Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  dering to them that which is just and equal.

  If the laws which regulate slavery were made by a despotic

  sovereign, over whose movements the masters could have no

  control, this mode of proceeding might be called just and

  equal; but, as they are made and kept in operation by these

  Christian masters, these ministers and Church members, in

  common with those who are not so, they are every one of them

  refusing to the slave that which is just and equal, so long as

  they do not seek the repeal of these laws; and if they

  cannot get them repealed, it is their duty to take the slave

  out from under them, since they are constructed with such

  fatal ingenuity as utterly to nullify all that the master tries

  to do for their elevation and permanent benefit.

  No man would wish to leave his own family of children as

  slaves under the kindest master that ever breathed; and what

  he would not wish to have done to his own children, he ought

  not to do to other people's children.

  But it will be said that it is not becoming for the Christian

  Church to enter into political matters. Again, we ask, what is

  the Christian Church? Is it not an association of republican

  citizens, each one of whom has his rights and duties as a legal

  voter?

  Now, suppose a law were passed which depreciated the value

  of cotton or sugar three cents in the pound; would these men

  consider the fact that they are Church members as any reason

  why they should not agitate for the repeal of such law? Cer-

  tainly not. Such a law would be brittle as the spider's web;

  it would be swept away before it was well made. Every law

  to which the majority of the community does not assent is, in

  this country, immediately torn down.

  Why, then, does this monstrous system stand from age to

  age? Because the community CONSENT TO IT. They re-enact these unjust laws every day, by their silent permission of them.

  The kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ is not of this world,

  say the South Carolina Presbyteries; therefore the Church has

  no right to interfere with any civil institution; but yet all the

  clergy of Charleston could attend in a body to give sanction

  to the proceedings of the great Vigilance Committee. They

  could not properly exert the least influence against slavery,

  because it is a civil institution; but they could give the whole

  weight of their influence in favour of it.

  Is it not making the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ

  quite as much of this world, to patronise the oppressor as to

  patronise the slave?

  CHAPTER IX.

  IS THE SYSTEM OF RELIGION WHICH IS TAUGHT THE SLAVE

  THE GOSPEL?

  The ladies of England, in their letter to the ladies of America,

  spoke in particular of the denial of the gospel to the slave. This

  has been indignantly resented in this country, and it has been

  claimed that the slaves do have the gospel communicated to

  them very extensively.

  Whoever reads Mr. Charles C. Jones's book on the religious

  instruction of the negroes will have no doubt of the following

  facts:--

  1. That from year to year, since the introduction of the

  negroes into this country, various pious and benevolent indi-

  viduals have made efforts for their spiritual welfare.

  2. That these efforts have increased, from year to year.

  3. That the most extensive and important one came into being

  about the time that Mr. Jones's book was written, in the year

  1842, and extended to some degree through the United States.

  The fairest development of it was probably in the State of

  Georgia, the sphere of Mr. Jones's immediate labour, where the

  most gratifying results were witnessed, and much very amiable

  and commendable Christian feeling elicited on the part of masters.

  4. From time to time, there have been prepared, for the use

  of the slave, catechisms, hymns, short sermons, &c. &c., designed

  to be read to them by their masters, or taught them orally.

  5. It will appear to anyone who reads Mr. Jones's book that,

  though written by a man who believed the system of slavery

  sanctioned by God, it manifests a spirit of sincere and earnest

  benevolence, and of devotedness to the cause he has undertaken,

  which cannot be too highly appreciated.

  It is a very painful and unpleasant task to express any qualifi-

  cation or dissent with regard to efforts which have been undertaken

  in a good spirit, and which have produced, in many respects,

  good results; but, in the reading of Mr. Jones's book, in the

  study of his catechism, and of various other catechisms and

  sermons which give an idea of the religious instruction of the

  slaves, the writer has often been painfully impressed with the

  idea that however imbued and mingled with good, it is not the

  true and pure Gospel system which is given to the slave. As far

  as the writer has been able to trace out what is communicated to

  him, it amounts in substance to this; that his master's authority

  over him, and property in him, to the full extent of the enactment

  of slave-law, is recognised and sustained by the tremendous

  authority of God himself. He is told that his master is God's

  overseer; that he owes him a blind, unconditional, unlimited

  submission; that he must not allow himself to grumble, or fret,

  or murmur, at anything in his conduct; and, in case he does so,

  that his murmuring is not against his master, but against God.

