Honest Abe and Uncle Tom

Abstract

I. Honest Abe and Uncle TomOver the course of many decades, historians have seen it as their duty to discover the fundamental causes of the Civil War: economic, political, and social. Their pursuit has turned up the political economies of slavery and freedom that ulti­mately would have pulled the American Union apart, peacefully or by force of arms (see Boritt; Collins; Freehling; Levine; McPherson; Niven; Perman; Reid). On the metaphorical level, by contrast, Honest Abe and Uncle Tom—incommensu­rate, but evocative figures—embody the causes of the Civil War. Monuments to Lincoln circulate on a daily basis, as units of money as common as pennies and five-dollar bills. After flourishing for three-quarters of a century, Uncle Tom’s popularity lapsed in the late twentieth century, as African Americans gained cul­tural clout and reinterpreted Tom’s meaning. With Black Power, the figure of Uncle Tom came to stand for treason to the (Negro) race rather than for faithful black Christian virtues, at least for the most part.