Uncle Tom's Cabin
and convenience of the strong! It needs not to be told;—every day is
telling it,—telling it, too, in the ear of One who is not deaf, though
he be long silent.
The young man who had spoken for the cause of humanity and God before
stood with folded arms, looking on this scene. He turned, and Haley was
standing at his side. “My friend,” he said, speaking with thick
utterance, “how can you, how dare you, carry on a trade like this? Look
at those poor creatures! Here I am, rejoicing in my heart that I am
going home to my wife and child; and the same bell which is a signal to
carry me onward towards them will part this poor man and his wife
forever. Depend upon it, God will bring you into judgment for this.”
The trader turned away in silence.
“I say, now,” said the drover, touching his elbow, “there’s differences
in parsons, an’t there? ‘Cussed be Canaan’ don’t seem to go down with
this ’un, does it?”
Haley gave an uneasy growl.
“And that ar an’t the worst on ’t,” said John; “mabbee it won’t go down
with the Lord, neither, when ye come to settle with Him, one o’ these
days, as all on us must, I reckon.”
Haley walked reflectively to the other end of the boat.
“If I make pretty handsomely on one or two next gangs,” he thought, “I
reckon I’ll stop off this yer; it’s really getting dangerous.” And he
took out his pocket-book, and began adding over his accounts,—a process
which many gentlemen besides Mr. Haley have found a specific for an
uneasy conscience.
The boat swept proudly away from the shore, and all went on merrily, as
before. Men talked, and loafed, and read, and smoked. Women sewed, and
children played, and the boat passed on her way.
One day, when she lay to for a while at a small town in Kentucky, Haley
went up into the place on a little matter of business.
Tom, whose fetters did not prevent his taking a moderate circuit, had
drawn near the side of the boat, and stood listlessly gazing over the
railing. After a time, he saw the trader returning, with an alert step,
in company with a colored woman, bearing in her arms a young child. She
was dressed quite respectably, and a colored man followed her, bringing
along a small trunk. The woman came cheerfully onward, talking, as she
came, with the man who bore her trunk, and so passed up the plank into
the boat. The bell rung, the steamer whizzed, the engine groaned and
coughed, and away swept the boat down the river.
The woman walked forward among the boxes and bales of the lower deck,
and, sitting down, busied herself with chirruping to her baby.
Haley made a turn or two about the boat, and then, coming up, seated
himself near her, and began saying something to her in an indifferent
undertone.
Tom soon noticed a heavy cloud passing over the woman’s brow; and that
she answered rapidly, and with great vehemence.
“I don’t believe it,—I won’t believe it!” he heard her say. “You’re
jist a foolin’ with me.”
“If you won’t believe it, look here!” said the man, drawing out a
paper; “this yer’s the bill of sale, and there’s your master’s name to
it; and I paid down good solid cash for it, too, I can tell you,—so,
now!”
“I don’t believe Mas’r would cheat me so; it can’t be true!” said the
woman, with increasing agitation.
“You can ask any of these men here, that can read writing. Here!” he
said, to a man that was passing by, “jist read this yer, won’t you!
This yer gal won’t believe me, when I tell her what ’t is.”
“Why, it’s a bill of sale, signed by John Fosdick,” said the man,
“making over to you the girl Lucy and her child. It’s all straight
enough, for aught I see.”
The woman’s passionate exclamations collected a crowd around her, and
the trader briefly explained to them the cause of the agitation.
“He told me that I was going down to Louisville, to hire out as cook to
the same tavern where my husband works,—that’s what Mas’r told me, his
own self; and I can’t believe he’d lie to me,” said the woman.
“But he has sold you, my poor woman, there’s no doubt about it,” said a
good-natured looking man, who had been examining the papers; “he has
done it, and no mistake.”
“Then it’s no account talking,” said the woman, suddenly growing quite
calm; and, clasping her child tighter in her arms, she sat down on her
box, turned her back round, and gazed listlessly into the river.
“Going to take it easy, after all!” said the trader. “Gal’s got grit, I
see.”
The woman looked calm, as the boat went on; and a beautiful soft summer
breeze passed like a compassionate spirit over her head,—the gentle
breeze, that never inquires whether the brow is dusky or fair that it
fans. And she saw sunshine sparkling on the water, in golden ripples,
and heard gay voices, full of ease and pleasure, talking around her
everywhere; but her heart lay as if a great stone had fallen on it. Her
baby raised himself up against her, and stroked her cheeks with his
little hands; and, springing up and down, crowing and chatting, seemed
determined to arouse her. She strained him suddenly and tightly in her
arms, and slowly one tear after another fell on his wondering,
unconscious face; and gradually she seemed, and little by little, to
grow calmer, and busied herself with tending and nursing him.
The child, a boy of ten months, was uncommonly large and strong of his
age, and very vigorous in his limbs. Never, for a moment, still, he
kept his mother constantly busy in holding him, and guarding his
springing activity.
“That’s a fine chap!” said a man, suddenly stopping opposite to him,
with his hands in his pockets. “How old is he?”
“Ten months and a half,” said the mother.
The man whistled to the boy, and offered him part of a stick of candy,
which he eagerly grabbed at, and very soon had it in a baby’s general
depository, to wit, his mouth.
“Rum fellow!” said the man “Knows what’s what!” and he whistled, and
walked on. When he had got to the other side of the boat, he came
across Haley, who was smoking on top of a pile of boxes.
