George Harris

The use of the institution of slavery was the source of great conflict and division in the United States, and ultimately caused the seceding of the Confederate States from the Union. This controversial practice had not only torn a once unified nation in two, but also turned families, friends, and neighbors against one another. Some viewed slavery as a valuable necessity for plantations in the southern states. On the other hand, others regarded it as immoral primarily because of the objectification of human beings and the cruel treatment many slaves received at the hands of their masters. After the ratification of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, many courageous Americans felt compelled to publicly proclaim their opinions of slavery. This
“Colonial and state laws considered [slaves] property and commodities, not legal persons who could enter into contracts, and marriage was, and is, very much a legal contract” (Williams 1). As a result, on the account that a slave was considered property by the government, his marriage was not legally protected and could be dissolved by his master at any given moment. This is seen by the reader when George Harris was removed from his successful job at a manufacturing company by order of his master, Mr. Harris, and moved to a southern plantation away from his wife, Eliza Harris and son, Harry. George told his wife that Mr. Harris “won’t let me come here any more, and that I shall take wife and settle down on his place” (Stowe 21). His master’s willingness to take George away from his family and replace his wife with another woman is done to exhibit a master’s control over a slave’s life and also Mr. Harris’ lack of empathy towards his feelings. A second incident in which a marital separation, involved Uncle Tom and Aunt Chloe, a farmhand and the head cook on the Shelby plantation, and had occurred after Tom was one of the slaves sold in order to repay Mr. Shelby’s debt to a trader named Mr. Haley. Arthur Shelby explains the deal to his wife by saying, “I’ve raked, and scraped,
For instance, Harry Harris, Eliza’s only child is also sold Mr. Haley so their master can pay off his debt. Before the deal was made for the boy he tried to negotiate with Haley by saying, ‘"I would rather not sell him…the fact is, sir, I'm a humane man, and I hate to take the boy from his mother, sir"’ (Stowe ). Although despite Shelby’s efforts to maintain ownership of Harry, his desperation for money was too great of a temptation for him to refuse the trader’s proposal. Another example is Lucy’s loss her infant son. Lucy and her ten and a half month old son were travelling on a ferry to Louisville along with Tom and Mr. Haley. While Lucy had left her child sleeping, unknown to her knowledge Haley had sold him. “[The] woman returned to her old seat. The trader was sitting there,--the child gone!” (Stowe 149). This demonstrates the lack of solicitude many traders had for the unity of the family among slaves as well as little regard towards a mother’s bond with her child. In her book The Key To Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Mrs. Stowe wrote that “[such] are the common incidents, not the admitted cruelties, of an institution which people have brought themselves to feel is in accordance with God’s word!” (Key 1851). The author meant to tell the reader that the occurrence of situations in which families are torn apart was not a rarity, but a norm within the practice of slavery. This theme of the