Uncle Tom's Cabin
knowledge. Some of the most deeply tragic and romantic, some of the
most terrible incidents, have also their parallels in reality. The
incident of the mother’s crossing the Ohio river on the ice is a
well-known fact. The story of “old Prue,” in the second volume, was an
incident that fell under the personal observation of a brother of the
writer, then collecting-clerk to a large mercantile house, in New
Orleans. From the same source was derived the character of the planter
Legree. Of him her brother thus wrote, speaking of visiting his
plantation, on a collecting tour; “He actually made me feel of his
fist, which was like a blacksmith’s hammer, or a nodule of iron,
telling me that it was ‘calloused with knocking down niggers.’ When I
left the plantation, I drew a long breath, and felt as if I had escaped
from an ogre’s den.”
That the tragical fate of Tom, also, has too many times had its
parallel, there are living witnesses, all over our land, to testify.
Let it be remembered that in all southern states it is a principle of
jurisprudence that no person of colored lineage can testify in a suit
against a white, and it will be easy to see that such a case may occur,
wherever there is a man whose passions outweigh his interests, and a
slave who has manhood or principle enough to resist his will. There is,
actually, nothing to protect the slave’s life, but the _character_ of
the master. Facts too shocking to be contemplated occasionally force
their way to the public ear, and the comment that one often hears made
on them is more shocking than the thing itself. It is said, “Very
likely such cases may now and then occur, but they are no sample of
general practice.” If the laws of New England were so arranged that a
master could _now and then_ torture an apprentice to death, would it be
received with equal composure? Would it be said, “These cases are rare,
and no samples of general practice”? This injustice is an _inherent_
one in the slave system,—it cannot exist without it.
The public and shameless sale of beautiful mulatto and quadroon girls
has acquired a notoriety, from the incidents following the capture of
the Pearl. We extract the following from the speech of Hon. Horace
Mann, one of the legal counsel for the defendants in that case. He
says: “In that company of seventy-six persons, who attempted, in 1848,
to escape from the District of Columbia in the schooner Pearl, and
whose officers I assisted in defending, there were several young and
healthy girls, who had those peculiar attractions of form and feature
which connoisseurs prize so highly. Elizabeth Russel was one of them.
She immediately fell into the slave-trader’s fangs, and was doomed for
the New Orleans market. The hearts of those that saw her were touched
with pity for her fate. They offered eighteen hundred dollars to redeem
her; and some there were who offered to give, that would not have much
left after the gift; but the fiend of a slave-trader was inexorable.
She was despatched to New Orleans; but, when about half way there, God
had mercy on her, and smote her with death. There were two girls named
Edmundson in the same company. When about to be sent to the same
market, an older sister went to the shambles, to plead with the wretch
who owned them, for the love of God, to spare his victims. He bantered
her, telling what fine dresses and fine furniture they would have.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘that may do very well in this life, but what will
become of them in the next?’ They too were sent to New Orleans; but
were afterwards redeemed, at an enormous ransom, and brought back.” Is
it not plain, from this, that the histories of Emmeline and Cassy may
have many counterparts?
Justice, too, obliges the author to state that the fairness of mind and
generosity attributed to St. Clare are not without a parallel, as the
following anecdote will show. A few years since, a young southern
gentleman was in Cincinnati, with a favorite servant, who had been his
personal attendant from a boy. The young man took advantage of this
opportunity to secure his own freedom, and fled to the protection of a
Quaker, who was quite noted in affairs of this kind. The owner was
exceedingly indignant. He had always treated the slave with such
indulgence, and his confidence in his affection was such, that he
believed he must have been practised upon to induce him to revolt from
him. He visited the Quaker, in high anger; but, being possessed of
uncommon candor and fairness, was soon quieted by his arguments and
representations. It was a side of the subject which he never had
heard,—never had thought on; and he immediately told the Quaker that,
if his slave would, to his own face, say that it was his desire to be
free, he would liberate him. An interview was forthwith procured, and
Nathan was asked by his young master whether he had ever had any reason
to complain of his treatment, in any respect.
“No, Mas’r,” said Nathan; “you’ve always been good to me.”
“Well, then, why do you want to leave me?”
“Mas’r may die, and then who get me?—I’d rather be a free man.”
After some deliberation, the young master replied, “Nathan, in your
place, I think I should feel very much so, myself. You are free.”
He immediately made him out free papers; deposited a sum of money in
the hands of the Quaker, to be judiciously used in assisting him to
start in life, and left a very sensible and kind letter of advice to
the young man. That letter was for some time in the writer’s hands.
The author hopes she has done justice to that nobility, generosity, and
humanity, which in many cases characterize individuals at the South.
Such instances save us from utter despair of our kind. But, she asks
any person, who knows the world, are such characters _common_,
anywhere?
