The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  It was pressed upon me by every object within sight or hearing, animate or

  inanimate. The silver trump of freedom had roused my soul to eternal wake-

  fulness. Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more for ever. It was heard in

  every sound and seen in every thing. It was ever present to torment me with a

  sense of my wretched condition. I saw nothing without seeing it, I heard nothing

  without hearing it, and felt nothing without feeling it. It looked from every star,

  it smiled in every calm, breathed in every wind, and moved in every storm.

  I often found myself regretting my own existence, and wishing myself dead;

  and but for the hope of being free, I have no doubt but that I should have killed

  myself, or done something for which I should have been killed. While in this

  state of mind I was eager to hear any one speak of slavery. I was a ready

  listener. Every little while I could hear something about the abolitionists. It

  was some time before I found what the word meant. It was always used in such

  connexions as to make it an interesting word to me. If a slave ran away and

  succeeded in getting clear, or if a slave killed his master, set fire to a barn, or did

  anything very wrong in the mind of a slave-holder, it was spoken of as the fruit

  of abolition. Hearing the word in this connexion very often, I set about learning

  what it meant. The dictionary afforded me little or no help. I found it was

  “the act of abolishing;” but then I did not know what was to be abolished.

  Here I was perplexed. I did not care to ask anyone about its meaning, for I was

  satisfied that it was something they wanted me to know very little about. After

  a patient waiting, I got one of our city papers, containing an account of the

  number of petitions from the North praying for the abolition of slavery in the

  District of Columbia, and of the slave-trade between the States. From this time

  I understood the words abolition and abolitionist, and always drew near when that

  word was spoken, expecting to hear something of importance to myself and fellow-

  slaves. The light broke in upon me by degrees. I went one day down on the

  wharf of Mr. Waters, and seeing two Irishmen unloading a scow of stone, I went,

  unasked, and helped them. When we had finished, one of them came to me and

  asked me if I was a slave. I told him that I was. He asked, “Are ye a slave

  for life?” I told him that I was. The good Irishman seemed to be deeply

  affected by the statement. He said to the other that it was a pity so fine a little

  fellow as myself should be a slave for life. He said it was a shame to hold me.

  They both advised me to run away to the North; that I should find friends there,

  and that I should be free. I pretended not to be interested in what they said,

  and treated them as if I did not understand them; for I feared they might be

  treacherous. White men have been known to encourage slaves to escape, and

  then, to get the reward, catch them and return them to their masters. I was

  afraid that these seemingly good men might use me so; but I nevertheless

  remembered their advice, and from that time I resolved to run away. I looked

  forward to a time at which it would be safe for me to escape. I was too young to

  think of doing so immediately; besides, I wished to learn how to write, as I might

  have occasion to write my own pass. I consoled myself with the hope that I

  should one day find a good chance. Meanwhile I would learn to write.

  The idea as to how I might learn to write was suggested to me by being in

  Durgin and Bailey's ship-yard, and frequently seeing the ship-carpenters, after

  hewing and getting a piece of timber ready for use, write on the timber the name

  of that part of the ship for which it was intended. When a piece of timber was

  intended for the larboard-side it would be marked thus--“L.” When a piece for

  the starboard-side it would be marked thus--“S.” A piece for the larboard-side

  forward would be marked thus--“L. F.” When a piece was for starboard-side

  forward it would be marked thus--“S. F.” For larboard-aft it would be marked

  thus--“L. A.” For starboard-aft it would be marked thus--“S. A.” I soon

  learned the names of these letters, and for what they were intended when placed

  upon a piece of timber in the ship-yard. I immediately commenced copying

  them, and in a short time was able to make the four letters named. After that,

  when I met with any boy who I knew could write, I would tell him I could

  write as well as he. The next word would be, “I don't believe you. Let me

  see you try it.” I would then make the letters which I had been so fortunate as

  to learn, and ask him to beat that. In this way I got a good many lessons in

  writing, which it was quite possible I should never have gotten in any other way.

  During this time my copy-book was the board fence, brick wall, and pavement;

  my pen and ink was a lump of chalk. With this I learned mainly how to write.

  I then commenced and continued copying the Italics in Webster's Spelling-Book,

  until I could make them all without looking on the book. By this time my little

  master Thomas had gone to school and learned how to write, and had written

  over a number of copy-books. These had been brought home, and shown to some

  of our neighbours, and then laid aside. My mistress used to go to class-meeting

  at the Wilk-street meeting-house every Monday afternoon, and leave me to take

  care of the house. When left thus I used to spend the time in writing in the

  spaces left in Master Thomas's copying-book, copying what he had written. I

  continued to do this until I could write a hand very similar to that of Master

  Thomas. Thus, after a long, tedious effort for years, I finally succeeded in learn-

  ing how to write.

