Uncle Tom’s Cabin and many other nineteenth-century antislavery texts, Blake opens with the forcible separation of the slave family. Henry’s wife, Maggie, discovers that her owner and biological father, Colonel Stephen Franks, has arranged to sell her, partly because his wife has become too close to Maggie and partly because Maggie has refused his sexual advances. Returning from an errand for the Franks family, Henry learns that his wife has been sold away from the Franks plantation. Maggie’s parents, Daddy Joe and Mammy Judy, weep, pray for better times, and implore Henry to “stan’ still an see de salbation.” Henry, however, chooses instead to leave the Franks plantation and travel through each state of the antebellum South in order to “sow the seeds” of rebellion.