in their critiques of the white South and slavery, creating deviating opinions on the domestic problems facing the United States. Stowe represented the Puritanical religious zeal that had been a staple of America since the Puritans’ landing in Plymouth and spoke to women of similar mindset. Politicians, weary and distrustful of Southern political dominance and of their insistence on slavery, joined with voters equally wary of the South, blacks, and politics alike to comprise the Republican Party. In these fundamental differences, one can distinguish between Stowe’s and the Republican party’s critiques. Stowe saw slavery as an anti-Christian institution led by sinful white Southerners, bankrupting the morals of the antebellum South; the Republican party saw powerful white plantation oligarchs corrupting the federal government in order to spread their antiquated institution of slavery and, in Lincoln’s words, creating “a house divided against itself.“

Works Cited

Holt, Michael. The Political Crisis of the 1850’s. WW Norton & Company,
New York.
“Lincoln, Abraham. Political Debates Between Lincoln and Douglas.” 2001,
Bartleyby. http://www.bartleby.com/251/.
Potter, David. The Impending Crisis 1848-1861. Harper Torchbooks, New York.
Stowe, Harriet. Uncle Tom’s Cabin. New American Library, New York.