The Black fugitive who inspired ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ and the end of US slavery

In this drawing from ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’ a Black child is taken from his mother by a White man. Culture Club/Getty Images by Susanna Ashton, Clemson University In or around 1825, John Andrew Jackson was born enslaved on a plantation in South Carolina and trained to spend his life picking cotton. But instead of living a life as a slave, he escaped bondage and became an influential anti-slavery lecturer and writer. He also had a key role in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s celebrated novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” which historians have argued helped trigger the Civil War by its depiction of the subhuman treatment afforded Black men and women. As a scholar of the lives of enslaved people and their writings, I have researched the life of Jackson for years and still remain puzzled by his obscurity from most histories of slavery in America. In my biography of Jackson, “A Plausible Man,” I detail his remarkable life. North to freedom In early 1846, Jackson’s wife and daughter were sold to another South Carolina plantation. Heartbroken and furious, he was determined to earn money and buy his family’s freedom. Jackson waited until Christmas Day and took a bold step – he escaped on...