Black English in Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Did Black Americans in the 1850s talk like they do in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”?

Josiah Henson

Uncle Tom was based on Josiah Henson, a real Black man, a runaway slave. “The Life of Josiah Henson” (1849) – “as narrated by himself” – came out just three years before Harriet Beecher Stowe’s book. In it he is quoted as saying stuff like this:

“I am going to Washington, Mistress, to see Mr. Frank, and I must take my pass with me if you please. … I can’t go to Washington without it. I may be met by some surly stranger, who will stop me and plague me, if he can’t do any thing worse.”

Somehow Stowe managed to go from that source material to having Uncle Tom say stuff like this:

“Chil’en! I’m afeard you don’t know what ye’re sayin’. Forever is a dre’ful word, chil’en; it’s awful to think on ’t. You oughtenter wish that ar to any human crittur.”

“Extremely accurate knowledge of the negroes” – at least according to White observers:

In 1852, according to a slave owner:

“How Mrs. Stowe, the authoress, has obtained her extremely accurate knowledge of the negroes, their character, dialect, habits,&c., is beyond my comprehension, as she never resided – as appears from the preface – in a slave State, or among slaves or negroes. But they are certainly admirably delineated.”

In 2001, according to linguist Allison Burkette:

“Stowe’s linguistic accuracy is evidenced by the fact that each character’s use of linguistic features mirrors that of actual speakers, in terms of specific dialect features and their frequency of use, and her distribution of features across social variables matches that found in sociolinguistic research.”

Stowe lived in Cincinnati, Ohio from 1832 to 1850, just across the river from Kentucky, a slave state. In 1833 she visited Kentucky. In 1850 she returned to her native New England to write the book.

Stowe’s Black English was not based close observation: the grammar is inconsistent. Like Mock Ebonics, it is a broken English with unnecessary use of eye dialect that to White people seems like Black English. That she might be a racist who thought Blacks lack intelligence is shown by the fact that in her book only mulattoes seem capable of speaking Standard English.

Neither are her Black characters based on close observation: many of them are stereotypes, ones she helped to burn into the White imagination: Mammies, piccaninnies, tragic mulattoes, happy darkies, and, by way of the endless stage adaptations that ran non-stop from 1853 to 1930, Uncle Toms.

In her letters to family and friends, according to the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center:

“Stowe demonstrated that she did not believe in racial equality; she suggested, for example, that emancipated slaves should be sent to Africa, and she used derogatory language when describing black servants.”

They admit:

“many white abolitionists believed that slavery was unjust while also believing that white people were intellectually, physically, and spiritually superior to black people.”

Other White writers in the 1800s whose Black characters spoke in dialect:

• 1843: Edgar Allan Poe: The Gold Bug – Jupiter
• 1851: Herman Melville: Moby Dick – Fleece (the Black cook)
• 1880: Joel Chandler Harris: Uncle Remus
• 1885: Mark Twain: Huckleberry Finn – Jim
• 1887: Thomas Nelson Page: In Ole Virginia

– Abagond, 2021.

See also:

• American abolitionists
  • Lincoln
  • Harriet Beecher Stowe
    • Uncle Tom’s Cabin
• Black English: a brief history
  • in the 1800s
  • Language myth #13: Black children are verbally deprived – more on White beliefs about Black English in the 1800s (and 1900s)
• Mock Ebonics
  • minstrelese
  • Those black crows in Dumbo
  • Stephen C. Foster – also lived in Cincinnati and visited Kentucky
• Standard English
• stereotype
  • The Mammy stereotype
  • The tragic mulatto
  • The piccaninny stereotype
  • darkies
  • Uncle Tom

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