For many years of her life, the author avoided all reading upon or
allusion to the subject of slavery, considering it as too painful to be
inquired into, and one which advancing light and civilization would
certainly live down. But, since the legislative act of 1850, when she
heard, with perfect surprise and consternation, Christian and humane
people actually recommending the remanding escaped fugitives into
slavery, as a duty binding on good citizens,—when she heard, on all
hands, from kind, compassionate and estimable people, in the free
states of the North, deliberations and discussions as to what Christian
duty could be on this head,—she could only think, These men and
Christians cannot know what slavery is; if they did, such a question
could never be open for discussion. And from this arose a desire to
exhibit it in a _living dramatic reality_. She has endeavored to show
it fairly, in its best and its worst phases. In its _best_ aspect, she
has, perhaps, been successful; but, oh! who shall say what yet remains
untold in that valley and shadow of death, that lies the other side?
To you, generous, noble-minded men and women, of the South,—you, whose
virtue, and magnanimity and purity of character, are the greater for
the severer trial it has encountered,—to you is her appeal. Have you
not, in your own secret souls, in your own private conversings, felt
that there are woes and evils, in this accursed system, far beyond what
are here shadowed, or can be shadowed? Can it be otherwise? Is _man_
ever a creature to be trusted with wholly irresponsible power? And does
not the slave system, by denying the slave all legal right of
testimony, make every individual owner an irresponsible despot? Can
anybody fail to make the inference what the practical result will be?
If there is, as we admit, a public sentiment among you, men of honor,
justice and humanity, is there not also another kind of public
sentiment among the ruffian, the brutal and debased? And cannot the
ruffian, the brutal, the debased, by slave law, own just as many slaves
as the best and purest? Are the honorable, the just, the high-minded
and compassionate, the majority anywhere in this world?
The slave-trade is now, by American law, considered as piracy. But a
slave-trade, as systematic as ever was carried on on the coast of
Africa, is an inevitable attendant and result of American slavery. And
its heart-break and its horrors, can they be told?
The writer has given only a faint shadow, a dim picture, of the anguish
and despair that are, at this very moment, riving thousands of hearts,
shattering thousands of families, and driving a helpless and sensitive
race to frenzy and despair. There are those living who know the mothers
whom this accursed traffic has driven to the murder of their children;
and themselves seeking in death a shelter from woes more dreaded than
death. Nothing of tragedy can be written, can be spoken, can be
conceived, that equals the frightful reality of scenes daily and hourly
acting on our shores, beneath the shadow of American law, and the
shadow of the cross of Christ.
And now, men and women of America, is this a thing to be trifled with,
apologized for, and passed over in silence? Farmers of Massachusetts,
of New Hampshire, of Vermont, of Connecticut, who read this book by the
blaze of your winter-evening fire,—strong-hearted, generous sailors and
ship-owners of Maine,—is this a thing for you to countenance and
encourage? Brave and generous men of New York, farmers of rich and
joyous Ohio, and ye of the wide prairie states,—answer, is this a thing
for you to protect and countenance? And you, mothers of America,—you
who have learned, by the cradles of your own children, to love and feel
for all mankind,—by the sacred love you bear your child; by your joy in
his beautiful, spotless infancy; by the motherly pity and tenderness
with which you guide his growing years; by the anxieties of his
education; by the prayers you breathe for his soul’s eternal good;—I
beseech you, pity the mother who has all your affections, and not one
legal right to protect, guide, or educate, the child of her bosom! By
the sick hour of your child; by those dying eyes, which you can never
forget; by those last cries, that wrung your heart when you could
neither help nor save; by the desolation of that empty cradle, that
silent nursery,—I beseech you, pity those mothers that are constantly
made childless by the American slave-trade! And say, mothers of
America, is this a thing to be defended, sympathized with, passed over
in silence?
Do you say that the people of the free state have nothing to do with
it, and can do nothing? Would to God this were true! But it is not
true. The people of the free states have defended, encouraged, and
participated; and are more guilty for it, before God, than the South,
in that they have not the apology of education or custom.
If the mothers of the free states had all felt as they should, in times
past, the sons of the free states would not have been the holders, and,
proverbially, the hardest masters of slaves; the sons of the free
states would not have connived at the extension of slavery, in our
national body; the sons of the free states would not, as they do, trade
the souls and bodies of men as an equivalent to money, in their
mercantile dealings. There are multitudes of slaves temporarily owned,
and sold again, by merchants in northern cities; and shall the whole
guilt or obloquy of slavery fall only on the South?
Northern men, northern mothers, northern Christians, have something
more to do than denounce their brethren at the South; they have to look
to the evil among themselves.
But, what can any individual do? Of that, every individual can judge.
There is one thing that every individual can do,—they can see to it
that _they feel right_. An atmosphere of sympathetic influence
encircles every human being; and the man or woman who _feels_ strongly,
healthily and justly, on the great interests of humanity, is a constant