  He is taught that it is God's will that he should have nothing

  but labour and poverty in this world; and that, if he frets and

  grumbles at this, he will get nothing by it in this life, and be sent

  to hell for ever in the next. Most vivid descriptions of hell,

  with its torments, its worms ever feeding and never dying, are

  held up before him; and he is told that this eternity of torture

  will be the result of insubordination here. It is no wonder that

  a slaveholder once said to Dr. Brisbane, of Cincinnati, that religion

  had been worth more to him, on his plantation, than a waggon-

  load of cowskins.

  Furthermore, the slave is taught that to endeavour to evade

  his master by running away, or to shelter or harbour a slave who

  has run away, are sins which will expose him to the wrath of

  that omniscient Being whose eyes are in every place.

  As the slave is a moveable and merchantable being, liable, as

  Mr. Jones calmly remarks, to “all the vicissitudes of property,”

  this system of instruction, one would think, would be in some-

  thing of a dilemma, when it comes to inculcate the Christian

  duties of the family state.

  When Mr. Jones takes a survey of the field, previous to com-

  mencing his system of operations, he tells us, what we suppose

  every rational person must have foreseen, that he finds among

  the negroes an utter demoralisation upon this subject; that

  polygamy is commonly practised, and that the marriage-covenant

  has become a mere temporary union of interest, profit, or plea-

  sure, formed without reflection, and diss
olved without the slightest

  idea of guilt.

  That this state of things is the necessary and legitimate result

  of the system of laws which these Christian men have made and

  are still keeping up over their slaves, any sensible person will per-

  ceive; and anyone would think it an indispensable step to any

  system of religious instruction here, that the negro should be

  placed in a situation where he can form a legal marriage, and

  can adhere to it after it is formed.

  But Mr. Jones and his coadjutors commenced by declaring

  that it was not their intention to interfere, in the slightest degree,

  with the legal position of the slave.

  We should have thought, then, that it would not have been

  possible, if these masters intended to keep their slaves in the

  condition of chattels personal, liable to a constant disruption of

  family ties--that they could have the heart to teach them the

  strict morality of the gospel, with regard to the marriage relation.

  But so it is, however. If we examine Mr. Jones's catechism,

  we shall find that the slave is made to repeat orally that one

  man can be the husband of but one woman; and if during

  her lifetime he marries another, God will punish him for ever

  in hell.

  Suppose a conscientious woman, instructed in Mr. Jones's

  catechism, by the death of her master is thrown into the market

  for the division of the estate, like many cases we may read of

  in the Georgia papers every week. She is torn from her hus-

  band and children, and sold at the other end of the Union,

  never to meet them again, and the new master commands her

  to take another husband; what, now, is this woman to do?

  If she takes the husband, according to her catechism she com-

  mits adultery, and exposes herself to everlasting fire; if she

  does not take him, she disobeys her master, who, she has been

  taught, is God's overseer; and she is exposed to everlasting

  fire on that account, and certainly she is exposed to horrible

  fortures here.

  Now, we ask if the teaching that has involved this poor

  soul in such a labyrinth of horrors can be called the gospel.

  Is it the gospel--is it glad tidings in any sense of the

  words?

  In the same manner, this catechism goes on to instruct

  parents to bring up their children in the nurture and admoni-

  tion of the Lord, that they should guide, counsel, restrain and

  govern them.

  Again these teachers tell them that they should search the

  Scriptures most earnestly, diligently, and continually, at the

  same time declaring that it is not their intention to interfere

  with the laws which forbid their being taught to read. Search-

  ing the Scriptures, slaves are told, means coming to people

  who are willing to read to them. Yes; but if there be no one

  willing to do this, what then? Anyone whom this catechism has

  thus instructed is sold off to a plantation on Red River, like

  that where Northrop lived; no Bible goes with him; his Chris-

  tian instructors, in their care not to interfere with his civil con-

  dition, have deprived him of the power of reading; and in this

  land of darkness his oral instruction is but as a faded dream.

  Let any of us ask for what sum we would be deprived of all

  power of ever reading the Bible for ourselves, and made entirely

  dependent on the reading of others--especially if we were liable

  to fall into such hands as slaves are--and then let us determine

  whether a system of religious instruction, which begins by de-

  claring that it has no intention to interfere with this cruel legal

  deprivation, is the gospel!

  The poor slave, darkened, blinded, perplexed on every hand

  by the influences which the legal system has spread under his feet,

  is furthermore strictly instructed in a perfect system of morality.