The stranger produced a match, and lighted a cigar, saying, as he did
so,
“Decentish kind o’ wench you’ve got round there, stranger.”
“Why, I reckon she _is_ tol’able fair,” said Haley, blowing the smoke
out of his mouth.
“Taking her down south?” said the man.
Haley nodded, and smoked on.
“Plantation hand?” said the man.
“Wal,” said Haley, “I’m fillin’ out an order for a plantation, and I
think I shall put her in. They telled me she was a good cook; and they
can use her for that, or set her at the cotton-picking. She’s got the
right fingers for that; I looked at ’em. Sell well, either way;” and
Haley resumed his cigar.
“They won’t want the young ’un on the plantation,” said the man.
“I shall sell him, first chance I find,” said Haley, lighting another
cigar.
“S’pose you’d be selling him tol’able cheap,” said the stranger,
mounting the pile of boxes, and sitting down comfortably.
“Don’t know ’bout that,” said Haley; “he’s a pretty smart young ’un,
straight, fat, strong; flesh as hard as a brick!”
“Very true, but then there’s the bother and expense of raisin’.”
“Nonsense!” said Haley; “they is raised as easy as any kind of critter
there is going; they an’t a bit more trouble than pups. This yer chap
will be running all around, in a month.”
“I’ve got a good place for raisin’, and I thought of takin’ in a little
more stock,” said the man. “One cook lost a young ’un last week,—got
drownded in a washtub, while she was a hangin’ out the clothes,—and I
reckon it would be well enough to set her to raisin’ this yer.”
Haley and the stranger smoked a while in silence, neither seeming
willing to broach the test question of the interview. At last the man
resumed:
“You wouldn’t think of wantin’ more than ten dollars for that ar chap,
seeing you _must_ get him off yer hand, any how?”
Haley shook his head, and spit impressively.
“That won’t do, no ways,” he said, and began his smoking again.
“Well, stranger, what will you take?”
“Well, now,” said Haley, “I _could_ raise that ar chap myself, or get
him raised; he’s oncommon likely and healthy, and he’d fetch a hundred
dollars, six months hence; and, in a year or two, he’d bring two
hundred, if I had him in the right spot; I shan’t take a cent less nor
fifty for him now.”
“O, stranger! that’s ridiculous, altogether,” said the man.
“Fact!” said Haley, with a decisive nod of his head.
“I’ll give thirty for him,” said the stranger, “but not a cent more.”
“Now, I’ll tell ye what I will do,” said Haley, spitting again, with
renewed decision. “I’ll split the difference, and say forty-five; and
that’s the most I will do.”
“Well, agreed!” said the man, after an interval.
“Done!” said Haley. “Where do you land?”
“At Louisville,” said the man.
“Louisville,” said Haley. “Very fair, we get there about dusk. Chap
will be asleep,—all fair,—get him off quietly, and no
screaming,—happens beautiful,—I like to do everything quietly,—I hates
all kind of agitation and fluster.” And so, after a transfer of certain
bills had passed from the man’s pocket-book to the trader’s, he resumed
his cigar.
It was a bright, tranquil evening when the boat stopped at the wharf at
Louisville. The woman had been sitting with her baby in her arms, now
wrapped in a heavy sleep. When she heard the name of the place called
out, she hastily laid the child down in a little cradle formed by the
hollow among the boxes, first carefully spreading under it her cloak;
and then she sprung to the side of the boat, in hopes that, among the
various hotel-waiters who thronged the wharf, she might see her
husband. In this hope, she pressed forward to the front rails, and,
stretching far over them, strained her eyes intently on the moving
heads on the shore, and the crowd pressed in between her and the child.
“Now’s your time,” said Haley, taking the sleeping child up, and
handing him to the stranger. “Don’t wake him up, and set him to crying,
now; it would make a devil of a fuss with the gal.” The man took the
bundle carefully, and was soon lost in the crowd that went up the
wharf.
When the boat, creaking, and groaning, and puffing, had loosed from the
wharf, and was beginning slowly to strain herself along, the woman
returned to her old seat. The trader was sitting there,—the child was
gone!
“Why, why,—where?” she began, in bewildered surprise.
“Lucy,” said the trader, “your child’s gone; you may as well know it
first as last. You see, I know’d you couldn’t take him down south; and
I got a chance to sell him to a first-rate family, that’ll raise him
better than you can.”
The trader had arrived at that stage of Christian and political
perfection which has been recommended by some preachers and politicians
of the north, lately, in which he had completely overcome every humane
weakness and prejudice. His heart was exactly where yours, sir, and
mine could be brought, with proper effort and cultivation. The wild
look of anguish and utter despair that the woman cast on him might have
disturbed one less practised; but he was used to it. He had seen that
same look hundreds of times. You can get used to such things, too, my
friend; and it is the great object of recent efforts to make our whole
northern community used to them, for the glory of the Union. So the
trader only regarded the mortal anguish which he saw working in those
dark features, those clenched hands, and suffocating breathings, as
necessary incidents of the trade, and merely calculated whether she was
going to scream, and get up a commotion on the boat; for, like other
supporters of our peculiar institution, he decidedly disliked
agitation.
But the woman did not scream. The shot had passed too straight and
direct through the heart, for cry or tear.