Uncle Tom's Cabin

Uncle Tom's Cabin is well known as an anti-slavery book. However, it is also a very strong apologetic Christian work. What I did not get is how "Uncle Tom" became a pejorative. In the story Uncle Tom, the character is loyal to his race, even being killed because of his failure to bow to the white slave driver. From wikipedia, it appears that the negativity resulted from derivative works that portrayed him as a buffoon.

The novel is quite long. It has s similar nuanced view of slavery as in Frederick Douglass's autobiography.  It is in the best interest of slave-holders to be kind to their slaves. However, the institution of slavery leads to an overall degrading of the human experience. With slaves as property, it only takes one bad harvest for the benevolent owners to need to sell their "property". This could separate families and expose them to one of the bad apples.

Religion plays an important role in the society. For some slaveholders, they would use religion as a way of justifying African slavery. Others struggled with slavery. This was especially true for northerners. How could they say to follow Christ while people are not treated in a Christ-like manner due to the color of their skin? The role of Christianity among the slaves is primarily among comfort. Tom reads his bible and is comforted by the teachings. He tries to live his best life, being loyal to others and hoping for eventual deliverance. The slave holders differ in their support of religion. The cruel slave-drivers don't want slaves to waste time with religion. They treat slaves as just "bodies". The kind slave holders respect and encourage the study of religion.

At the last part of the book, Tom is killed by the cruel slave-master. Two slaves use a plan to escape - and in the process spook the cruel slave driver. The narration also describes a slave-holder who granted freedom to all his slaves. This also played into into the "benevolent slaver" mythos. The slaves wanted to remain with their master. However, the master knew that not every master would be so benevolent. Thus, he freed all of the slaves, while letting them remain with him, now as employees drawing a salary. This gave them the benefits of the benevolence with the freedom to change.

After the narration, the novel includes a bit of pontification. Africans are people. They are not machines. Christianity teaches us to love everyone else. Slavery should not exist. However, they should not be expected to just jump from slavery to a full self-governing society. Education is important. They may be given the chance to go to Africa if they desire. The should also be given the chance to live in society. Alas, these points were not followed. Instead there was a war, and a yoyoing of black empowerment giving way to heavy discrimination and various resolution attempts.