Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  It may be said that it was the duty of St. Clare to emancipate Uncle Tom,

  but the wealth of the Rothschilds would not enable a man to act out his benevo-

  lent instincts at such a price; and if such was his duty, it is not equally the duty

  of every monied man in the free States to attend the New Orleans slave-mart

  with the same benevolent purpose in view? It seems to me that to purchase a

  slave with the purpose of saving him for a hard and cruel fate, and without any

  view to emancipation, is itself a good action. If the slave should subsequently

  become able to redeem himself, it would doubtless be the duty of the owner to

  emancipate him, and it would be but even-handed justice to set down every dollar

  of the slave's earnings, above the expense of his maintenance, to his credit, until

  the price paid for him should be fully restored. This is all that justice could

  exact of the slave-holder.

  Those who have railed against “Uncle Tom's Cabin” as an incendiary publica-

  tion, have singularly (supposing that they have read the book) overlooked the

  moral of the hero's life. Uncle Tom is the most faithful of servants. He

  literally “obeyed in all things” his “masters according to the flesh; not with

  eye-service, as men-pleasers, but in singleness of heart, fearing God.” If his

  conduct exhibits the slightest departure from a literal fulfilment of this injunction

  of Scripture, it is in a case which must command the approbation of the most

  rigid casuist, for the injunction of obedience extends, of course, only to lawful

  commands. It is only when the monster Legree commands him to inflict unde-

  served chastisement upon his fellow-servants that Uncle Tom refuses obedience.

  He would not listen to a proposition of escaping into Ohio with the young

  woman Eliza, on the night after they were sold by Mr. Shelby to the trader

  Haley. He thought it would be bad faith to his late master, whom he had

  nursed in his arms, and might be the means of bringing him into difficulty. He

  offered no resistance to Haley, and obeyed even Legree in every legitimate com-

  mand; but when he was required to be the instrument of his master's cruelty, he

  chose rather to die, with the courage and resolution of a Christian martyr, than

  to save his life by a guilty compliance. Such was Uncle Tom--not a bad

  example for the imitation of man or master.

  I am, sir, very respectfully,

  Your ob't serv't,

  Daniel R. Goodloe.

  A. M. Gangewer, Esq.,

  Washington, D. C.

  The writer has received permission to publish the following

  extract from a letter received by a lady at the North from the

  editor of a Southern paper. The mind and character of the

  author will speak for themselves, in the reading of it:

  Charleston, Sunday, 25th July, 1852.

  * * * The books, I infer, are Mrs. Beecher Stowe's “Uncle Tom's

  Cabin.” The book was furnished me by-- --, about a fortnight ago,

  and you may be assured I read it with an attentive interest. “Now, what is your

  opinion of it?” you will ask; and, knowing my preconceived opinions upon the

  question of slavery, and the embodiment of my principles, which I have so long

  supported, in regard to that peculiar institution, you may be prepared to meet

  an indirect answer. This my own consciousness of truth would not allow in the

  present instance. The book is a truthful picture of life, with the dark outlines

  beautifully portrayed. The life (the characteristics, incidents, and the dialogues)

  is life itself reduced to paper. In her Appendix she rather evades the question

  whether it was taken from actual scenes, but says there are many counterparts.

  In this she is correct beyond doubt. Had she changed the picture of Legree, on

  Red River, for-- --, on--Island, South Carolina, she could not have

  drawn a more admirable portrait. I am led to question whether she had not some

  knowledge of this beast, as he is known to be, and made the transposition for

  effect.

  My position in connexion with the extreme party, both in Georgia and South

  Carolina, would constitute a restraint to the full expression of my feelings upon

  several of the governing principles of the institution. I have studied slavery in

  all its different phases--have been thrown in contact with the negro in different

  parts of the world, and made it my aim to study his nature, so far as my limited

  abilities would give me light--and, whatever my opinions have been, they were

  based upon what I supposed to be honest convictions.

  During the last three years you well know what my opportunities have been

  to examine all the sectional bearings of an institution which now holds the

  great and most momentous question of our federal well-being. These oppor-

  tunities I have not let pass, but have given myself, body and soul, to a know-

  ledge of its vast intricacies--to its constitutional compact and its individual

  hardships. Its wrongs are in the constituted rights of the master, and the

  blank letter of those laws which pretend to govern the bondman's rights. What

  legislative act, based upon the construction of self-protection for the very men who

  contemplate the laws--even though their intention was amelioration--could be

  enforced, when the legislated object is held as the bond property of the legislator?

  The very fact of constituting a law for the amelioration of property becomes an

  absurdity so far as carrying it out is concerned. A law which is intended to

  govern, and gives the governed no means of seeking its protection, is like the

  clustering together of so many useless words for vain show. But why talk of law?

