Chapter 12: Questions and Answers
Study Questions
1. Where do Haley and Uncle Tom stay while in Washington, D.C.?
2. What does Aunt Hagar promise to Haley if he buys her together with her son?
3. What is Albert’s special relationship to his mother?
4. Which passenger on the riverboat quotes the Bible to defend slavery?
5. Which passenger comments adversely on slavery and questions Haley?
6. How does Haley defend his position as a trader?
7. What makes some passengers think more about the horrors of slavery?
8. Why does Haley sell Lucy’s child to the stranger?
9. Who first discovers that Lucy has jumped overboard?
10. How does Haley feel about the loss of Lucy?
Answers
1. Haley stays at a tavern; Tom is locked in a jail.
2. She promises that she is able to work hard on a plantation, despite being old and crippled.
3. Albert is Hagar’s last son to be sold from her.
4. A minister recites the Bible passage.
5. A humane slave owner attacks slavery.
6. Haley says: “I took up the trade just to make a living.”
7. Thinking about their own families, some passengers realize how terrible it is for slaves to be separated from their kin.
8. Haley thinks the child will decrease Lucy’s value on the market because a plantation owner may not want the added financial burden of raising the child.
9. Uncle Tom notices during the night that Lucy drowns herself by seeing her run down the boat and hearing the splash in the water.
10. He feels “devilish unlucky.”
