Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  God will bring you into judgment for this.

  If that gentleman has read the work, as perhaps he has before

  now, he has probably recognised his own words. One affecting

  incident in the narrative, as it really occurred, ought to be

  mentioned. The wife was passionately bemoaning her hus-

  band's fate, as about to be for ever separated from all that he

  held dear, to be sold to the hard usage of a Southern plantation.

  The husband, in reply, used that very simple but sublime ex-

  pression which the writer has placed in the mouth of Uncle

  Tom, in similar circumstances:--“There'll be the same God

  there that there is here.”

  One other incident mentioned in Uncle Tom's Cabin may,

  perhaps, be as well verified in this place as in any other.

  The case of old Prue was related by a brother and sister of

  the writer as follows:--She was the woman who supplied

  rusks and other articles of the kind at the house where they

  boarded. Her manners, appearance, and character were just

  as described. One day another servant came in her place,

  bringing the rusks. The sister of the writer inquired what

  had become of Prue. She seemed reluctant to answer for

  some time, but at last said that they had taken her into the

  cellar and beaten her, and that the flies had got at her and

  she was dead!

  It is well known that there are no cellars, properly so called,

  in New Orleans, the nature of the ground being such as to

  forbid digging. The slave who used the word had probably

  been imported from some State where cellars were in use, and

  applied the term to the place which was used for the ordinary

  purposes of a cellar. A cook who lived in the writer's family,

  having lived most of her life on a plantation, always applied

  the descriptive terms of the plantation to the very limited

  enclosures and retinue of a very plain house and yard.

  This same lady, while living in the same place, used fre-

  quently to have her compassion excited by hearing the wailings

  of a sickly baby in a house adjoining their own, as also the

  objurgations and tyrannical abuse of a ferocious virago upon

  its mother. She once got an opportunity to speak to its

  mother, who appeared heart-broken and dejected, and inquired

  what was the matter with her child. Her answer was, that she

  had had a fever, and that her milk was all dried away; and that

  her mistress was set against her child, and would not buy milk

  for it. She had tried to feed it on her own coarse food, but it

  pined and cried continually; and in witness of this she brought

  the baby to her. It was emaciated to a skeleton. The lady

  took the little thing to a friend of hers in the house who had

  been recently confined, and who was suffering from a re-

  dundancy of milk, and begged her to nurse it. The miserable

  sight of the little, famished, wasted thing affected the mother

  so as to overcome all other considerations, and she placed it to

  her breast, when it revived, and took food with an eagerness

  which showed how much it had suffered. But the child was so

  reduced that this proved only a transient alleviation. It was

  after this almost impossible to get sight of the woman, and the

  violent temper of her mistress was such as to make it difficult

  to interfere in the case. The lady secretly afforded what aid she

  could, though, as she confessed, with a sort of misgiving that it

  was a cruelty to try to hold back the poor little sufferer from

  the refuge of the grave; and it was a relief to her when at last

  its wailings ceased, and it went where the weary are at rest.

  This is one of those cases which go to show that the interest of

  the owner will not always insure kind treatment of the slave.

  There is one other incident, which the writer interwove into

  the history of the mulatto woman who was bought by Legree

  for his plantation. The reader will remember that, in telling her

  story to Emmeline, she says:--

  “My mas'r was Mr. Ellis--lived in Levee-street. P'raps you've seen the

  house.”

  “Was he good to you?” said Emmeline.

  “Mostly, till he tuk sick. He's lain sick, off and on, more than six months,

  and been orful oneasy. 'Pears like he warn't willin' to have nobody rest, day nor

  night; and got so cur'ous, there couldn't nobody suit him. 'Pears like he just

  grew crosser every day; kep me up nights till I got fairly beat out, and couldn't

  keep awake no longer; and 'cause I got to sleep one night, Lors! he talk so orful

  to me, and he tell me he'd sell me to just the hardest master he could find; and

  he'd promised me my freedom, too, when he died!”

  An incident of this sort came under the author's observation

  in the following manner. A quadroon slave family, liberated by

  the will of the master, settled on Walnut Hills, near her resi-

  dence, and their children were received into her family school,

  taught in her house. In this family was a little quadroon boy,

  four or five years of age, with a sad, dejected appearance, who

  excited their interest.