  That which is considered the popular rights of a people, and every tenacious pre-

  judice set forth to protect its property interest, creates its own power against every

  weaker vessel. Laws which interfere with this become unpopular, repugnant to a

  forcible will, and a dead letter in effect. So long as the voice of the governed

  cannot be heard, and his wrongs are felt beyond the jurisdiction or domain of the

  law, as nine-tenths are, where is the hope of redress? The master is the powerful

  vessel; the negro feels his dependence, and, fearing the consequences of an appeal

  for his rights, submits to the cruelty of his master in preference to the dread of

  something more cruel. It is in those dissected cases of cruelty we find the wrongs

  of slavery, and in those governing laws which give power to bad Northern men to

  become the most cruel task-masters. Do not judge from my observations that I

  am seeking consolation for the Abolitionists. Such is not my intention; but

  truth to a cause which calls loudly for reformation constrains me to say that

  humanity calls for some law to govern the force and absolute will of the master,

  and to reform no part is more requisite than that which regards the slave's food

  and raiment. A person must live years at the South before he can become fully

  acquainted with the many workings of slavery. A Northern man, not prominently

  interested in the political and social weal of the South, may live for years, in it, and

  pass from town to town in his every-day pursuits, and yet see but the polished

  side of slavery. With me it has been different. Its effect upon
the negro him-

  self, and its effect upon the social and commercial well-being of Southern society

  has been laid broadly open to me, and I have seen more of its workings within

  the past year than was disclosed to me all the time before. It is with these feel-

  ings that I am constrained to do credit to Mrs. Stowe's book, which I consider

  must have been written by one who derived the materials, from a thorough

  acquaintance with the subject. The character of the slave-dealer, the bankrupt

  owner in Kentucky, and the New Orleans merchant, are simple every-day occur-

  rences in these parts. Editors may speak of the dramatic effect as they please;

  the tale is not told them, and the occurrences of common reality would form a

  picture more glaring. I could write a work, with date and incontrovertible facts,

  of abuses which stand recorded in the knowledge of the community in which they

  were transacted, that would need no dramatic effect, and would stand out ten-fold

  more horrible than anything Mrs. Stowe has described.

  I have read two columns in the Southern Press of Mrs. Eastman's “Aunt

  Phillis's Cabin, or Southern Life as It is,” with the remarks of the editor. I have

  no comments to make upon it, that being done by itself. The editor might have

  saved himself being writ down an ass by the public if he had withheld his non-

  sense. If the two columns are a specimen of Mrs. Eastman's book, I pity her

  attempt and her name as an author.

  PART II.

  CHAPTER I.

  The New York Courier and Inquirer, of November 5th, con-

  tained an article which has been quite valuable to the author,

  as summing up, in a clear, concise, and intelligible form, the

  principal objections which may be urged to “Uncle Tom's

  Cabin.” It is here quoted in full, as the foundation of the re-

  marks in the following pages.

  The author of “Uncle Tom's Cabin,” that writer states, has

  committed false witness against thousands and millions of her

  fellow-men.

  She has done it [he says] by attaching to them as slaveholders, in the eyes of

  the world, the guilt of the abuses of an institution of which they are absolutely

  guiltless. Her story is so devised as to present slavery in three dark aspects:

  first, the cruel treatment of the slaves; second, the separation of families; and,

  third, their want of religious instruction.

  To show the first, she causes a reward to be offered for the recovery of a run-

  away slave, “dead or alive,” when no reward with such an alternative was ever

  heard of, or dreamed of, south of Mason and Dixon's line, and it has been decided

  over the over again in Southern courts that “a slave who is merely flying away

  cannot be killed.” She puts such language as this into the mouth of one of her

  speakers:--“The master who goes furthest and does the worst only uses within

  limits the power that the law gives him;” when, in fact, the civil code of the

  very State where it is represented the language was uttered--Louisiana--de-

  clares that--

  “The slave is entirely subject to the will of his master, who may correct and

  chastise him, though not with unusual rigour, nor so as to maim or mutilate him,

  on to expose him to the danger of loss of life, or to cause his death.”

  And provides for a compulsory sale--

  “When the master shall be convicted of cruel treatment of his slaves, and the

  judge shall deem proper to pronounce, besides the penalty established for such

  cases, that the slave be sold at public auction, in order to place him out of the

  reach of the power which the master has abused.”

  “If any person whatsoever shall wilfully kill his slave, or the slave of another

  person, the said person, being convicted thereof, shall be tried and condemned

  agreeably to the laws.”

