Editing Uncle Tom (section)

==Original characterization and critical evaluations==
At the time of the novel's initial publication in 1851, Uncle Tom was a rejection of the existing stereotypes of [[minstrel show]]s; Stowe's [[melodrama]]tic story humanized the suffering of slavery for white audiences by portraying Tom as a young, strong Jesus-like figure who is ultimately martyred, beaten to death by a cruel master (Simon Legree) because he refuses to betray the whereabouts of two women who had escaped from slavery.<ref name="williams" /><ref name="parfait">{{cite book |last=Parfait |first=Claire |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=J-IaLbTxpVYC&q=Uncle+Tom&pg=PA1 |title=The publishing history of Uncle Tom's cabin, 1852–2002 |publisher=Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. |year=2007 |isbn=978-0-7546-5514-5 |pages=1–2, 6 |doi=10.4324/9781315237558 |access-date=2009-04-16}}</ref> Stowe reversed the gender conventions of slave narratives by juxtaposing Uncle Tom's passivity against the daring of three [[African American]] women who escape from slavery.<ref name="williams" />

The novel was both influential and commercially successful, published as a serial from 1851 to 1852 and as a book from 1852 onward.<ref name="williams" /><ref name="parfait" /> An estimated 500,000 copies had sold worldwide by 1853, including unauthorized reprints.<ref name="meer">{{cite book |last=Meer |first=Sarah |year=2005 |title=Uncle Tom mania: slavery, minstrelsy, and transatlantic culture in the 1850s |publisher=University of Georgia Press |isbn=978-0-8203-2737-2 |pages=1–4, 9, 14–15 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rKu7Tp8_-6wC&q=Uncle+Tom |access-date=2009-04-16}}</ref> Senator [[Charles Sumner]] credited ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' for the election of [[Abraham Lincoln]], an opinion that is later echoed in the [[apocrypha]]l story of Lincoln greeting Stowe with the quip, "So ''you're'' the little woman who wrote the book that made [[American Civil War|this great war]]!"<ref name="williams" /><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Vollaro |first=Daniel R. |date=2009-01-01 |title=Lincoln, Stowe, and the 'Little Woman/Great War' Story: The Making, and Breaking, of a Great American Anecdote |url=https://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jala/2629860.0030.104/--lincoln-stowe-and-the-little-womangreat-war-story-the-making?rgn=main;view=fulltext |journal=Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association |language=en |volume=30 |issue=1 |issn=1945-7987 |jstor=25701789}}</ref> [[Frederick Douglass]] praised the novel as "a flash to light a million camp fires in front of the embattled hosts of slavery."<ref name="williams" /> Despite Douglass's enthusiasm, an anonymous 1852 reviewer for [[William Lloyd Garrison]]'s publication, ''[[The Liberator (newspaper)|The Liberator]]'', suspected a racial double standard in the idealization of Uncle Tom:

<blockquote>Uncle Tom's character is sketched with great power and rare religious perception. It triumphantly exemplifies the nature, tendency, and results of Christian non-resistance. We are curious to know whether Mrs. Stowe is a believer in the duty of non-resistance for the white man, under all possible outrage and peril, as for the black man ... [For whites in parallel circumstances, it is often said] Talk not of overcoming evil with good{{snd}}it is madness! Talk not of peacefully submitting to chains and stripes{{snd}}it is base servility! Talk not of servants being obedient to their masters{{snd}}let the blood of tyrants flow! How is this to be explained or reconciled? Is there one law of submission and non-resistance for the black man, and another of rebellion and conflict for the white man? When it is the whites who are trodden in the dust, does Christ justify them in taking up arms to vindicate their rights? And when it is the blacks who are thus treated, does Christ require them to be patient, harmless, long-suffering, and forgiving? Are there two Christs?<ref name="liberator">{{cite book |author=<!--anonymous--> |year=2004 |orig-year=1852 |title=Untitled review, republished in A Routledge literary sourcebook on Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's cabin by Debra J. Rosenthal |publisher=<!--William Lloyd Garrison (original publisher)-->Routledge |isbn=978-0-415-23473-3 |page=35 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eptkDlB3J4kC&q=Uncle+Tom&pg=PA1 |access-date=2009-04-17}}</ref></blockquote>

[[James Weldon Johnson]], a prominent figure of the [[Harlem Renaissance]], expressed an antipathetic opinion in his autobiography:

<blockquote>For my part, I was never an admirer of Uncle Tom, nor of his type of goodness; but I believe that there were lots of old Negroes as foolishly good as he.</blockquote>

In 1949, American writer [[James Baldwin (writer)|James Baldwin]] rejected the [[emasculation]] of the title character "robbed of his humanity and divested of his sex" as the price of spiritual salvation for a dark-skinned man in a fiction whose African-American characters, in Baldwin's view, were invariably two-dimensional stereotypes.<ref name="williams" /><ref name="baldwin">{{cite book |last=Baldwin |first=James |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1loJe4UmHPAC&q=James+Baldwin+Uncle+Tom&pg=PA118 |title=Everybody's Protest Novel (partial republication) |date=2006 |publisher=Harvard University Press |isbn=978-0-674-02352-9 |pages=118–121 |doi=10.1093/oso/9780195166958.003.0007 |access-date=2009-04-17 |orig-year=1949}}</ref> To Baldwin, Stowe was closer to a pamphleteer than a novelist and her artistic vision was fatally marred by polemics and racism that manifested especially in her handling of the title character.<ref name="baldwin" /> Stowe had stated that her sons had wept when she first read them the scene of Uncle Tom's death. But after Baldwin's essay, it ceased being respectable to accept the melodrama of the Uncle Tom story.<ref name="williams" /> Uncle Tom became what critic Linda Williams describes as "an epithet of servility" and the novel's reputation plummeted until feminist critics led by [[Jane Tompkins]] reassessed the tale's female characters.<ref name="williams" />

According to Debra J. Rosenthal, in an introduction to a collection of critical appraisals for the ''Routledge Literary Sourcebook on Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin"'', overall reactions have been mixed, with some critics praising the novel for affirming the humanity of the African American characters and for the risks Stowe assumed in taking a very public stand against slavery before [[abolitionism]] had become a socially acceptable cause, and others criticizing the very limited terms upon which those characters's humanity was affirmed and the artistic shortcomings of political melodrama.<ref name="rosenthal">{{cite book |last=Rosenthal |first=Debra J. |year=2004 |title=A Routledge literary sourcebook on Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's cabin |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-0-415-23473-3 |pages=30–31 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eptkDlB3J4kC&q=Uncle+Tom&pg=PA1 |access-date=2009-04-17}}</ref>