  The history of this child, as narrated by his friends, was simply

  this: his mother had been the indefatigable nurse of her master,

  during a lingering and painful sickness which at last terminated

  his life. She had borne all the fatigue of the nursing both by

  night and by day, sustained in it by his promise that she should

  be rewarded for it by her liberty, at his death. Overcome by

  exhaustion and fatigue, she one night fell asleep, and he was

  unable to rouse her. The next day, after violently upbraiding

  her, he altered the directions of his will, and sold her to a man

  who was noted in all the region round as a cruel master, which

  sale, immediately on his death, which was shortly after, took

  effect. The only mitigation of her sentence was that her child

  was not to be taken with her into this dreaded lot, but was given

  to this quadroon family to be brought into a free State.

  The writer very well remembers hearing this story narrated

  among a group of liberated negroes, and their comments on it.

  A peculiar form of grave and solemn irony often characterises

  the communications of this class of people. It is a habit en-

  gendered in slavery to comment upon proceedings of this kind in

  language apparently respectful to the perpetrators, and which is

  felt to be irony only by a certain peculiarity of manner, difficult

  to describe. After the relation of this story, when the writer

  expressed her indignation in no measured terms, one of the

  oldest of the sable circle remarked, gravely--

  “The man was a mighty great Christian, anyhow.”

  The writer warmly expressed her dissent from this view, when

  another of the same circle added--

  “Went to glory, anyhow.”

  And another continued--

  “Had the greatest kind of a time when he was a-dyin'; said

  he was goin' straight into heaven.”

  And when the writer remarked that many people thought so

  who never got there, a singular smile of grim approval p
assed

  round the circle, but no further comments were made. This

  incident has often recurred to the writer's mind, as showing the

  danger to the welfare of the master's soul from the possession of

  absolute power. A man of justice and humanity when in health,

  is often tempted to become unjust, exacting, and exorbitant in

  sickness. If, in these circumstances, he is surrounded by in-

  feriors, from whom law and public opinion have taken away the

  rights of common humanity, how is he tempted to the exercise of

  the most despotic passions, and, like this unfortunate man, to

  leave the world with the weight of these awful words upon his

  head: “If ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your

  Father forgive your trespasses.”

  CHAPTER XII.

  TOPSY.

  Topsy stands as the representative of a large class of the chil-

  dren who are growing up under the institution of slavery--quick,

  active, subtle and ingenious, apparently utterly devoid of prin-

  ciple and conscience, keenly penetrating, by an instinct which

  exists in the childish mind, the degradation of their condition,

  and the utter hopelessness of rising above it; feeling the black

  skin on them, like the mark of Cain, to be a sign of reprobation

  and infamy, and urged on by a kind of secret desperation to

  make their “calling and election” in sin “sure.”

  Christian people have often been perfectly astonished and dis-

  couraged, as Miss Ophelia was, in the attempt to bring up such

  children decently and Christianly, under a state of things which

  takes away every stimulant which God meant should operate

  healthfully on the human mind.

  We are not now speaking of the Southern States merely, but of

  the New England States; for, startling as it may appear, slavery

  is not yet wholly abolished in the free States of the North. The

  most unchristian part of it, that which gives to it all the bitterness

  and all the sting, is yet, in a great measure, unrepealed; it is the

  practical denial to the negro of the rights of human brotherhood.

  In consequence of this, Topsy is a character which may be found

  at the North as well as at the South.

  In conducting the education of negro, mulatto, and quadroon

  children, the writer has often observed this fact--that, for a

  certain time, and up to a certain age, they kept equal pace with,

  and were often superior to, the white children with whom they

  were associated; but that there came a time when they became

  indifferent to learning, and made no further progress. This was

  invariably at the age when they were old enough to reflect upon

  life, and to perceive that society had no place to offer them for

  which anything more would be requisite than the rudest and most

  elementary knowledge.

  Let us consider how it is with our own children; how few

  of them would ever acquire an education from the mere love of

  learning.

  In the process necessary to acquire a handsome style of hand-

  writing, to master the intricacies of any language, or to conquer

  the difficulties of mathematical study, how often does the perse-

  verance of the child flag, and need to be stimulated by his

  parents and teachers by such considerations as these: “It will

  be necessary for you, in such or such a position in life, to possess

  this or that acquirement or accomplishment. How could you

  ever become a merchant without understanding accounts? How

  could you enter the learned professions without understanding

  languages? If you are ignorant and uninformed, you cannot

  take rank as a gentleman in society.”

  Does not everyone know that, without the stimulus which

  teachers and parents thus continually present, multitudes of

  children would never gain a tolerable education? And is it not

  the absence of all such stimulus which has prevented the negro

  child from an equal advance?

  It is often objected to the negro race that they are frivolous

  and vain, passionately fond of show, and are interested only in

  trifles. And who is to blame for all this? Take away all high

  aims, all noble ambition, from any class, and what is left for

  them to be interested in but trifles?

