Uncle Tom's Cabin

While many of Stowe’s abolitionist arguments are rooted in the suffering of the exploited black populace of antebellum America, this argument would only have reached half of her intended audience. The many instances of black slaves suffering physically and mentally at the hands of their white masters, drawn from real-life examples curated by Stowe, are designed as an appeal to pathos to establish an emotional connection to those subjugated to slavery. This argument is based on the premise that the audience accepted the grounds that slaves were capable of feelings equal to those of Stowe’s white audience. However, a large portion of her audience would not accept these grounds; many, like Marie St. Clare, believed black people lacked some fundamental aspect of humanity and could not suffer as white people could.

To combat this view, Stowe adopts another argument that avoids it altogether. Uncle Tom’s Cabin is rooted in Christian morality, and Stowe turns to this assumed common base of all her readers to show how slavery degrades the moral nature of the entire country, Northerner, Southerner, and slave alike.

Stowe notes when introducing Simon Legree’s overseers, Sambo and Quimbo, that “It is a common remark […] that the negro overseer is always more tyrannical and cruel than the white one” and that the “slave is always a tyrant, if he can get the chance to be one” (492-93).