The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  name's sake hast laboured and hast not fainted. Neverthe-

  less, I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy

  first love.”

  There are in this class of people, activity, zeal, unflinching con-

  scientiousness, clear intellectual discriminations between truth

  and error, and great logical and doctrinal correctness; but there

  is a want of that spirit of love, without which, in the eye of

  Christ, the most perfect character is as deficient as a wax flower

  --wanting in life and perfume.

  Yet this blessed principle is not dead in their hearts, but

  only sleepeth; and so great is the real and genuine goodness,

  that when the true magnet of divine love is applied, they always

  answer to its touch.

  So when the gentle Eva, who is an impersonation in childish

  form of the love of Christ, solves at once, by a blessed instinct,

  the problem which Ophelia has long been unable to solve by

  dint of utmost hammering and vehement effort, she at once,

  with a good and honest heart, perceives and acknowledges her

  mistake, and is willing to learn even of a little child.

  Miss Ophelia, again, represents one great sin, of which, un-

  consciously, American Christians have allowed themselves to be

  guilty. Unconsciously it must be, for nowhere is conscience so

  predominant as among this class, and nowhere is there a more

  honest strife to bring every thought into captivity to the obedience

  of Christ.

  One of the first and most declared objects of the gospel has

  been to break down all those irrational barriers and prejudices

  which separate the human brotherhood into diverse and con-

  tending clans. Paul says, “In Christ Jesus there is neither Jew

  nor Greek, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free.” The Jews at

  that time were separated from the Gentiles by an insuperable

  wall of prejudice. They could not eat and drink together, nor

  pray together. But the apostles most earnestly laboured to

  show them the sin of this prejudice. St. Paul says to the

  Ephesians, speaking of this former division, “He is our peace,

  who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall

  of partition between us.

  It is very easy to see that, although slavery has been abolished

  in the New England States, it has left behind it the most bane-

  ful feature of the system--that which makes American worse

  than Roman slavery--the prejudice of caste and colour. In the

  New England States the negro has been treated as belonging to

  an inferior race of beings; forced to sit apart by himself in the

  place of worship; his children excluded from the schools; himself

  excluded from the railroad-car and the omnibus, and the peculi-

  arities of his race made the subject of bitter contempt and ridicule.

  This course of conduct has been justified by saying that they

  are a degraded race. But how came they degraded? Take any

  class of men, and shut them from the means of education, deprive

  them of hope and self-respect, close to them all avenues of

  honourable ambition, and you will make just such a race of them

  as the negroes have been among us.

  So singular and so melancholy is the dominion of prejudice

  over the human mind, that professors of Christianity in our New

  England States have often, with very serious self-denial to them-

  selves, sent the gospel to heathen as dark-complexioned as the

  Africans, when in their very neighbourhood were persons of dark

  complexion, who, on that account, were forbidden to send their

  children to the schools and discouraged from entering the

  churches. The effect of this has been directly to degrade and

  depress the race; and then this very degradation and depression

  has been pleaded as the reason for continuing this course.

  Not long since the writer called upon a benevolent lady, and

  during the course of the call the conversation turned upon the

  incidents of a fire which had occurred the night before in the

  neighbourhood. A deserted house had been burned to the

  ground. The lady said it was supposed it had been set on fire.

  “What could be any one's motive for setting it on fire?” said

  the writer.

  “Well,” replied the lady, “it was supposed that a coloured

  family was about to move into it, and it was thought that the

  neighbourhood wouldn't consent to that. So it was supposed

  that was the reason.”

  This was said with an air of innocence and much unconcern.

  The writer inquired, “Was it a family of bad character?”

  “No, not particularly, that I know of,” said the lady; “but

  then they are negroes, you know.”

  Now, this lady is a very pious lady. She probably would deny

  herself to send the gospel to the heathen; and if she had ever

  thought of considering this family a heathen family, would have

  felt the deepest interest in their welfare, because on the subject

  of duty to the heathen she had been frequently instructed from

  the pulpit, and had all her religious and conscientious sensibilities

  awake. Probably she had never listened from the pulpit to a

  sermon which should exhibit the great truth, that “in Christ

  Jesus there is neither Jew nor Greek, barbarian, Scythian, bond

  nor free.”

  Supposing our Lord was now on earth, as he was once, what

  course is it probable that he would pursue with regard to this

  unchristian prejudice of colour?

