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Uncle Tom's Cabin Unit of Study
Frederick Douglass and Harriet Beecher Stowe Lesson Plan
By David J. Cope

Overview

It is often said that politics make strange bedfellows. This lesson allows students to become acquainted with two of the most influential individuals in the antislavery movement and throughout the 1800s and to learn how their mutual respect affected each other and the United States. Frederick Douglass and Harriet Beecher Stowe formed a fast friendship and alliance that allowed both to support each other while often holding differing views. This mutual support system drew criticism from many quarters, some extremely influential. Students will be able to draw conclusions on how principle is often more important than popularity.

Time Required

Three to four days, including background readings and discussions

Materials Needed

Internet access to these sites:

Handouts:

"Frederick Douglass Views Mrs. Stowe"
"Brief Biographies"

The Lesson

Anticipatory Set

Have students write the name of their best friend on a piece of paper, then ask them to reflect for a few minutes on the following:

The characteristics that draw them to this individual and that cause them to continue to be best friends.
What actions they have taken to help each other in a personal crisis.

Procedures

Before the first full period of this lesson, assign the students to research and prepare a one-page biography on Frederick Douglass. Through a class discussion of their research, create, with the class, a timeline of Douglass' life on the board.

Have the class pre-read the essay "Harriet Beecher Stowe and Uncle Tom's Cabin" from the Slavery in America website. Review how the Stowe and Douglass became acquainted and place the appropriate information on the timeline. Discuss, with the class, their blooming friendship in the context of Douglass' life.

Relate the following information to the class:
Harriet Beecher Stowe tried to act as an intermediary between the antebellum era's two abolitionists, William Lloyd Garrison and Douglass. Garrison and Douglass first met in 1841, and Garrison mentored Douglass through their early years together. However, major disagreements developed. Garrison stood with the most radical abolitionists who viewed the U.S. Constitution as a pro-slavery document and advocated the dissolution of the Union. Douglass, on the other had, believed that the Constitution could "be wielded on behalf of emancipation" rather than isolating the slaves in the South, especially if dissolution occurred. Douglass and Garrison's break developed through public attacks by both and seemed irreconcilable. Harriet Stowe, a friend of both men, hoped to re-unite the two.

Stowe initially feared that Garrison was being too radical. When he invited her to be the guest of honor at the 25^th anniversary celebration of the American Anti-Slavery Society, she demurred. She wrote, "What I fear is that The Liberator (Garrison's paper) will talk from poor Uncle Tome his Bible (Garrison undertook strong anti-religious stands) and give him nothing in its place."

Garrison responded that he had to remain true to his convictions and asked Stowe to prove that she wasn't "Trammeled by education or traditional notions as to the entire sanctity of the Bible." Harriet retorted that she would never attack anyone's faith without being sure that she had a better one to replace it with.

An uneasy alliance developed after this exchange, and Stowe invited Garrison to her home in Andover Massachusetts, Stone Cottage. Their conversations led to a sense of mutual respect. After a similar meeting with Douglass, Stowe took action.

On December 19, 1853, Harriet Stowe wrote Garrison that Douglass "did not seem to me malignant or revengeful." She continued, "...at all events, he holds no opinion which he cannot defend, with a variety of richness of thought and expression and an aptness of illustration...." Stowe then issued her main thrust for reconciliation, "Is there but one true anti-slavery church and all others infidels? Who shall declare which it is?" She concluded, "What Douglass is really, time will show." Despite this noble effort, Garrison and Douglass failed to reconcile.

Ask students the following questions:
- What circumstances caused the break between Garrison and Douglass?
- From the essay "Harriet Beecher Stowe and Uncle Tom's Cabin" on the Slavery in America website, why would Harriet Beecher Stowe be more sympathetic to Douglass than to Garrison?
- What steps did she take in attempting reconciliation?
- Why do you think her efforts failed?
Then, have students answer the questions below:
- Have you ever had an experience where mediation between friends failed?
- Were you able to remain friends with both parties?
- Why or why not?
Like William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass visited Harriet Beecher Stowe's home at Andover. Reporting on the trip in the March 4, 1853, edition of his publication Frederick Douglass' Paper, he painted an interesting portrait of the author. Give each student a copy of the handout "Frederick Douglass Views Mrs. Stowe."(link to below) Ask them to write a sentence for each quote addressing the following:

What observation is Douglass making about Harriet Beecher Stowe?
How would this attribute help Harriet Stowe as an author?
How would this attribute help Harriet Stowe as an abolitionist?
How would the public view this attribute in relationship to a woman?

Frederick Douglass held Harriet Beecher Stowe in high esteem. He termed her "our friend and benefactress." Therefore, his visit to Andover held the distinct purpose to "consult with the authoress ... to the improvement and elevation of the free people of color in the United States." In his March 8, 1853, letter to Stowe, he asserted, "that poverty, ignorance and degradation are the combined evil or, in other words, these constitute the social disease of the Free Colored People of the United States."

Harriet Stowe implied throughout Uncle Tom's Cabin that the colonization of Africa by free blacks presented the best solution. (This issue is discussed in "The African Colonization Movement" handout in the "Attitudes" lesson.) However, Douglass emphatically stated, "The truth is, dear madam, we are here, and here we are likely to remain."

Douglass had another solution, "the most telling, the most killing refutation of slavery, is the presentation of an industrious, enterprising, thrifty, and intelligent free black population." Douglass analyzed the situation as such: "We give no proof of genius or skill at the county, State (sic), or national fairs. We are unknown at any of the great exhibitions of the industry or our fellow citizens, and being unknown we are unconsidered." His solution was simple: "We must become mechanics."

