Pious, old Uncle Tom is sold by his well-intentioned Kentucky owner, Mr. Shelby, who has fallen into debt. The trader also singles out little Harry, Eliza's child, but Eliza takes Harry and heads for the river. Uncle Tom submits to his fate. He is bought first by the idealistic Augustine St. Clare after saving her daughter, Little Eve, who falls from the deck of a riverboat. In his New Orleans house, Uncle Tom makes friends with Eva's black friend, the impish Topsy, whom Eva tires to reform. "Never was born!" persisted Topsy... "never had no father, nor mother, nor nothin'. I was raised by a speculator, with lots of others." Eva dies from a weakened constitution, and St. Clare is stabbed to death while trying to separate two brawling men. Tom is sold to Simon Legree, a Yankee and a brutal cotton plantation owner. "I don't go for savin' niggers. Use up, and buy more, 's my way," he says. Two of Uncle Tom's female slaves, Cassy and Emmeline, pretend to escape and go into hiding. Tom will not reveal their whereabouts, and Legree has his lackeys Quimbo and Sambo beat the unresisting Tom to the point of death. Tom forgives them and dies, just as Mr. Shelby's son arrives to buy him back. A parallel plot centers on Eliza, her little child, and her husband George who escape to freedom in Canada using the 'underground railroad.' Other important characters are Miss Ophelia St. Clare, a New England spinster, and Marks, the slave catcher. Cassy meets Madame de Throux, sister of George Harris, Eliza's husband, on the boat north. The Harris family leaves for Africa, and George Shelby frees his slaves.
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