The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  many Legrees? Nay, take the purest district of New England,

  and let people cast about in their memory and see if there have

  not been men there, hard, coarse, unfeeling, brutal, who, if they

  had possessed the absolute power of Legree, would have used it

  in the same way; and that there should be Legrees in the

  Southern States, is only saying that human nature is the same

  there that it is everywhere. The only difference is this--

  that in free States Legree is chained and restrained by law; in

  the slave States, the law makes him an absolute, irresponsible

  despot.

  It is a shocking task to confirm by fact this part of the

  writer's story. One may well approach it in fear and trembling.

  It is so mournful to think that man, made in the image of God,

  and by his human birth a brother of Jesus Christ, can sink so

  low, can do such things as the very soul shudders to contem-

  plate--and to think that the very man who thus sinks is our

  brother--is capable, like us, of the renewal by the Spirit of

  grace, by which he might be created in the image of Christ

  and be made equal unto the angels. They who uphold the laws

  which grant this awful power, have another heavy responsibility,

  of which they little dream. How many souls of masters have

  been ruined through it! How has this absolute authority pro-

  voked and developed wickedness which otherwise might have

  been suppressed! How many have stumbled into everlasting

  perdition over this stumbling-stone of IRRESPONSIBLE

  POWER!

  What facts do the judicial trials of slave-holding States

  occasionally develope! What horrible records defile the pages

  of the law-book, describing unheard-of scenes of torture and

  agony, perpetrated in this nineteenth century of the Christian

  era, by the irresponsible despot who owns the body and soul!

  Let any one read, if they can, the ninety-third page of Weld's

  Slavery as It is, where the Rev. Mr. Dickey gives an account of

  a trial in Kentucky for a deed of butchery and blood too re-

  pulsive to humanity to be here described. The culprit was

  convicted, and sentenced to death. Mr. Dickey's account of

  the finale is thus:--

  The Court sat--Isham was judged to be guilty of a capital crime in the affair

  of George. He was to be hanged at Salem. The day was set. My good old

  father visited him in the prison--two or three times talked and prayed with him;

  I visited him once myself. We fondly hoped that he was a sincere penitent.

  Before the day of execution came, by some means, I never knew what, Isham was

  missing. About two years after, we learned that he had gone down to Natchez,

  and had married a lady of some refinement and piety. I saw her letters to his

  sisters, who were worthy members of the church of which I was pastor. The

  last letter told of his death. He was in Jackson's army, and fell in the famous

  battle of New Orleans.

  I am, sir, your friend,

  Wm. Dickey.

  But the reader will have too much reason to know of the

  possibility of the existence of such men as Legree, when he

  comes to read the records of the trials and judicial decisions in

  Part II.

  Let not the Southern country be taunted as the only country

  in the world which produces such men; let us in sorrow and

  in humility concede that such men are found everywhere; but

  let not the Southern country deny the awful charge that she

  invests such men with absolute, irresponsible power over both

  the body and the soul.

  With regard to that atrocious system of working up the

  human being in a given time on which Legree is represented

  as conducting his plantation, there is unfortunately too much

  reason to know that it has been practised and is still practised.

  In Mr. Weld's book, Slavery as It is, under the head of

  Labour, p. 39, are given several extracts from various docu-

  ments, to show that this system has been pursued on some

  plantations to such an extent as to shorten life, and to prevent

  the increase of the slave population, so that, unless annually

  renewed, it would of itself die out. Of these documents we

  quote the following:--

  The Agricultural Society of Baton Rouge, La., in its report published in 1829,

  furnishes a laboured estimate of the amount of expenditure necessarily incurred

  in conducting “a well-regulated sugar estate.” In this estimate, the annual net

  loss of slaves, over and above the supply by propagation, is set down at TWO AND

  A HALF PER CENT.! The late Hon. Josiah S. Johnson, a member of Congress

  from Louisiana, addressed a letter to the Secretary of the United States Trea-

  sury in 1830, containing a similar estimate, apparently made with great care, and

  going into minute details. Many items in this estimate differ from the preceding;

  but the estimate of the annual decrease of the slaves on a plantation was the

  same--TWO AND A HALF PER CENT.!

  In September, 1834, the writer of this had an interview with James G. Birney,

  Esq., who then resided at Kentucky, having removed with his family from Ala-

  bama the year before. A few hours before that interview, and on the morning

  of the same day, Mr. B. had spent a couple of hours with Hon. Henry Clay, at

  his residence, near Lexington. Mr. Birney remarked that Mr. Clay had just told

  him he had lately been led to mistrust certain estimates as to the increase of the

  slave population in the far South-west--estimates which he had presented, I

  think, in a speech before the Colonization Society. He now believed that the

  births among the slaves in that quarter were not equal to the deaths; and that, of

  course, the slave population, independent of immigration from the slave-selling

  States, was not sustaining itself.

