Eliza’s Flight. A Scene From Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Boston: Published by Oliver Ditson, 115 Washington St.; Bufford’s Lith., 1852. 4to (13.25” x 10.25”) sheet music, lithographic front-cover. 5 pp. Image size, 8” x 6.5”.

An early example of Uncle Tom’s Cabin sheet music, featuring one of the first illustrations of one of the most iconic episodes in the book.

The cover lithograph shows Eliza Harris in flight, her son Harry in her arms, crossing the frozen Ohio River into the free state of Ohio. She is pursued by the slave-trader Haley, who is standing on the Kentucky shore holding a whip, accompanied by his two slaves, Andy and Sam, one of whom raises his arms in alarm. A plantation house looms in the background. The words of Eliza appear below the image: “God helping me, I crossed the river on the ice; for they were behind me—right behind—and there was no other way.”

In the novel, Eliza, a maid, decides to run away after overhearing her owners discuss the imminent sale of Harry and Uncle Tom. She departs in the night, jumping from one ice floe to the next across the river, and is helped to the shore by Mr. Symmes, a man who detests slave-catchers. Although Eliza’s escape is one of the more dramatic moments in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the subject was not illustrated in the first American edition. Published in the same year as the first edition, this sheet music lithograph is one of the earliest illustrations of this subject, which became one of the most iconic Uncle Tom’s Cabin images, with a multitude of versions appearing on posters, broadsides, ceramics, and other ephemera, as well as in various editions of the book.

REFERENCES: Eliza's Flight: A Scene from Uncle Tom's Cabin at civilwarinart.org.

CONDITION: Light scuffing to covers; page number for Uncle Tom's Cabin quote partially effaced below image.