  The present Attorney-General of Liberia, Mr. Lewis, is a

  man who commands the highest respect for talent and ability in

  his position; yet, while he was in America, it is said that, like

  many other young coloured men, he was distinguished only for

  foppery and frivolity. What made the change in Lewis after he

  went to Liberia? Who does not see the answer? Does any-

  one wish to know what is inscribed on the seal which keeps the

  great stone over the sepulchre of African mind? It is this--

  which was so truly said by poor Topsy--“Nothing but a

  nigger!”

  It is this, burnt into the soul by the branding-iron of cruel

  and unchristian scorn, that is a sorer and deeper wound than all

  the physical evils of slavery together.

  There never was a slave who did not feel it. Deep, deep

  down in the dark still waters of his soul is the conviction,

  heavier, bitterer than all others, that he is not regarded as a man.

  On this point may be introduced the testimony of one who has

  known the wormwood and the gall of slavery by bitter expe-

  rience. The following letter has been received from Dr. Pen-

  nington, in relation to some inquiries of the author:--

  New York, 50, Laurens-street, November 30, 1852.

  Esteemed Madam,--I have duly received your kind letter in answer to mine

  of the 15th instant, in which you state that you “have an intense curiosity to

  know how far you have rightly divined the heart of the slave.” You give me

  your idea in these words: “There lies buried down in the heart of the most

  seemingly careless and stupid slave a bleeding spot that bleeds and aches, though

  he could scarcely tell why; and that this sore spot is the degradation of his

  position.”

  After escaping from the plantation of Dr. Tilghman, in Washington County,

  Md., where I was held as a slave, and worked as a blacksmith, I came to the State

  of Pennsylvania, and, after experiencing there some of the vicissitudes referred to

  in my little published narrative, I came into New York State, bringing in my

  mind a certain indescribable feeling of wretchedness. They used to say of me at

  Dr. Tilghman's, “That blacksmith Jemmy is a 'cute fellow; still water runs

  deep.” But I confess that “blacksmith Jemmy” was not 'cute enough to under-

  stand the cause of his own wretchedness. The current of the still water may have

  run deep, but it did not reach down to that awful bed of lava.

  At times I thought it occasioned by the lurking fear of betrayal. There was no

  Vigilance Committee at the time--there were but anti-slavery men. I came

  North with my counsels in my own cautious breast. I married a wife, and did

  not tell her I was a fugitive. None of my friends knew it. I knew not the

  means of safety, and hence I was constantly in fear of meeting with some one

  who would betray me.

  It wa
s fully two years before I could hold up my head; but still that feeling

  was in my mind. In 1846, after opening my bosom as a fugitive to John Hooker,

  Esq., I felt this much relief--“Thank God, there is one brother man in hard old

  Connecticut that knows my troubles.”

  Soon after this, when I sailed to the island of Jamaica, and on landing there

  saw coloured men in all the stations of civil, social, commercial life, where I had

  seen white men in this country, that feeling of wretchedness experienced a sen-

  sible relief, as if some feverish sore had been just reached by just the right kind

  of balm. There was before my eye evidence that a coloured man is more than

  “a nigger.” I went into the House of Assembly at Spanishtown, where fifteen

  out of forty-five members were coloured men. I went into the courts, where I

  saw in the jury-box coloured and white men together, coloured and white lawyers

  at the bar. I went into the Common Council of Kingston; there I found men of

  different colours. So in all the counting-rooms, &c. &c.

  But still there was this drawback. Somebody says, “This is nothing but a

  nigger island.” Now, then, my old trouble came back again, “a nigger among

  niggers is but a nigger still.”

  In 1849, when I undertook my second visit to Great Britain, I resolved to pro-

  long and extend my travel and intercourse with the best class of men, with a view

  to see if I could banish that troublesome old ghost entirely out of my mind. In

  England, Scotland, Wales, France, Germany, Belgium, and Prussia, my whole

  power has been concentrated on this object: “I'll be a man, and I'll kill off this

  enemy which has haunted me these twenty years and more.” I believe I have

  succeeded in some good degree; at least, I have now no more trouble on the score

  of equal manhood with the whites. My European tour was certainly useful,

  because there the trial was fair and honourable. I had nothing to complain of.

  I got what was due to man, and I was expected to do what was due from man to

  man. I sought not to be treated as a pet. I put myself into the harness, and

  wrought manfully in the first pulpits, and the platforms in peace congresses, con-

  ventions, anniversaries, commencements, &c.; and in these exercises that rusty old

  iron came out of my soul, and went “clean away.”

  You say again you have never seen a slave, however careless and merryhearted,