  These few quoted incidents will show that the case of George

  Harris is by no means so uncommon as might be supposed.

  Let the reader peruse the account which George Harris gives

  of the sale of his mother and her children, and then read the

  following account given by the venerable Josiah Henson, now

  pastor of the missionary settlement at Dawn, in Canada.

  After the death of his master, he says, the slaves of the

  plantation were all put up at auction, and sold to the highest

  bidder.

  My brothers and sisters were bid off one by one, while my mother, holding

  my hand, looked on in an agony of grief, the cause of which I but ill understood

  at first, but which dawned on my mind with dreadful clearness as the sale proceeded.

  My mother was then separated from me and put up in her turn. She was bought

  by a man named Isaac R., residing in Montgomery County [Maryland], and then

  I was offered to the assembled purchasers. My mother, half distracted with the

  parting for ever from all her children, pushed through the crowd, while the

  bidding for me was going on, to the spot where R. was standing. She fell at his

  feet, and clung to his knees, entreating him, in tones that a mother only could

  command, to buy her baby as well as herself, and spare to her one of her little

  ones at least. Will it, can it be believed, that this man, thus appealed to, was

  capable, not merely of turning a deaf ear to her supplication, but of disengaging

  hi
mself from her with such violent blows and kicks as to reduce her to the neces-

  sity of creeping out of his reach, and mingling the groan of bodily suffering with

  the sob of a breaking heart?

  Now all these incidents that have been given are real incidents of slavery, related by those who know slavery by the

  best of all tests--experience; and they are given by men who

  have earned a good character in freedom, which makes their

  word as good as the word of any man living.

  The case of Lewis Clark might be called a harder one than

  common. The case of Douglass is probably a very fair average

  specimen.

  The writer had conversed, in her time, with a very con-

  siderable number of liberated slaves, many of whom stated that

  their own individual lot had been comparatively a mild one;

  but she never talked with one who did not let fall, first or last,

  some incident which he had observed, some scene which he had

  witnessed, which went to show some most horrible abuse of

  the system; and what was most affecting about it, the narrator

  often evidently considered it so much a matter of course as to

  mention it incidentally, without any particular emotion.

  It is supposed by many that the great outcry among those

  who are opposed to slavery comes from a morbid reading

  of unauthenticated accounts got up in abolition papers, &c.

  This idea is a very mistaken one. The accounts which tell

  against the slave-system are derived from the continual living

  testimony of the poor slave himself; often from that of the

  fugitives from slavery who are continually passing through our

  Northern cities.

  As a specimen of some of the incidents, thus developed, is

  given the following fact of recent occurrence, related to the

  author by a lady in Boston. This lady, who was much in the

  habit of visiting the poor, was sent for, a month or two since,

  to see a mulatto woman, who had just arrived at a coloured

  boarding-house near by, and who appeared to be in much

  dejection of mind. A little conversation showed her to be a

  fugitive. Her history was as follows: She, with her brother,

  were, as is often the case, both the children and slaves of

  their master. At his death, they were left to his legitimate

  daughter as her servants, and treated with as much con-

  sideration as very common kind of people might be expected to

  show those who were entirely and in every respect at their

  disposal.

  The wife of her brother ran away to Canada; and as there

  was some talk of selling her and her child, in consequence of

  some embarrassment in the family affairs, her brother, a fine-

  spirited young man, determined to effect her escape, also, to a

  land of liberty. He concealed her for some time in the back

  part of an obscure dwelling in the city, till he could find an

  opportunity to send her off. While she was in this retreat, he

  was indefatigable in his attentions to her, frequently bringing

  her fruit and flowers, and doing everything he could to beguile

  the weariness of her imprisonment.

  At length, the steward of a vessel, whom he had obliged,

  offered to conceal him on board the ship, and give him a chance

  to escape. The noble-hearted fellow, though tempted by an

  offer which would enable him immediately to join his wife, to

  whom he was tenderly attached, preferred to give this offer to

  his sister, and during the absence of the captain of the vessel

  she and her child were brought on board and secreted.

  The captain, when he returned and discovered what had been

  done, was very angry, as the thing, if detected, would have in-

  volved him in very serious difficulties. He declared at first,

  that he would send the woman up into town to jail; but, by

  her entreaties and those of the steward, was induced to wait till

  evening, and send word to her brother to come and take her

  back. After dark the brother came on board, and, instead of

  taking his sister away, began to appeal to the humanity of the

  captain in the most moving terms. He told his sister's history

  and his own, and pleaded eloquently his desire for her liberty.

