Uncle Tom's Cabin
going. I thought I’d just look at his—”
“Catch me ever buying any of St. Clare’s people! Spoilt niggers, every
one. Impudent as the devil!” said the other.
“Never fear that!” said the first. “If I get ’em, I’ll soon have their
airs out of them; they’ll soon find that they’ve another kind of master
to deal with than Monsieur St. Clare. ’Pon my word, I’ll buy that
fellow. I like the shape of him.”
“You’ll find it’ll take all you’ve got to keep him. He’s deucedly
extravagant!”
“Yes, but my lord will find that he _can’t_ be extravagant with _me_.
Just let him be sent to the calaboose a few times, and thoroughly
dressed down! I’ll tell you if it don’t bring him to a sense of his
ways! O, I’ll reform him, up hill and down,—you’ll see. I buy him,
that’s flat!”
Tom had been standing wistfully examining the multitude of faces
thronging around him, for one whom he would wish to call master. And if
you should ever be under the necessity, sir, of selecting, out of two
hundred men, one who was to become your absolute owner and disposer,
you would, perhaps, realize, just as Tom did, how few there were that
you would feel at all comfortable in being made over to. Tom saw
abundance of men,—great, burly, gruff men; little, chirping, dried men;
long-favored, lank, hard men; and every variety of stubbed-looking,
commonplace men, who pick up their fellow-men as one picks up chips,
putting them into the fire or a basket with equal unconcern, according
to their convenience; but he saw no St. Clare.
A little before the sale commenced, a short, broad, muscular man, in a
checked shirt considerably open at the bosom, and pantaloons much the
worse for dirt and wear, elbowed his way through the crowd, like one
who is going actively into a business; and, coming up to the group,
began to examine them systematically. From the moment that Tom saw him
approaching, he felt an immediate and revolting horror at him, that
increased as he came near. He was evidently, though short, of gigantic
strength. His round, bullet head, large, light-gray eyes, with their
shaggy, sandy eyebrows, and stiff, wiry, sun-burned hair, were rather
unprepossessing items, it is to be confessed; his large, coarse mouth
was distended with tobacco, the juice of which, from time to time, he
ejected from him with great decision and explosive force; his hands
were immensely large, hairy, sun-burned, freckled, and very dirty, and
garnished with long nails, in a very foul condition. This man proceeded
to a very free personal examination of the lot. He seized Tom by the
jaw, and pulled open his mouth to inspect his teeth; made him strip up
his sleeve, to show his muscle; turned him round, made him jump and
spring, to show his paces.
“Where was you raised?” he added, briefly, to these investigations.
“In Kintuck, Mas’r,” said Tom, looking about, as if for deliverance.
“What have you done?”
“Had care of Mas’r’s farm,” said Tom.
“Likely story!” said the other, shortly, as he passed on. He paused a
moment before Dolph; then spitting a discharge of tobacco-juice on his
well-blacked boots, and giving a contemptuous umph, he walked on. Again
he stopped before Susan and Emmeline. He put out his heavy, dirty hand,
and drew the girl towards him; passed it over her neck and bust, felt
her arms, looked at her teeth, and then pushed her back against her
mother, whose patient face showed the suffering she had been going
through at every motion of the hideous stranger.
The girl was frightened, and began to cry.
“Stop that, you minx!” said the salesman; “no whimpering here,—the sale
is going to begin.” And accordingly the sale begun.
Adolph was knocked off, at a good sum, to the young gentlemen who had
previously stated his intention of buying him; and the other servants
of the St. Clare lot went to various bidders.
“Now, up with you, boy! d’ye hear?” said the auctioneer to Tom.
Tom stepped upon the block, gave a few anxious looks round; all seemed
mingled in a common, indistinct noise,—the clatter of the salesman
crying off his qualifications in French and English, the quick fire of
French and English bids; and almost in a moment came the final thump of
the hammer, and the clear ring on the last syllable of the word
_“dollars,”_ as the auctioneer announced his price, and Tom was made
over.—He had a master!
He was pushed from the block;—the short, bullet-headed man seizing him
roughly by the shoulder, pushed him to one side, saying, in a harsh
voice, “Stand there, _you!_”
Tom hardly realized anything; but still the bidding went on,—ratting,
clattering, now French, now English. Down goes the hammer again,—Susan
is sold! She goes down from the block, stops, looks wistfully back,—her
daughter stretches her hands towards her. She looks with agony in the
face of the man who has bought her,—a respectable middle-aged man, of
benevolent countenance.
“O, Mas’r, please do buy my daughter!”
“I’d like to, but I’m afraid I can’t afford it!” said the gentleman,
looking, with painful interest, as the young girl mounted the block,
and looked around her with a frightened and timid glance.
The blood flushes painfully in her otherwise colorless cheek, her eye
has a feverish fire, and her mother groans to see that she looks more
beautiful than she ever saw her before. The auctioneer sees his
advantage, and expatiates volubly in mingled French and English, and
bids rise in rapid succession.
“I’ll do anything in reason,” said the benevolent-looking gentleman,
pressing in and joining with the bids. In a few moments they have run
beyond his purse. He is silent; the auctioneer grows warmer; but bids
gradually drop off. It lies now between an aristocratic old citizen and
our bullet-headed acquaintance. The citizen bids for a few turns,
contemptuously measuring his opponent; but the bullet-head has the
advantage over him, both in obstinacy and concealed length of purse,
and the controversy lasts but a moment; the hammer falls,—he has got
the girl, body and soul, unless God help her!
