Even the idea that black people were to be thought of as equal was radical in too many eyes back in the day. We're not seeing Stowe's story, but we are seeing her vision of the cruelty of slavery as an institution. It was a stench in the nostrils of folks like the Quakers who were prominent in the anti-slavery movement. The law was part of the Compromise of 1850 which almost mandated help for slave catchers who found runaway slaves in the north. What slaves, free blacks, and sympathetic northerners like the Quaker family you see who rescue Eliza and her baby are afraid of the new strict fugitive slave law. What you're seeing in this 1927 version is not Harriet Beecher Stowe's story, it couldn't be because there are references in the film to the Dred Scott decision, the firing on Fort Sumter and the Emancipation Proclamation all in the future because her story was published in 1852. So sadly did the king, but that's another story. ![]() The only exposure I had to the story at all was in watching The King And I where Tuptim puts on the play for the king recognizing the story as an indictment of slavery. ![]() I would happily include myself in that number. In these days Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel of Uncle Tom's Cabin is known more by historians as a contributing cause of the Civil War than as an actual literary work.
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