  The captain had determined to be obdurate, but, alas! he was

  only a man. Perhaps he had himself a wife and child--perhaps

  he felt that, were he in the young man's case, he would do just

  so for his sister. Be it as it may, he was at last overcome. He

  said to the young man, “I must send you away from my ship;

  I'll put off a boat and see you get into it, and you must row off,

  and never let me see your faces again; and if, after all, you

  should come back and get on board, it will be your fault and not

  mine.”

  So, in the rain and darkness, the young man and his sister

  and child were lowered over the side of the vessel, and rowed

  away. After a while the ship weighed anchor, but before she

  reached Boston it was discovered that the woman and child were

  on board.

  The lady to whom this story was related, was requested to

  write a letter, in certain terms, to a person in the city whence

  the fugitive had come, to let the brother know of her safe

  arrival.

  The fugitive was furnished with work, by which she could

  support herself and child, and the lady carefully attended to her

  wants for a few weeks.

  One morning she came in, with a good deal of agitation, ex-

  claiming, “O ma'am, he's come! George is come!” And in

  a few minutes the young man was introduced.

  The lady who gave this relation belongs to the first circles of

  Boston society; she says that she never was more impressed by

  the personal manners of any gentleman than by those of this

  fugitive brother. So much did he have the air of a perfect,

  finished gentleman, that she felt she could not question him with

  regard to his escape with the familiarity with which persons of

  his condition are commonly approached; and it was not till he

  requested her to write a letter for him, because he could not write

  himself, that she could realize that this fine specimen of manhood

  had been all his life a slave.

  The remainder of the history is no less romantic. The lady

  had a friend in Montreal, whither George's wife had gone; and,

  after furnishing money to pay their expenses, she presented them

  with a letter to this gentleman, requesting the latter to assist the

  young man in finding his wife. When they landed at Montreal,

  George stepped on shore and presented this letter to the first

  man he met, asking him if he knew to whom it was directed.

  The gentleman proved to be the very person to whom the letter

  was addressed. He knew George's wife, brought him to her

  without delay, so that, by return mail, the lady had the satisfac-

  tion of learning the happy termination of the adventure.

  This is but a specimen of histories which are continually

  transpiring; so that those who speak of slavery can say, “We

  speak that which we do know, and testify that we have seen.”

  But we shall be told the slaves are all a lying rac
e, and that

  these are lies which they tell us. There are some things, how-

  ever, about these slaves, which cannot lie. Those deep lines of

  patient sorrow upon the face; that attitude of crouching and

  humble subjection; that sad, habitual expression of hope de-

  ferred in the eye, would tell their story if the slave never spoke.

  It is not long since the writer has seen faces such as might

  haunt one's dreams for weeks.

  Suppose a poor, worn-out mother, sickly, feeble, and old--

  her hands worn to the bone with hard, unpaid toil, whose nine

  children have been sold to the slave trader, and whose tenth soon

  is to be sold, unless by her labour as a washerwoman she can

  raise nine hundred dollars! Such are the kind of cases con-

  stantly coming to one's knowledge, such are the witnesses which

  will not let us sleep.

  Doubt has been expressed whether such a thing as an adver-

  tisement for a man “dead or alive,” like the advertisement for

  George Harris, was ever published in the Southern States. The

  scene of the story in which that occurs is supposed to be laid a

  few years back, at the time when the black laws of Ohio were

  passed. That at this time such advertisements were common in

  the newspapers, there is abundant evidence. That they are less

  common now, is a matter of hope and gratulation.

  In the year 1839, Mr. Theodore D. Weld made a systematic

  attempt to collect and arrange the statistics of slavery. A mass

  of facts and statistics was gathered, which was authenticated with

  the most unquestionable accuracy. Some of the “one thousand”

  witnesses, whom he brings upon the stand, were ministers, law-

  yers, merchants, and men of various other callings, who were

  either natives of the slave States, or had been residents there for

  many years of their life. Many of these were slaveholders.

  Others of the witnesses were, or had been, slave-drivers, or

  officers of coasting-vessles engaged in the slave-trade.

  Another part of his evidence was gathered from public speeches

  in Congress, in the State legislatures, and elsewhere. But the

  majority of it was taken from recent newspapers.

  The papers from which these facts were copied were preserved

  and put on file in a public place, where they remained for some

  years for the information of the curious. After Mr. Weld's