Assign the students to research and report on Frederick Douglass' role at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago by reading the essay "African Americans in 'The White City,'" which they can find on PBS' Jim Crow website at http://www.jimcrowhistory.org. Ask students how Douglass' premonitions appear 40 years later?

Then, invite the school's guidance counselor to discuss the advantages of education and the earning potential for each of these people:

High school dropout;
High school graduate;
Vocational education graduate;
Graduate from a two-year program; and
Graduate of a four-year program.

Have the students read the opening paragraphs of Uncle Tom's Cabin, Chapter Two, up to the line, "It was during the happy period...." Discuss with the class how this passage supported both Douglass' analysis and solution for the free blacks.

Mary Henderson Eastman, a self-styled "member of one of the [First Families of Virginia] F.F.V's, as a mother, and as a Christian," wrote the most widely read "anti-Tom" novel, Aunt Phillis's Cabin or Southern Life As It Is. In her "Concluding Remarks," Eastman attacks Stowe's assertions of George Harris' genius. She states, "George Harris, inventing a machine, is very solitary. The Negroes, like a good many of their owners, are opposed to innovations. They like the good old way." Then, she follows up with, "when Liberia or Africa does become a great nation, (Heaven grant it may soon,) they will require many other building there, before a patent office is called for."

Ask students to discuss this question: Why would Eastman's passages have great appeal in the South and the North at that time? Then, assign students to research inventions and innovations by blacks in the antebellum period to support Stowe's and Douglass' contentions.

Harriet Beecher Stowe endorsed Frederick Douglass' advocating an educated free black populous (citing him as an example but misspelling his name) in the concluding chapter of Uncle Tom's Cabin.
In all states of the Union we see men, but yesterday burst from the shackles of slavery, who, being a self-educating force, which cannot be too much admired, have risen to highly respectable stations in society. Pennington, among clergymen, Douglas and Ward, among editors, are well known instances.

Give each student the "Brief Biographies" handout(link to below). After a silent reading period, have the class compare Pennington's and Ward's lives to Frederick Douglass,' making sure students address these questions: How do the three men exemplify Douglass' vision for the future? How do the three men contradict Douglass' vision for the future?

Assessment

Assess students through observations made during the class discussions and through the written assignments and projects provided in the Procedures section.

Related Works

The History of Black Inventors: http://inventors.about.com/cs/blackinventors

Interdisciplinary Links

The lesson on Frederick Douglass and Harriet Beecher Stowe allows for great interdisciplinary links with the English curriculum and character education.

This lesson was submitted by David J. Cope, honors teacher at Titusville Senior High School, Titusville, Pennsylvania.

Uncle Tom's Cabin Unit of Study
Frederick Douglass and Harriet Beecher Stowe Lesson
Handout One: Frederick Douglass Views Mrs. Stowe

Instructions: For each of the quotes below, answer the following four questions:

What observation is Douglass making about Harriet Beecher Stowe?
How would this attribute help Harriet Stowe as an author?
How would this attribute help Harriet Stowe as an abolitionist?
How would the public view this attribute in relationship to a woman?

"Our reception, at the Cabin, by Mr. and Mrs. Stow, was free from all ostentation."
a.

b.

c.

d.
"In respect to Mrs. Stowe...she has a way and a manner of her own;"

"No one would ever suspect her of being the splendid genius that she is!"

She is "possessing that deep insight into human character,"

She has a "melting pathos"

...a "keen and quiet wit"

..."powers of argumentation"

...an "exalted sense of justice"

...an "enlightened and comprehensive philosophy."

"You listen to her rather than to her language."

Uncle Tom's Cabin Unit of Study
Frederick Douglass and Harriet Beecher Stowe Lesson
Handout Two: Brief Biographies

DR. JAMES W. C. PENNINGTON

Jim Pennington was born on a Maryland plantation. His master apprenticed him to a stonemason and a blacksmith. At the age of 21, Pennington fled to the North following the violent whipping of his parents. Slave catchers brought him back to his master, but he eventually escaped to Pennsylvania.

He relocated to New York City, working as a blacksmith. Pennington established important relationships with and received guidance from Dr. S.H. Cox, a Presbyterian minister, and William Lloyd Garrison. He later moved to Newton, Long Island, and taught at a school for black children.

In 1834, Pennington audited classes at Yale and assumed the pastorate at New Haven's Temple Street Congregational Church. Four years later. he was ordained a minister, becoming the minister of Hartford's Talcott Street Church, a black Congregationalist appointment.

In May 1841, Pennington served as the first president of the Union Missionary Society, established to raise funds to help the return to Africa of the Amistad victims. Two years later, he represented Connecticut at the World's Anti-Slavery Convention in London.

In 1850, he published an account of his life in slavery and his escape to the North, The Fugitive Blacksmith. Friends feared that the printing of his story might jeopardize his freedom with the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law. They collected funds and "purchased" him from his former master for $150.

SAMUEL RINGGOLD WARD

Samuel Ward was born a slave in Maryland in 1817. He escaped to New York in 1820 with his parents. There, he taught in black schools and worked for the American Anti-Slavery Society. In 1839, the New York Congregational Association licensed him as a pastor and he served at the all-white congregation in South Butler, New York.

Ward became noted as a great speaker on the anti-slavery circuit, earning him the nickname "the black Daniel Webster." However, Ward took offense to this appellation when Webster helped draft the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850.

In April 1853, Ward settled in England and, two years later, published his life story Autobiography of a Fugitive Negro. In the same year, he moved to Kingston, Jamaica, and served a number of pastorates there.