  In the General Court of Virginia, last year, in the case of Souther v. Common-

  wealth, it was held that the killing of a slave by his master and owner, by wilful

  and excessive whipping, is murder in the first degree, though it may not have been

  the purpose of the master and owner to kill the slave! And it is not six months

  since Governor Johnson, of Virginia, pardoned a slave who killed his master, who

  was beating him with brutal severity.

  And yet, in the face of such laws and decisions as these, Mrs. Stowe winds up a

  ong series of cruelties upon her other black personages, by causing her faultless

  hero, Tom, to be literally whipped to death in Louisiana, by his master, Legree;

  and these acts, which the laws make criminal, and punish as such, she sets forth

  in the most repulsive colours, to illustrate the institution of slavery.

  So, too, in reference to the separation of children from their parents. A con-

  siderable part of the plot is made to hinge upon the selling, in Louisiana, of the

  child Eliza, “eight or nine years old,” away from her mother; when, had its in-

  ventor looked in the statute-book of Louisiana, she would have found the following

  language:--

  “Every person is expressly prohibited from selling separately from their mothers

  the children who shall not have attained the full age of ten years.

  “Be it further enacted, That if any person or persons shall sell the mother of

  any slave child or children under the age of ten years, separate from said child or

  children, or shall, the mother living, sell any slave child or children of ten years of

  age, or under, separate from said mother, said person or persons shall be fined not

  less than one thousand nor more than two thousand dollars, and be imprisoned

  in the public jail for a period of not less than six months nor more than one

  year.”

  The privation of religious instruction, as represented by Mrs. Stowe, is utterly

  unfounded in fact. The largest churches in the Union consist entirely of slaves.

  The first African church in Louisville, which numbers fifteen hundred persons,

  and the first African church in Augusta, which numbers thirteen hundred, are

  specimens. On multitudes of large plantations in the different parts of the

  South, the ordinances of the gospel are as regularly maintained, by competent

  ministers, as in any other communities, north or south. A larger proportion of

  the slave population are in communion with some Christian church than of the

  white population in any part of the country. A very considerable portion of

  every Southern congregation, either in city or country, is sure to consist of blacks;

  whereas, of our Northern churches, not a coloured person is to be seen in one out

  of fifty.

  The peculiar falsity of this whole book consists in making exceptional or

  impossible cases the representatives of the system. By the same process which

  she has used, it would not be difficult to frame a fatal argument against the rela-

  tion of husband and wife, or parent and child, or of guardian and ward; for thou-

  sands of wives and children, and wards, have been maltreated, and even murdered.

  It is wrong, unpardonably wrong, to impute to any relation of life those enormities

  which spring only out of the worst depravity of human nature. A ridiculously

  extravagant spirit of generalisation pervades this fiction from beginning to end.

  The U
ncle Tom of the authoress is a perfect angel, and her blacks generally are

  half angels; her Simon Legree is a perfect demon, and her whites generally are

  half demons. She has quite a peculiar spite against the clergy; and, of the many

  she introduces at different times into the scenes, all, save an insignificant exception,

  are Pharisees or hypocrites. One who could know nothing of the United States

  and its people, except by what he might gather from this book, would judge that

  it was some region just on the confines of the infernal world. We do not say that

  Mrs. Stowe was actuated by wrong motives in the preparation of this work, but

  we do say that she has done a wrong which no ignorance can excuse, and no

  penance can expiate.

  A much valued correspondent of the author, writing from

  Richmond, Virginia, also uses the following language:--

  I will venture this morning to make a few suggestions which have occurred to

  me in regard to future editions of your work, “Uncle Tom's Cabin,” which I desire

  should have all the influence of which your genius renders it capable, not only

  abroad, but in the local sphere of slavery, where it has been hitherto repudiated.

  Possessing already the great requisites of artistic beauty and of sympathetic

  affection, it may yet be improved in regard to accuracy of statement, without being

  at all enfeebled. For example, you do less than justice to the formalised laws of

  the Southern States, while you give more credit than is due to the virtue of public

  or private sentiment in restricting the evil which the laws permit.

  I enclose the following extracts from a Southern paper:--

  “ `I'll manage that ar; they's young in the business, and must 'spect to work

  cheap,' said Marks, as he continued to read. `Thar's three on 'em easy cases,

  'cause all you've got to do is to shoot 'em, or swear they is shot; they couldn't, of

  course, charge much for that.'

  “The reader will observe that two charges against the South are involved

  in this precious discourse; one, that it is the habit of Southern masters to

  offer a reward, with the alternative of `dead or alive,' for their fugitive slaves;

  and the other, that it is usual for pursuers to shoot them. Indeed, we are led