  He must not even covet anything that is his master's; he must

  not murmur or be discontented; he must consider his master's

  interests as his own, and be ready to sacrifice himself to them;

  and this he must do, as he is told, not only to the good and

  gentle, but also to the froward. He must forgive all injuries,

  and do exactly right under all perplexities; thus is the obliga-

  tion on his part expounded to him, while his master's reciprocal

  obligations mean only to give him good houses, clothes, food,

  &c. &c., leaving every master to determine for himself what is

  good in relation to these matters.

  No wonder, when such a system of utter injustice is justified

  to the negro by all the awful sanctions of religion, that now and

  then a strong soul rises up against it. We have known under a

  black skin shrewd minds, unconquerable spirits, whose indignant

  sense of justice no such representations could blind.

  That Mr. Jones has met such is evident; for speaking of the

  trials of a missionary among them, he says (p. 127):

  He discovers Deism, Scepticism, Universalism. As already stated, the various

  perversions of the gospel, and all the strong objections against the truth of God

  --objections which he may perhaps have considered peculiar only to the cultivated

  minds, the ripe scholarship, and profound intelligence of critics and philosophers!

  --extremes here meet on the natural and common ground of a darkened understand-

  ing and a hardened heart.

  Again, in the Tenth Annual Report of the “Association for the

  Religious Instruction of the Negroes in Liberty County, Georgia,”

  he says:

  Allow me to relate a fact which occurred in the spring of this year, illustrative

  of the character and knowledge of the negroes at this time. I was preaching to

  a large congregation on the Epistle to Philemon; and when I insisted upon fidelity

  and obedience as Christian virtues in servants, and upon the authority of Paul con-

  demned the practice of running away, one half of my audience deliberately walked

  off with themselves, and those that remained looked anything but satisfied either

  with the preacher or his doctrine. After dismission, there was no small stir among

  them; some solemnly declared that there was no such epistle in the Bible; others,

  “that it was not the Gospel;” others, “that I preached to please masters;” others,

  “that they did not care if they never heard me preach again.”

  --Pp. 24, 25. Lundy Lane, an intelligent fugitive, who has published his

  Memoirs, says that on one occasion they (the slaves) were greatly

  delighted with a certain preacher, until he told them that God

  had ordained and created them expressly to make slaves of. He

  says that after that they all left him, and went away, because

  they thought with the Jews, “This is a hard saying; who can

  bear it?”

  In these remarks on the perversion of the gospel as presented

  to the slave, we do not mean to imply that much that is excellent

  and valuable is not taught him. We mean simply to assert that,

  in so far as the system taught justifies the slave-system, so far

  necessarily it vitiates the fundamental ideas of justice and

  morality; and so far as the obligations of the g
ospel are incul-

  cated on the slave in their purity, they bring him necessarily in

  conflict with the authority of the system. As we have said

  before, it is an attempt to harmonise light with darkness, and

  Christ with Belial. Nor is such an attempt to be justified and

  tolerated because undertaken in the most amiable spirit by

  amiable men. Our admiration of some of the labourers who

  have conducted the system is very great; so also is our admira-

  tion of many of the Jesuit missionaries who have spread the

  Roman Catholic religion among our aboriginal tribes. Devotion

  and disinterestedness could be carried no further than some of

  both these classes of men have carried them.

  But while our respect for these good men must not seduce

  us as Protestants into an admiration of the system which they

  taught, so our esteem for our Southern brethren must not lead

  us to admit that a system which fully justifies the worst kind of

  spiritual and temporal despotism can properly represent the

  gospel of him who came to preach deliverance to the captives.

  To prove that we have not misrepresented the style of in-

  struction, we will give some extracts from various sermons and

  discourses.

  In the first place, to show how explicitly religious teachers

  disclaim any intention of interfering in the legal relation (see Mr.

  Jones's work, p. 157):--

  By law or custom they are excluded from the advantages of education, and by

  consequence from the reading of the word of God; and this immense mass of

  immortal beings is thrown for religious instruction upon oral communications

  entirely. And upon whom? Upon their owners. And their owners, especially

  of late years, claim to be the exclusive guardians of their religious instruction,

  and the almoners of divine mercy towards them, thus assuming the entire respon-

  sibility of their entire Christianisation!

  All approaches to them from abroad are rigidly guarded against, and no ministers

  are allowed to break to them the bread of life, except such as have commended

  themselves to the affection and confidence of their owners. I do not condemn

  this course of self-preservation on the part of our citizens, I merely mention it to

  show their entire dependence upon ourselves.