Uncle Tom's Cabin summary

Our story opens in the comfortably furnished parlor of a Kentucky farmhouse. The building and acres of surrounding land belong to a kindly gentleman called Mr. Shelby, who has a guest – Mr. Haley. 

The two men talk over cigars and brandy. The conversation is polite, but it’s clear that Shelby doesn’t like Haley. We soon learn why. Shelby has speculated largely and loosely. He’s in danger of losing everything, and his debts have come into Haley’s hands.

Shelby is genteel and easy-going; Haley is coarse and irritable. For all their differences, though, they have something in common: their participation in the slave trade. 

Shelby is a mild master. His enslaved people never lack physical comforts, and their workload is light. He and his wife regard them as part of the family and share in their joys and sorrows. There is genuine affection as well as indulgence and protection. 

Haley is a slave trader. He has little affection for the men and women he buys and sells. Enslaved people are for him what they are for the law: property. He’s not especially cruel – unlike some, he takes no pleasure in handling a whip – but he dislikes sentimentalism. If he can get a good deal, he’ll sell a man “down the river,” which usually means being worked to death on a Louisiana plantation. Business is business, and his business is perfectly legal. 

It’s business that brings him to Kentucky. Shelby owns the kind of slaves that fetch the best prices at auctions – strong, well-fed, hardworking men who don’t cause trouble or run away. Men like Tom, who just about single-handedly runs the Shelby plantation. He’s been known to travel 50 miles with $500 in his pocket to settle some matter on Shelby’s behalf – and return. It’s a sin to betray a man’s trust, Tom says, even if he does own you. 

Shelby doesn’t want to separate Tom from his family. But Haley insists. Fearing his own ruin, Shelby agrees. The papers are signed, and our tale is set in motion. 

ANALYSIS

In her preface, Stowe promises to show readers the true horror of a sinful institution which trades human souls like yards of linen and tons of lumber. 

Yet Mr. Shelby, the first slaveholder we meet, isn’t the Devil incarnate. Instead, we’re given a flattering portrait of a “kindly” man who has to be strong-armed into harming his slaves. 

Why does Stowe start here? Well, before showing us the horror, she sets out to demolish the arguments justifying it. Slavery’s defenders often depicted it as a benevolent institution. In their telling, owners were enlightened patriarchs ruling over the childlike “African race.” Just as children profit from the firm hand of guardians, they said, enslaved people were elevated by their masters’ guidance and instruction. Shelby’s character is designed to undercut this racist argument. 

Stowe admits that some slaveholders are true Christians – but she does so to show that evil flourishes in any form of slavery. The misfortune of the kindest owner, as Shelby’s situation demonstrates, can lead to the people in his possession exchanging a “life of protection and indulgence for one of hopeless misery and toil.” As long as that possibility exists, even the best-regulated forms of slavery result in the worst horrors.