David Reynold's 'Mightier than the Sword' brandishes the reach of 'Uncle Tom's Cabin'

Plain Dealer guest writer By Plain Dealer guest writer The Plain Dealer
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on June 13, 2011 at 9:18 AM, updated June 13, 2011 at 2:43 PM
harriet.jpg Harriet Beecher Stowe, in this undated photo, was born in Connecticut, bore seven children and died in Connecticut at age 85. When she was 39, she wrote a novel that changed the course of history.
By Anne Trubek

"So you're the little lady who started this great war," Abraham Lincoln famously said to Harriet Beecher Stowe. Her novel, "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was the most sensational, best-selling and influential book of its day.

Stowe was born 200 years ago this Tuesday, and in honor of her birthday scholar David Reynolds has published a cultural history of the novel, tracking its influence across decades of domestic and international politics.

In "Mightier Than the Sword: Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Battle for America," Reynolds convincingly argues that the novel "was central to redefining American democracy on a more egalitarian basis. It helped rectify social injustice by affirming fairness and empowerment for marginalized or oppressed groups," in the United States and abroad. Without it, the last 150 years would have played out differently.

Reynolds, a professor at the City University of New York, is author of other well-regarded books on American literature and history, including "Walt Whitman's America" and "John Brown, Abolitionist."

He knows 19th-century America, and the first part of "Mightier Than the Sword" traces the roots of Stowe's novel. He discusses Calvinism, gender roles, the temperance movement and the religious beliefs of the famous Beecher family -- Lyman, Stowe's father, was a nationally known preacher, as was her brother, Henry Ward. Stowe, a life-long abolitionist, lived in Cincinnati for several years where, it is said, she witnessed those trying to escape from Kentucky by crossing the river into Ohio.

How did the novel start the war? Without Lincoln's election, Reynolds argues, there would have been no Civil War. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" helped put Lincoln in the White House by uniting differing antislavery groups, igniting the passions of the regular citizens and inflaming Southerners.

First serialized in a newspaper, then published in 1852, Stowe's novel was an instant best seller, and one month later, the presses were "running twenty-four hours a day, three paper mills supplying paper, and a hundred booksellers selling work." Within a year, it had sold over 300,000 copies in the United States, three times more than any other American book, including the Bible.

Reading it aloud became a favorite family pastime, and abroad, it was widely translated. The British bought more than 1 million copies -- triple the rate of U.S. sales. (Stowe, incidentally, did not get rich: She signed a poor contract and, without international copyright laws, received nothing for foreign editions).

Just as important as the novel, Reynolds convinces us, were the spinoffs: engravings of the black characters, Topsy dolls, Uncle Tom's Pure Unadulterated Coffee and Parisian licorice called Uncle Tom's Candy. Most influential was the play based on the novel. Some Southern states outlawed the book and its theatrical version.

Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote of the novel's influence in a poem: "All through the conflict, up and down / Marched Uncle Tom and Old John Brown, / One ghost, one form ideal; / And which was false and which was true, / And which was mightier of the two, /The wisest sybil never knew, /For both alike were real."

sword.jpgW.W. Norton, 351 pp., $27.95

The ripples didn't stop with the Emancipation Proclamation. Lenin loved the novel. Tolstoy called it "the highest art." It inspired nationalist movements in South America, and in 1901, it was the first U.S. novel translated into Chinese.

Before the century expired, 500 traveling companies were staging the play in the United States. Tom shows were, Reynolds argues, "among the primitive beginnings of mass entertainment in America." In the early 20th century, most Americans' first experience with theater was at a Tom show.

Eventually, Tom's accommodating became subject to debate. Reynolds quotes appreciations by W.E.B. Dubois and Booker T. Washington as well as put-downs by Richard Wright and Alain Locke. He demonstrates how early films deployed both racially sensitive and insensitive portrayals of Tom and Topsy and how both kinds influenced modern cinema.

Reynolds, sensitive to historical change, concludes that the novel had "invested blacks with beauty and power to a degree that no other pre-Civil War novel began to approach." Langston Hughes agreed, calling it a "moral battle cry."

Today there are 88 foreign translations of the novel. After a dip during which critics deemed the novel crude and Tom only racist, both novel and protagonist are better understood as pioneers.

Clear and informative, "Mightier Than the Sword" is a research-driven yet readable history. It reminds us to remember the author born two centuries ago this week. 

Anne Trubek is the author of "A Skeptic's Guide to Writers' Houses."