Homage to ‘hero’ of divisive novel

WASHINGTON — His life may have inspired the landmark novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin but 150 years after the abolition of slavery in the United States, Josiah Henson remains a controversial figure, and efforts to turn his onetime home outside Washington into a museum are slow at best.

In Rockville, now a swanky suburb of the US capital, all that remains of the tobacco and wheat plantation where Henson once worked is a wooden house with a small, single-room attachment.

The cabin is not specifically where Henson lived — its construction came long after he left — but it resembles the hut he described in his 1849 autobiography, The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave.

Archaeologists working with authorities in Maryland’s Montgomery County — who bought the plantation house in 2006 and plan to develop the site in the next years to allow regular guest visits — discovered traces of a kitchen below.

Henson may have slept there for time to time during his 30 years on Isaac Riley’s plantation, where he joined his mother at age 5 in 1795, and experts hope they can use the traces to reconstruct his actual dwelling.

Author Harriet Beecher Stowe used Henson’s autobiography as the basis for Uncle Tom’s Cabin, her 1852 novel that was one of the best-selling books of the 19th century.

Shirl Spicer, museum manager for Montgomery County parks, plans to showcase editions of both Henson’s book and Uncle Tom’s Cabin at the site. But she says the museum will not be ready for about five years, due to a lack of funding.

Honoring Henson is still a sensitive topic, especially among African Americans, some of whom think that he “betrayed his race to obey his white master,” Spicer said.

Spicer said that even Henson’s descendants, who came to the park a few years ago, said they had “always been ashamed of him.’”

In 1825, Riley had Henson take some of his slaves to his brother’s farm in Kentucky to keep them away from creditors. Henson obeyed, even though he could have escaped during the long journey on foot.

Henson returned with his meager savings and tried — but failed — to buy his freedom.

“He felt the only honest way to achieve freedom was to buy it,” said historian Jamie Kuhns.

Montgomery County officials hope to rehabilitate Henson.

“We have to introduce the real man to everyone, the hero behind the fictional character,” Spicer said.

1852 the year Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published. The novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe has proved controversial.