# XXX: The Slave Warehouse explained — Uncle Tom’s Cabin > Chapter companion for Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. ## What happens Tom, Adolph, and several other slaves from the St. Clare estate are taken to a slave warehouse in New Orleans to be sold at auction. The chapter exposes the brutal and dehumanizing nature of the slave trade, describing how slaves are fattened and forced to be merry to fetch higher prices. Tom is deeply sorrowful, while Adolph is disgusted by the coarse treatment. The chapter also introduces Susan and Emmeline, a mother and daughter who are separated at the auction despite their desperate pleas. Emmeline is sold to Simon Legree, while Tom and two other men are also purchased by him. The chapter ends with a condemnation of the Christian merchants who profit from such sales. ## Themes in this chapter ### Slavery and Inhumanity The chapter vividly depicts the dehumanizing conditions of the slave warehouse, where human beings are treated as property, fattened for sale, and forced to be merry to mask their suffering. ### Family and Separation The auction brutally separates Susan and Emmeline, a mother and daughter, highlighting the cruel destruction of family bonds under slavery. ### Hypocrisy of American Society The chapter condemns the Christian merchants of B. & Co. who profit from the slave trade while professing moral scruples, exposing the hypocrisy of a society that tolerates such commerce. ## Character check-ins ### Uncle Tom Tom is brought to the slave warehouse, deeply sorrowful and refusing to join in the forced merriment. He is sold to Simon Legree at the auction. ### Adolph Adolph is also taken to the warehouse, where he reacts with disgust and pride when Sambo mocks him. He is part of the group sold at auction. ### Sambo Sambo is a burly, coarse slave in the warehouse who performs buffoonery and mocks Adolph. He represents the brutalized, callous slave. ### Emmeline Emmeline is a young, beautiful slave girl sold at auction with her mother Susan. She is purchased by Simon Legree, despite her mother's desperate pleas. ### Simon Legree Legree is the bullet-headed buyer who purchases Emmeline, Tom, and two other men at the auction, becoming their new master. ## Key lines > A slave warehouse! Perhaps some of my readers conjure up horrible visions of such a place. They fancy some foul, obscure den, some horrible Tartarus “ informis, ingens, cui lumen ademptum. ” But no, innocent friend; in these days men have learned the art of sinning expertly and genteelly, so as not to shock the eyes and senses of respectable society. The slave warehouse is not a dark, filthy dungeon as one might imagine, but a clean, orderly place where the brutality of slavery is hidden behind a respectable facade. _Stowe contrasts the reader's expectations with the reality of a sanitized, commercial slave market, emphasizing the genteel evil of the institution._ > The dealers in the human article make scrupulous and systematic efforts to promote noisy mirth among them, as a means of drowning reflection, and rendering them insensible to their condition. Slave traders deliberately encourage loud, forced merriment among the enslaved to prevent them from thinking about their misery and to make them easier to control. _This reveals the calculated cruelty of the slave trade, which uses psychological manipulation to suppress resistance._ > Susan remembered the man’s looks and words. With a deadly sickness at her heart, she remembered how he had looked at Emmeline’s hands, and lifted up her curly hair, and pronounced her a first-rate article. Susan recalls with horror how the slave trader inspected her daughter's hands and hair, treating her like a commodity and calling her a 'first-rate article.' _The inspection of Emmeline's body for sale underscores the dehumanization and sexual vulnerability of enslaved women._ > On the reverse of that draft, so obtained, let them write these words of the great Paymaster, to whom they shall make up their account in a future day: “ When he maketh inquisition for blood, he forgetteth not the cry of the humble! ” The Christian merchants who profit from the sale of slaves should remember that God will hold them accountable for the blood and suffering they have caused. _Stowe directly condemns the hypocrisy of Christian businessmen who profit from slavery, invoking divine judgment._ ## Links - HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/uncle_tom_s_cabin_se/chapters/volume-ii-xxx-the-slave-warehouse - Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/uncle_tom_s_cabin_se - All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/uncle_tom_s_cabin_se/chapters