  There was a class of men in those days as much despised by

  the Jews as the negroes are by us; and it was a complaint made

  of Christ that he was a friend of publicans and sinners. And if

  Christ should enter, on some communion season, into a place of

  worship, and see the coloured man sitting afar off by himself,

  would it not be just in his spirit to go there and sit with him,

  rather than to take the seats of his richer and more prosperous

  brethren?

  It is, however, but just to our Northern Christians to say that

  this sin has been committed ignorantly and in unbelief, and that

  within a few years signs of a much better spirit have begun to

  manifest themselves. In some places, recently, the doors of

  school-houses have been thrown open to the children, and many

  a good Miss Ophelia has opened her eyes in astonishment to find

  that, while she has been devouring the Missionary Herald, and

  going without butter on her bread and sugar in her tea to send

  the gospel to the Sandwich Islands, there is a very thriving

  colony of heathen in her own neighbourhood at home; and, true

  to her own good and honest heart, she has resolved not to give

  up her prayers and efforts for the heathen abroad, but to add

  thereunto labours for the heathen at home.

  Our safety and hope in this matter is this: that there are

  multitudes in all our churches who do most truly and sincerely

  love Christ above all things, and who, just so soon as a little re-

  flection shall have made them sensible of their duty in this

  respect, will most earnestly perform it.

  It is true that, if they do so, they may
be called Abolitionists;

  but the true Miss Ophelia is not afraid of a hard name in a good

  cause, and has rather learned to consider “the reproach of Christ

  a greater treasure than the riches of Egypt.”

  That there is much already for Christians to do in enlightening

  the moral sense of the community on this subject, will appear if

  we consider that even so well-educated and gentlemanly a man

  as Frederick Douglass was recently obliged to pass the night on

  the deck of a steamer, when in delicate health, because this

  senseless prejudice deprived him of a place in the cabin; and

  that that very laborious and useful minister, Dr. Pennington, of

  New York, has, during the last season, been often obliged

  seriously to endanger his health, by walking to his pastoral

  labours, over his very extended parish, under a burning sun,

  because he could not be allowed the common privilege of the

  omnibus, which conveys every class of white men, from the most

  refined to the lowest and most disgusting.

  Let us consider now the number of professors of the religion

  of Christ in New York; and consider also that, by the very fact

  of their profession, they consider Dr. Pennington the brother of

  their Lord, and a member with them of the body of Christ.

  Now, these Christians are influential, rich and powerful; they

  can control public sentiment on any subject that they think of

  any particular importance; and they profess, by their religion,

  that “if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it.”

  It is a serious question, whether such a marked indignity

  offered to Christ and his ministry, in the person of a coloured

  brother, without any remonstrance on their parts, will not lead

  to a general feeling that all that the Bible says about the union of

  Christians is a mere hollow sound, and means nothing.

  Those who are anxious to do something directly to improve

  the condition of the slave can do it in no way so directly as by

  elevating the condition of the free coloured people around them,

  and taking every pains to give them equal rights and privileges.

  This unchristian prejudice has doubtless stood in the way

  of the emancipation of hundreds of slaves. The slaveholder,

  feeling and acknowledging the evils of slavery, has come to the

  North, and seen evidences of this unkindly and unchristian

  state of feeling towards the slave, and has thus reflected within

  himself:--

  “If I keep my slave at the South, he is, it is true, under the

  dominion of a very severe law; but then he enjoys the advan-

  tage of my friendship and assistance, and derives, through

  his connexion with me and my family, some kind of a position

  in the community. As my servant, he is allowed a seat in the

  car, and a place at the table. But if I emancipate and send

  him North, he will encounter substantially all the disadvantages

  of slavery, with no master to protect him.”

  This mode of reasoning has proved an apology to many a

  man for keeping his slaves in a position which he confesses to

  be a bad one; and it will be at once perceived that, should the

  position of the negro be conspicuously reversed in our Northern

  States, the effect upon the emancipation of the slave would be

  very great. They, then, who keep up this prejudice may be

  said to be, in a certain sense, slaveholders.

  It is not meant by this that all distinctions of society should

  be broken over, and that people should be obliged to choose

  their intimate associates from a class unifitted by education and

  habits to sympathise with them.

  The negro should not be lifted out of his sphere of life

  because he is a negro; but he should be treated with Christian

  courtesy in his sphere. In the railroad-car, in the omnibus and

  steam-boat, all ranks and degrees of white persons move with

  unquestioned freedom side by side; and Christianity requires

  that the negro have the same privilege.