Her master is Mr. Legree, who owns a cotton plantation on the Red
River. She is pushed along into the same lot with Tom and two other
men, and goes off, weeping as she goes.
The benevolent gentleman is sorry; but, then, the thing happens every
day! One sees girls and mothers crying, at these sales, _always!_ it
can’t be helped, &c.; and he walks off, with his acquisition, in
another direction.
Two days after, the lawyer of the Christian firm of B. & Co., New York,
send on their money to them. On the reverse of that draft, so obtained,
let them write these words of the great Paymaster, to whom they shall
make up their account in a future day: _“When he maketh inquisition for
blood, he forgetteth not the cry of the humble!”_
CHAPTER XXXI
The Middle Passage
“Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look upon
iniquity: wherefore lookest thou upon them that deal treacherously, and
holdest thy tongue when the wicked devoureth the man that is more
righteous than he?”—HAB. 1: 13.
On the lower part of a small, mean boat, on the Red River, Tom
sat,—chains on his wrists, chains on his feet, and a weight heavier
than chains lay on his heart. All had faded from his sky,—moon and
star; all had passed by him, as the trees and banks were now passing,
to return no more. Kentucky home, with wife and children, and indulgent
owners; St. Clare home, with all its refinements and splendors; the
golden head of Eva, with its saint-like eyes; the proud, gay, handsome,
seemingly careless, yet ever-kind St. Clare; hours of ease and
indulgent leisure,—all gone! and in place thereof, _what_ remains?
It is one of the bitterest apportionments of a lot of slavery, that the
negro, sympathetic and assimilative, after acquiring, in a refined
family, the tastes and feelings which form the atmosphere of such a
place, is not the less liable to become the bond-slave of the coarsest
and most brutal,—just as a chair or table, which once decorated the
superb saloon, comes, at last, battered and defaced, to the barroom of
some filthy tavern, or some low haunt of vulgar debauchery. The great
difference is, that the table and chair cannot feel, and the _man_ can;
for even a legal enactment that he shall be “taken, reputed, adjudged
in law, to be a chattel personal,” cannot blot out his soul, with its
own private little world of memories, hopes, loves, fears, and desires.
Mr. Simon Legree, Tom’s master, had purchased slaves at one place and
another, in New Orleans, to the number of eight, and driven them,
handcuffed, in couples of two and two, down to the good steamer Pirate,
which lay at the levee, ready for a trip up the Red River.
Having got them fairly on board, and the boat being off, he came round,
with that air of efficiency which ever characterized him, to take a
review of them. Stopping opposite to Tom, who had been attired for sale
in his best broadcloth suit, with well-starched linen and shining
boots, he briefly expressed himself as follows:
“Stand up.”
Tom stood up.
“Take off that stock!” and, as Tom, encumbered by his fetters,
proceeded to do it, he assisted him, by pulling it, with no gentle
hand, from his neck, and putting it in his pocket.
Legree now turned to Tom’s trunk, which, previous to this, he had been
ransacking, and, taking from it a pair of old pantaloons and
dilapidated coat, which Tom had been wont to put on about his
stable-work, he said, liberating Tom’s hands from the handcuffs, and
pointing to a recess in among the boxes,
“You go there, and put these on.”
Tom obeyed, and in a few moments returned.
“Take off your boots,” said Mr. Legree.
Tom did so.
“There,” said the former, throwing him a pair of coarse, stout shoes,
such as were common among the slaves, “put these on.”
In Tom’s hurried exchange, he had not forgotten to transfer his
cherished Bible to his pocket. It was well he did so; for Mr. Legree,
having refitted Tom’s handcuffs, proceeded deliberately to investigate
the contents of his pockets. He drew out a silk handkerchief, and put
it into his own pocket. Several little trifles, which Tom had
treasured, chiefly because they had amused Eva, he looked upon with a
contemptuous grunt, and tossed them over his shoulder into the river.
Tom’s Methodist hymn-book, which, in his hurry, he had forgotten, he
now held up and turned over.
“Humph! pious, to be sure. So, what’s yer name,—you belong to the
church, eh?”
“Yes, Mas’r,” said Tom, firmly.
“Well, I’ll soon have _that_ out of you. I have none o’ yer bawling,
praying, singing niggers on my place; so remember. Now, mind yourself,”
he said, with a stamp and a fierce glance of his gray eye, directed at
Tom, “_I’m_ your church now! You understand,—you’ve got to be as _I_
say.”
Something within the silent black man answered _No!_ and, as if
repeated by an invisible voice, came the words of an old prophetic
scroll, as Eva had often read them to him,—“Fear not! for I have
redeemed thee. I have called thee by name. Thou art MINE!”
But Simon Legree heard no voice. That voice is one he never shall hear.
He only glared for a moment on the downcast face of Tom, and walked
off. He took Tom’s trunk, which contained a very neat and abundant
wardrobe, to the forecastle, where it was soon surrounded by various
hands of the boat. With much laughing, at the expense of niggers who
tried to be gentlemen, the articles very readily were sold to one and
another, and the empty trunk finally put up at auction. It was a good
joke, they all thought, especially to see how Tom looked after his
things, as they were going this way and that; and then the auction of
the trunk, that was funnier than all, and occasioned abundant
witticisms.