Uncle Tom's Cabin
marks as characteristic of the women of Kentucky, she added high moral
and religious sensibility and principle, carried out with great energy
and ability into practical results. Her husband, who made no
professions to any particular religious character, nevertheless
reverenced and respected the consistency of hers, and stood, perhaps, a
little in awe of her opinion. Certain it was that he gave her unlimited
scope in all her benevolent efforts for the comfort, instruction, and
improvement of her servants, though he never took any decided part in
them himself. In fact, if not exactly a believer in the doctrine of the
efficiency of the extra good works of saints, he really seemed somehow
or other to fancy that his wife had piety and benevolence enough for
two—to indulge a shadowy expectation of getting into heaven through her
superabundance of qualities to which he made no particular pretension.
The heaviest load on his mind, after his conversation with the trader,
lay in the foreseen necessity of breaking to his wife the arrangement
contemplated,—meeting the importunities and opposition which he knew he
should have reason to encounter.
Mrs. Shelby, being entirely ignorant of her husband’s embarrassments,
and knowing only the general kindliness of his temper, had been quite
sincere in the entire incredulity with which she had met Eliza’s
suspicions. In fact, she dismissed the matter from her mind, without a
second thought; and being occupied in preparations for an evening
visit, it passed out of her thoughts entirely.
CHAPTER II
The Mother
Eliza had been brought up by her mistress, from girlhood, as a petted
and indulged favorite.
The traveller in the south must often have remarked that peculiar air
of refinement, that softness of voice and manner, which seems in many
cases to be a particular gift to the quadroon and mulatto women. These
natural graces in the quadroon are often united with beauty of the most
dazzling kind, and in almost every case with a personal appearance
prepossessing and agreeable. Eliza, such as we have described her, is
not a fancy sketch, but taken from remembrance, as we saw her, years
ago, in Kentucky. Safe under the protecting care of her mistress, Eliza
had reached maturity without those temptations which make beauty so
fatal an inheritance to a slave. She had been married to a bright and
talented young mulatto man, who was a slave on a neighboring estate,
and bore the name of George Harris.
This young man had been hired out by his master to work in a bagging
factory, where his adroitness and ingenuity caused him to be considered
the first hand in the place. He had invented a machine for the cleaning
of the hemp, which, considering the education and circumstances of the
inventor, displayed quite as much mechanical genius as Whitney’s
cotton-gin.[1]
[2] A machine of this description was really the invention of a young
colored man in Kentucky. [Mrs. Stowe’s note.]
He was possessed of a handsome person and pleasing manners, and was a
general favorite in the factory. Nevertheless, as this young man was in
the eye of the law not a man, but a thing, all these superior
qualifications were subject to the control of a vulgar, narrow-minded,
tyrannical master. This same gentleman, having heard of the fame of
George’s invention, took a ride over to the factory, to see what this
intelligent chattel had been about. He was received with great
enthusiasm by the employer, who congratulated him on possessing so
valuable a slave.
He was waited upon over the factory, shown the machinery by George,
who, in high spirits, talked so fluently, held himself so erect, looked
so handsome and manly, that his master began to feel an uneasy
consciousness of inferiority. What business had his slave to be
marching round the country, inventing machines, and holding up his head
among gentlemen? He’d soon put a stop to it. He’d take him back, and
put him to hoeing and digging, and “see if he’d step about so smart.”
Accordingly, the manufacturer and all hands concerned were astounded
when he suddenly demanded George’s wages, and announced his intention
of taking him home.
“But, Mr. Harris,” remonstrated the manufacturer, “isn’t this rather
sudden?”
“What if it is?—isn’t the man _mine_?”
“We would be willing, sir, to increase the rate of compensation.”
“No object at all, sir. I don’t need to hire any of my hands out,
unless I’ve a mind to.”
“But, sir, he seems peculiarly adapted to this business.”
“Dare say he may be; never was much adapted to anything that I set him
about, I’ll be bound.”
“But only think of his inventing this machine,” interposed one of the
workmen, rather unluckily.
“O yes!—a machine for saving work, is it? He’d invent that, I’ll be
bound; let a nigger alone for that, any time. They are all labor-saving
machines themselves, every one of ’em. No, he shall tramp!”
George had stood like one transfixed, at hearing his doom thus suddenly
pronounced by a power that he knew was irresistible. He folded his
arms, tightly pressed in his lips, but a whole volcano of bitter
feelings burned in his bosom, and sent streams of fire through his
veins. He breathed short, and his large dark eyes flashed like live
coals; and he might have broken out into some dangerous ebullition, had
not the kindly manufacturer touched him on the arm, and said, in a low
tone,
“Give way, George; go with him for the present. We’ll try to help you,
yet.”
The tyrant observed the whisper, and conjectured its import, though he
could not hear what was said; and he inwardly strengthened himself in
his determination to keep the power he possessed over his victim.
George was taken home, and put to the meanest drudgery of the farm. He
had been able to repress every disrespectful word; but the flashing
eye, the gloomy and troubled brow, were part of a natural language that
could not be repressed,—indubitable signs, which showed too plainly
that the man could not become a thing.