  That the dirtiest and most uneducated foreigner or American,

  with breath redolent of whisky, and clothes foul and disordered,

  should have an unquestioned right to take a seat next to any

  person in a railroad-car or steam-boat, and that the respectable,

  decent, and gentlemanly negro, should be excluded simply

  because he is a negro, cannot be considered otherwise than as an

  irrational and unchristian thing; and any Christian who allows

  such things done in his presence without remonstrance and the

  use of his Christian influence, will certainly be made deeply

  sensible of his error when he comes at last to direct and per-

  sonal interview with his Lord.

  There is no hope for this matter if the love of Christ is

  not strong enough, and if it cannot be said, with regard to the

  two races, “He is our peace who hath made both one, and hath

  broken down the middle wall of partition between us.”

  The time is coming rapidly when the upper classes in society

  must learn that their education, wealth, and refinement, are not

  their own; that they have no right to use them for their own

  selfish benefit; but that they should hold them rather, as Fenelon

  expresses it, as “a ministry,” a stewardship, which they hold in

  trust for the benefit of their poorer brethren.

  In some of the very highest circles in England and America,

  we begin to see illustrious examples of the commencement of

  such a condition of things.

  One of the merchant princes of Boston, whose funeral has

  lately been celebrated in our city, afforded in his life a beautiful

  example of this truth. His wealth was the wealth of thousands.

  He was the steward of the widow and the orphan. His funds

  were a savings' bank, wherein were laid up the resources of the

  poor; and the mourners at his funeral were the scholars of the

  schools which he had founded, the officers of literary institutions

  which his munificence had endowed, the widows and orphans

  whom he had counselled and supported, and the men, in all

  ranks and conditions of life, who had been made by his benevo-

  lence to feel that his wealth was their wealth. May God raise

  up many men in Boston to enter into the spirit and labours of

  Amos Lawrence!

  This is the true socialism, which comes from the spirit of

  Christ, and, without breaking down existing orders of society,

  by love makes the property and possessions of the higher class

  the property of the lower.

  Men are always seeking to begin their reforms with the out-

  ward and physical. Christ begins his reforms in the heart.

  Men would break up all ranks of society, and throw all property

  into a common stock; but Christ would inspire the higher

  class with that Divine Spirit by which all the wealth, and means,

  and advantages of their position are used for the good of the

  lower.

  We see, also, in the highest aristocracy of England instances

  of the same tendency.

  Among her oldest nobility there begin to arise lecturers to

  mechanics and patrons of ragged-schools; and it is
said that

  even on the throne of England is a woman who weekly instructs

  her class of Sunday-school scholars from the children in the

  vicinity of her country residence.

  In this way, and not by an outward and physical division of

  property, shall all things be had in common. And when the

  white race shall regard their superiority over the coloured one

  only as a talent intrusted for the advantage of their weaker

  brother, then will the prejudice of caste melt away in the light

  of Christianity.

  CHAPTER VIII.

  MARIE ST. CLARE.

  Marie St. Clare is the type of a class of women not pecu-

  liar to any latitude, nor any condition of society. She may

  be found in England or in America. In the northern free States

  we have many Marie St. Clares, more or less fully developed.

  When found in a northern latitude, she is for ever in trouble

  about her domestic relations. Her servants never do anything

  right. Strange to tell, they are not perfect, and she thinks it a

  very great shame. She is fully convinced that she ought to

  have every moral and Christian virtue in her kitchen for a little

  less than the ordinary wages; and when her cook leaves her,

  because she finds she can get better wages and less work in a

  neighbouring family, she thinks it shockingly selfish, unprinci-

  pled conduct. She is of opinion that servants ought to be per-

  fectly disinterested; that they ought to be willing to take up

  with the worst rooms in the house, with very moderate wages,

  and very indifferent food, when they can get much better else-

  where, purely for the sake of pleasing her. She likes to get

  hold of foreign servants, who have not yet learned our ways,

  who are used to working for low wages, and who will be satis-

  fied with almost anything; but she is often heard to lament that

  they soon get spoiled, and want as many privileges as anybody

  else--which is perfectly shocking. Marie often wishes that she

  could be a slaveholder, or could live somewhere where the lower

  class are kept down, and made to know their place. She is

  always hunting for cheap seamstresses, and will tell you, in an

  under-tone, that she has discovered a woman who will make

  linen shirts beautifully, stitch the collars and wristbands twice,

  all for thirty-seven cents, when many seamstresses get a dollar

  for it; says she does it because she's poor, and has no friends;