- Year Published: 1852.
- Pages: 496.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin Summary of Chapters
Chapter 1-5
Arthur Shelby is a slave-owner and farmer in Kentucky. He is under debt and forced to sell two of his slaves to a trader, Haley. One slave is Uncle Tom, and the other is his wife’s servant Eliza’s son, Harry. Eliza overhears Haley and Arthur talking, and warns Tom.
Chapter 6-10
Eliza asks him and his wife to run away, while she flees with her son. She succeeds crossing the Ohio River and gets help from the public. Haley appoints two of his men to catch Harry and Eliza. Tom decides not to elope. He gets picked up by Haley and sets towards New Orleans.
Chapter 11-20
Haley had bought more slaves before the journey, and also sold off an infant before letting the mother slave know. The mother commits suicide to this incident. George Harris, Eliza’s husband, who had also escaped slavery and was in disguise, gets the news that Eliza had headed towards Canada. He sets out to look for her and join her. Eliza gets support from a Quaker family and joined by George to get to the next stage of their mission.
On the Mississippi river boat, Tom saves a little white girl from drowning. She is Eva St. Clare, whose beauty and integrity touches the elderly man. Eva requests her father to buy Tom and that is how he accompanies the father, daughter and cousin Ophelia to New Orleans. Eva’s mother is a bigoted woman who looks down at all the slaves in the house. Tom starts having a nice time bonding with the little girl Eva, and reads to her from the Bible. Eva grows to know more about Christianity through him.
George and Eliza with son and two more escaped slaves, were on their way to their next destination, when the slave-catchers tried to overtake them. George wounded one with a pistol and the rest ran. Eliza requests them to carry the wounded man for treatment.
At New Orleans, Tom is ordered to market for the household. St. Clare then writes to Tom’s wife back in Kentucky, to inform her about his well-being. He then buys a young girl named Topsy to raise Ophelia.
Chapter 21-30
Tom’s wife Chloe requests and convinces Mrs. Shelby, to let her work at a bakery in Louisville, to save wages and free Tom. George, Shelby’s son, write to Tom to give him this news. Two years pass,