Unit 7: Response Paper
Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Between pages 1697 through 1703, of chapter XII, “Select Incident of Lawful Trade,” Mr. Haley, the slave trader is taking his slave, Tom, to Louisiana from Kentucky for a slave auction, and then back up the river toward Ohio. There are several exchanges between Mr. Haley and slaves, as well as other bystanders whom interject comments on the subject of slavery, including a clergyman. Many types of appeals are used in this section, including ethos, pathos, and logos.  
The story opens with the author illustrating that the same occurrence is viewed differently through others’ eyes. There is a conflict between the slave owner, Mr. Haley and his slave, Tom. Mr. Haley “thought of how he should make out his gang; he thought of the respective market value of certain supposititious men and women and children who were to compose it, and other kindred topics of the business; then he thought of himself, and how humane he was, that whereas other men chained their ‘niggers’ hand and foot both, he only put fetters on the feet, and left Tom the us of his hands, as long as he behaved well; and he sighed to think how ungrateful human nature was, so that there was even room to doubt whether Tom appreciated his mercies” (Stowe 1697). This is Mr. Haley’s dumbfounded use of logos to Tom. Mr. Haley doesn’t understand that less humane doesn’t make humane. This is a transport system still used today within the U.S. prison and jail systems. The author then projects ethos through Tom’s thoughts. “He was thinking over some words of an unfashionable old book, which kept running through his head again and again, as follows: ‘We have here no continuing city, but we seek one to com; wherefore God himself is not ashamed to be called our God; for he hath prepared for us a city” (Stowe 1697). While the narrator is expressing pathos through Tom’s oppressed reaction, he is also adopting the use of ethos through the Bible. Tom is associating the African slave trade and struggle, to the ancient slave trade and struggle of the Jews, through the means of the Old Testament. Using Mr. Haley’s beliefs against him, in his mind, the author is using Tom to portray Mr. Haley as a hypocrite.
	Afterwards, Mr. Haley is purusing through the classifieds in the newspaper, among the goods and services, browsing the human livestock. He discovers a slave auction and journey’s to Louisiana with Tom. While Mr. Haley is greeted upon entering town, he informs Tom that he’ll be bunking in the town’s jail, while Mr. Haley is pampered at a Tavern, for the business he brings to the town, in support of the thriving economy of slave trading: “It is to be confessed, too, that the naïve, off-hand information that he was to be thrown into jail by no means produced an agreeable impression on a poor fellow who had always prided himself on a strictly honest and upright course of life. Yes, Tom, must confess it, was rather proud of his honesty, poor fellow, - not having very much else to be proud of” (Stowe 1698). The author then again is employing the use of pathos by Tom’s mistreatment. Once again, Mr. Haley feeling it humane to shelter Tom in a jail, Tom is felt that he is being robbed of all he has left, his honesty and character.
	The next day at the courthouse for the slave auction, “Haley here forced his way into the group, walked up to the old man, pulled his mouth open and looked in, felt of his teeth, made him stand and straighten himself, bend his back, and perform various evolutions to show his muscles; and then passed on the next, and put him through the same trial” (Stowe 1699). After inspecting the slaves, as if they were race dogs, he encounters a mother and son slave couple. This was the last son that this mother was to have, with the rest already being sold previously. The mother kept proclaiming that they had to be sold together as a lot, but Mr. Haley didn’t feel that the mother passed his inspection. To Mr. Haley, this was a business decision and nothing more. He purchased her son, Albert, separate and refused to take the mother for free even, in avoidance of another mouth to feed or body to bury. The author then exemplifies, yet again, the use of pathos through the interaction of the mother and her son being torn from each other for ever, and implied that the mother will soon die emotionally, if not physically, soon after. The old woman proclaims in a fit of emotion, “Buy me too, Mas’r, for de dear Lord’s sake! – buy me, - I shall die if you don’t!’ ‘You’ll die if I do, that’s the kink of it,’ said Haley” (Stowe 1700). In the midst of the old woman’s pathos, she utilizes the logos of the Lord against Haley.
	As they are traveling up the river toward Ohio in a boat, a young white boy discovers the slaves chained-up below deck and consults his mother. This begins a conversation in which the contagious ignorance of hearsay collides with the scarred vision of a witness. A stubborn woman is stating that the slaves would be worse off if freed and insisting on their wellbeing without ever having been in their company or environment, but a woman raised in Kentucky, begs to differ. She claims that she has seen and experienced the slave trade and insists that the slaves are people just as the whites and capable of the same feelings and emotions if not more. In addition to, she is stern in her claim that there is no bright side to slavery. While the author is mixing a watered down combination of logos and third person pathos, a man interrupts: “It’s undoubtedly the intention of Providence that the African race should be servants, - kept in a low condition,’ said a grave-looking gentleman in black, a clergyman, seated by the cabin door. ‘Cursed be Canaan; as servant of servants shall he be,’ the scripture says” (Stowe 1702). Here, the author is using the ethos of the clergyman and the bible with misinterpretation of the scripture to prove that slavery, specifically of the black race, is an institution of divine order. This clergyman is then contradicted by another bystander, which is all witnessed by Haley: “A tall, slender young man, with a face expressive of great feeling and intelligence, here broke in, and repeated the words, ‘All things whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them.’ ‘I suppose,’ he added, ‘that is scripture, as much as ‘Cursed be Canaan” (Stowe 1702). This tall man successfully uses the ethos of scripture against the clergyman. This faint hint of ethos in conversation between the whites is a start to a breakthrough in Haley’s acknowledgement of the cruelty and inequality and inhumanity of slavery.
	This story is tightly woven with the uses of ethos, pathos, and logos. The point is to prove that slavery is wrong, to Mr. Haley, or more directly to the reader. He portrays this through the use of the relationships between slave-trader and slave, slave mother to son, bystanders to the slaves, bystanders to the slave traders, and most importantly author to reader.

Works Cited

Baym, Nina, ed. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin." Stowe, Harriet Beecher. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Vol. B. 6th Ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2003. 1697-1703.