It was during the happy period of his employment in the factory that
George had seen and married his wife. During that period,—being much
trusted and favored by his employer,—he had free liberty to come and go
at discretion. The marriage was highly approved of by Mrs. Shelby, who,
with a little womanly complacency in match-making, felt pleased to
unite her handsome favorite with one of her own class who seemed in
every way suited to her; and so they were married in her mistress’
great parlor, and her mistress herself adorned the bride’s beautiful
hair with orange-blossoms, and threw over it the bridal veil, which
certainly could scarce have rested on a fairer head; and there was no
lack of white gloves, and cake and wine,—of admiring guests to praise
the bride’s beauty, and her mistress’ indulgence and liberality. For a
year or two Eliza saw her husband frequently, and there was nothing to
interrupt their happiness, except the loss of two infant children, to
whom she was passionately attached, and whom she mourned with a grief
so intense as to call for gentle remonstrance from her mistress, who
sought, with maternal anxiety, to direct her naturally passionate
feelings within the bounds of reason and religion.
After the birth of little Harry, however, she had gradually become
tranquillized and settled; and every bleeding tie and throbbing nerve,
once more entwined with that little life, seemed to become sound and
healthful, and Eliza was a happy woman up to the time that her husband
was rudely torn from his kind employer, and brought under the iron sway
of his legal owner.
The manufacturer, true to his word, visited Mr. Harris a week or two
after George had been taken away, when, as he hoped, the heat of the
occasion had passed away, and tried every possible inducement to lead
him to restore him to his former employment.
“You needn’t trouble yourself to talk any longer,” said he, doggedly;
“I know my own business, sir.”
“I did not presume to interfere with it, sir. I only thought that you
might think it for your interest to let your man to us on the terms
proposed.”
“O, I understand the matter well enough. I saw your winking and
whispering, the day I took him out of the factory; but you don’t come
it over me that way. It’s a free country, sir; the man’s _mine_, and I
do what I please with him,—that’s it!”
And so fell George’s last hope;—nothing before him but a life of toil
and drudgery, rendered more bitter by every little smarting vexation
and indignity which tyrannical ingenuity could devise.
A very humane jurist once said, The worst use you can put a man to is
to hang him. No; there is another use that a man can be put to that is
WORSE!
CHAPTER III
The Husband and Father
Mrs. Shelby had gone on her visit, and Eliza stood in the verandah,
rather dejectedly looking after the retreating carriage, when a hand
was laid on her shoulder. She turned, and a bright smile lighted up her
fine eyes.
“George, is it you? How you frightened me! Well; I am so glad you ’s
come! Missis is gone to spend the afternoon; so come into my little
room, and we’ll have the time all to ourselves.”
Saying this, she drew him into a neat little apartment opening on the
verandah, where she generally sat at her sewing, within call of her
mistress.
“How glad I am!—why don’t you smile?—and look at Harry—how he grows.”
The boy stood shyly regarding his father through his curls, holding
close to the skirts of his mother’s dress. “Isn’t he beautiful?” said
Eliza, lifting his long curls and kissing him.
“I wish he’d never been born!” said George, bitterly. “I wish I’d never
been born myself!”
Surprised and frightened, Eliza sat down, leaned her head on her
husband’s shoulder, and burst into tears.
“There now, Eliza, it’s too bad for me to make you feel so, poor girl!”
said he, fondly; “it’s too bad. O, how I wish you never had seen me—you
might have been happy!”
“George! George! how can you talk so? What dreadful thing has happened,
or is going to happen? I’m sure we’ve been very happy, till lately.”
“So we have, dear,” said George. Then drawing his child on his knee, he
gazed intently on his glorious dark eyes, and passed his hands through
his long curls.
“Just like you, Eliza; and you are the handsomest woman I ever saw, and
the best one I ever wish to see; but, oh, I wish I’d never seen you,
nor you me!”
“O, George, how can you!”
“Yes, Eliza, it’s all misery, misery, misery! My life is bitter as
wormwood; the very life is burning out of me. I’m a poor, miserable,
forlorn drudge; I shall only drag you down with me, that’s all. What’s
the use of our trying to do anything, trying to know anything, trying
to be anything? What’s the use of living? I wish I was dead!”
“O, now, dear George, that is really wicked! I know how you feel about
losing your place in the factory, and you have a hard master; but pray
be patient, and perhaps something—”
“Patient!” said he, interrupting her; “haven’t I been patient? Did I
say a word when he came and took me away, for no earthly reason, from
the place where everybody was kind to me? I’d paid him truly every cent
of my earnings,—and they all say I worked well.”
“Well, it _is_ dreadful,” said Eliza; “but, after all, he is your
master, you know.”
“My master! and who made him my master? That’s what I think of—what
right has he to me? I’m a man as much as he is. I’m a better man than
he is. I know more about business than he does; I am a better manager
than he is; I can read better than he can; I can write a better
hand,—and I’ve learned it all myself, and no thanks to him,—I’ve
learned it in spite of him; and now what right has he to make a
dray-horse of me?—to take me from things I can do, and do better than