  Among other facts stated by Mr. Clay was the following, which we copy ver-

  batim from the original memorandum made at the time by Mr. Birney, with which

  he has kindly furnished us.

  “Sept. 16, 1834.--Hon. H. Clay, in a conversation at his own house on the

  subject of slavery, informed me that Hon. Outerbridge Horsey--formerly a sena-

  tor in Congress from the State of Delaware, and the owner of a sugar plantation

  in Louisiana--declared to him that his overseer worked his hands so closely that

  one of the women brought forth a child whilst engaged in the labours of the field.

  “Also that, a few years since, he was at a brick-yard in the environs of New

  Orleans, in which a hundred hands were employed; among them were from twenty to

  thirty young women, in the prime of life. He was told by the proprietor that

  there had not been a child born among them for the last two or three years, although

  they all had husbands.”

  The late Mr. Samuel Blackwell, a highly respectable citizen of Jersey City,

  opposite the city of New York, and a member of the Presbyterian church, visited

  many of the sugar plantations in Louisiana a few years since; and having, for

  many years, been the owner of an extensive sugar refinery in England, and sub-

  sequently in this country, he had not only every facility afforded him by the

  planters for personal i
nspection of all parts of the process of sugar-making, but

  received from them the most unreserved communications as to their management of

  their slaves. Mr. B--, after his return, frequently made the following statement

  to gentlemen of his acquaintance:--“That the planters generally declared to him

  that they were obliged so to overwork their slaves, during the sugar-making season

  (from eight to ten weeks), as to use them up in seven or eight years. For, said

  they, after the process is commenced, it must be pushed, without cessation, night

  and day; and we cannot afford to keep a sufficient number of slaves to do the

  extra work at the time of sugar-making, as we could not profitably employ them

  the rest of the year.”

  Dr. Demming, a gentleman of high respectability, residing in Ashland, Richland

  County, Ohio, stated to Professor Wright, of New York city--“That, during a

  recent tour at the South, while ascending the Ohio river on the steam-boat

  `Fame,' he had an opportunity of conversing with a Mr. Dickinson, a resident of

  Pittsburg, in company with a number of cotton-planters and slave-dealers from

  Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi. Mr. Dickinson stated as a fact, that the

  sugar-planters upon the sugar-coast in Louisiana had ascertained that, as it was

  usually necessary to employ about twice the amount of labour during the boiling

  season that was required during the season of raising, they could, by excessive

  driving, day and night, during the boiling season, accomplish the whole labour

  with one set of hands. By pursuing this plan, they could afford to sacrifice a set of

  hands once in seven years! He further stated that this horrible system was now

  practised to a considerable extent! The correctness of this statement was sub-

  stantially admitted by the slave-holders then on board.”

  The following testimony of the Rev. Dr. Channing, of Boston, who resided

  some time in Virginia, shows that the over-working of slaves, to such an extent

  as to abridge life, and cause a decrease of population, is not confined to the far

  South and South-west:--

  “I heard of an estate managed by an individual who was considered as singu-

  larly successful, and who was able to govern the slaves without the use of the

  whip. I was anxious to see him, and trusted that some discovery had been made

  favourable to humanity. I asked him how he was able to dispense with corporal

  punishment. He replied to me, with a very determined look, `The slaves know

  that the work must be done, and that it is better to do it without punishment

  than with it.' In other words, the certainty and dread of chastisement were so

  impressed on them that they never incurred it.

  “I then found that the slaves on this well-managed estate decreased in number.

  I asked the cause. He replied, with perfect frankness and ease, `The gang is not

  large enough for the estate.' In other words, they were not equal to the work of

  the plantation, and yet were made to do it, though with the certainty of abridging

  life.

  “On this plantation the huts were uncommonly convenient. There was an

  unusual air of neatness. A superficial observer would have called the slaves,

  happy. Yet they were living under a severe, subduing discipline, and were

  over-worked to a degree that shortened life.”

  -- A friend of the writer--the Rev. Mr. Barrows, now officiating

  as teacher of Hebrew in Andover Theological Seminary--stated

  as following, in conversation with her:--That, while at New

  Orleans, some time since, he was invited by a planter to visit

  his estate, as he considered it to be a model one. He found

  good dwellings for the slaves, abundant provision distributed to

  them, all cruel punishments superseded by rational and reason-

  able ones, and half a day, every week, allowed to the negroes to

  cultivate their own grounds. Provision was also made for their

  moral and religious instruction. Mr. Barrows then asked the

  planter,

  “Do you consider your estate a fair specimen?” The gentle-

  man replied, “There are two systems pursued among us. One

  is, to make all we can out of a negro in a few years, and then

  supply his place with another; and the other is, to treat him as

  I do. My neighbour on the next plantation pursues the oppo-

  site system. His boys are hard worked and scantily fed; and I

  have had them come to me, and get down on their knees to beg

  me to buy them.”

