You’re probably familiar with the term “Uncle Tom.” It’s a synonym for a black sellout, someone who works against the interests of his own race. I’m not a big fan of the term, since it’s often applied to people who merely have different views about political and policy questions facing the black community. Be that as it may, the term definitely has a certain bite. That’s why I was so surprised when I read through Uncle Tom’s cabin.

In the book, Uncle Tom is exposed to a level of cruelty most of us could never imagine. His master in Kentucky sells him, but not before holding out false hope that he will buy him back. Another master in Louisiana promises to free him but dies just before fulfilling the promise. Sold yet again, he finds himself working for an exceptionally mean master.

The novel spends a great deal of time exploring Uncle Tom’s faith. He is constantly reading his Bible and professing it to others, even his master at one point. And he is a man of principle. When he sees a slave struggling to pick enough cotton, he dumps some of his into her sack and is hit for it. Not to be deterred, he dumps cotton in her sack again after the overseers leave. At the end of the day, his sadistic master orders him to beat the woman, but he refuses. He even goes so far as to tell his master to his face that beating her is wrong. For that, two overseers (who were also slaves) beat him nearly to death.

This episode is even more significant than it appears at first. At the time, slave owners often used the Bible to instruct slaves about their duties to honor and submit to their masters. Although they probably didn’t say it in so many words, masters suggested that their slaves’ biblical duty to obey them superseded any duty to follow their consciences. In refusing to obey his master, Uncle Tom showed that he rejected this twisted view of Christianity and that he would think for himself.

Afterwards, when Cassy comes to bandage his wounds, he tells her that God loves her and listens empathetically to her plight of having children sold away from her even as he is in agonizing pain himself. In short, far from selling fellow blacks out, he is a man who risked his life to help them.

In his own way, I see Uncle Tom as a rebel. No, he never tried to get all the slaves on his plantation to rise up. But he defied the prevailing notions at the time of what it means to be black. Slave owners and many others looked on blacks as beasts to be controlled, animals without a moral sense or the ability to reason. But in standing by his faith and acting upon it, Uncle Tom demonstrated that blacks were equal to whites in every way. Intellectually, they could understand how the Bible required them to behave and see past the attempts slave owners made to use it to justify oppression. Far from being cowards, they could be brave and live out their principles even when it might cost them their lives. Slavery did its best to strip Uncle Tom of his humanity. It failed.

Uncle Tom is best seen as a Christian apologist whose example called on Americans to follow the golden rule and treat blacks right. I certainly think that’s what Harriet Beecher Stowe intended when she wrote him. He deserves better than to be a racial epithet.