  Mr. Barrows says he subsequently passed by this plantation,

  and that the woe-struck, dejected aspect of its labourers fully

  confirmed the account. He also says that the gentleman who

  managed so benevolently told him, “I do not make much money

  out of my slaves.”

  It will be easy to show that such is the nature of slavery, and

  the temptations of masters, that such well-regulated plantations

  are, and must be, infinitely in the minority, and exceptional cases.

  The Rev. Charles C. Jones, a man of the finest feelings of

  humanity, and for many years an assiduous labourer for the

  benefit of the slave, himself the owner of a plantation, and

  qualified, therefore, to judge, both by experience and observation,

  says, after speaking of the great improvidence of the negroes,

  engendered by slavery:--

  And, indeed, once for all, I will here say that the wastes of the system are so

  great, as well as the fluctuation in prices of the staple articles for market, that it is

  difficult, nay, impossible, to indulge in large expenditures on plantations, and make

  them savingly profitable.

  -- If even the religious and benevolent master feels the difficulty

  of uniting any great consideration for the comfort of the slave

  with prudence and economy, how readily must the moral question

  be solved by minds of the coarse style of thought which we have

  supposed in Legree!

  “I used to, when I fust begun, have considerable trouble fussin' with 'em, and

  trying to make 'em hold out--doctorin' on 'em up when they's sick, and givin' on

  'em clothes, and blankets, and what not, trying to keep 'em all sort o' decent and

  comfortable. Law, 't want no sort o' use; I lost money on 'em, and 't was heaps

  o' trouble. Now, you see, I just put'm straight through, sick or well. When

  one nigger's dead, I buy another; and I find it comes cheaper and easier every

  way.”

  Added to this, the peculiar mode of labour on the sugar

  plantation is such that the master, at a certain season of the year,

  must over-work his slaves, unless he is willing to incur great

  pecuniary loss. In that very gracefully written apology for

  slavery, Professor Ingraham's “Travels in the South-west,” the

  following description of sugar-making is given. We quote from

  him in preference to anyone else, because he speaks as an apolo-

  gist, and describes the thing with the grace of a Mr. Skimpole.

  When the grinding has once commenced, there is no cessation of labour till it is

  completed. From beginning to end a busy and cheerful scene continues. The

  negroes,

  “--Whose sore task Does not divide the Sunday from the week,”

  work from eighteen to twenty hours, />
  “And make the night joint labourer with the day;”

  though, to lighten the burden as much as possible, the gang is divided into two

  watches, one taking the first and the other the last part of the night; and, not-

  withstanding this continued labour, the negroes improve in appearance, and appear

  fat and flourishing. They drink freely of cane-juice, and the sickly among them

  revive, and become robust and healthy.

  After the grinding is finished, the negroes have several holidays, when they are

  quite at liberty to dance and frolic as much as they please; and the cane-song--

  which is improvised by one of the gang, the rest all joining in a prolonged and

  unintelligible chorus--now breaks, night and day, upon the ear, in notes “most

  musical, most melancholy.”

  The above is inserted as a specimen of the facility with which

  the most horrible facts may be told in the genteelest phrase. In

  a work entitled “Travels in Louisiana in 1802” is the following

  extract (see Weld's Slavery as It is, p. 134), from which it

  appears that this cheerful process of labouring night and day

  lasts three months!

  “At the rolling of sugars, an interval of from two to three

  months, they (the slaves in Louisiana) work both night and day.

  Abridged of their sleep, they scarcely retire to rest during the

  whole period.”--P. 81.

  Now, let any one learn the private history of seven hundred

  blacks--men and women--compelled to work day and night

  under the lash of a driver, for a period of three months!

  Possibly, if the gentleman who wrote the account were em-

  ployed, with his wife and family, in this “cheerful scene” of

  labour--if he saw the woman that he loved, the daughter who

  was dear to him as his own soul, forced on in the general gang,

  in this toil which

  “Does not divide the Sabbath from the week,

  And makes the night joint labourer with the day,'

  --possibly, if he saw all this, he might have another opinion of

  its cheerfulness; and it might be an eminently salutary thing if

  every apologist for slavery were to enjoy some such privilege for

  a season, particularly as Mr. Ingraham is careful to tell us that

  its effect upon the general health is so excellent that the negroes