The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  ingly--

  Stroud's Sketch, 148. Haywood's Manual, 525, 526, 529, 537.

  The sheriff is directed, five days before the time for the sale

  of the emancipated negro, to give notice, in writing, to the per-

  son by whom the emancipation was made, to the end--

  and with the hope that, smitten by remorse of conscience, and

  brought to a sense of his guilt before God and man-- such person may, if he thinks proper, renew his claim to the negro so eman-

  cipated by him; on failure to do which, the sale is to be made by the sheriff, and

  one-fifth part of the net proceeds is to become the property of the freeholder by

  whom the apprehension was made, and the remaining four-fifths are to be paid

  into the public treasury.

  It is proper to add that we have given examples of the laws

  Stroud, pp. 148-154.

  of States whose legislation on this subject has been

  most severe. The laws of Virginia, Maryland,

  Missouri, Kentucky, and Louisiana, are much less stringent.

  A Striking case, which shows how inexorably the law contends

  with the kind designs of the master, is on record in the reports

  of legal decisions in the State of Mississippi. The circum-

  stances of the case have been thus briefly stated in the New

  York Evening Post, edited by Mr. William Cullen Bryant.

  They are a romance of themselves.

  A man of the name of Elisha Brazealle, a planter in Jefferson County, Missis-

  sippi, was attacked with a loathsome disease. During his illness he was faith-

  fully nursed by a mulatto slave, to whose assiduous attentions he felt that he owed

  his life. He was duly impressed by her devotion, and soon after his recovery

  took her to Ohio, and had her educated. She was very intelligent, and improved

  her advantages so rapidly that when he visited her again he determined to marry

  her. He executed a deed for her emancipation, and had it recorded both in the

  States of Ohio and Mississippi, and made her his wife.

  Mr. Brazealle returned with her to Mississippi, and in process of time had a son.

  After a few years he sickened and died, leaving a will, in which, after reciting the

  deed of emancipation, he declared his intention to ratify it, and devised all his pro-

  perty to this lad, acknowledging him in the will to be such.

  Some poor and distant relations in North Carolina, whom he did not know, and

  for whom he did not care, hearing of his death, came on to Mississippi, and

  claimed the property thus devised. They instituted a suit for its recovery, and the

  case (it is reported in Howard's Mississippi Reports, vol. ii.,.p. 837) came before

  Judge Sharkey, our new consul at Havana. He decided it, and in that decision

  declared the act of emancipation an offence against morality, and pernicious and

  detestable as an example. He set aside the will; gave the property of Brazealle

  to his distant relations, condemned Brazealle's son, and his wife, that son's mother,

  again to bondage, and made them the slaves of these North Carolina kinsmen, as

  part of the assets of the estate.

  Chief Justice Sharkey, after narrating the circumstances of

  the case, declares the validity of the deed of emancipation to be

  the main question in the controversy. He then argues that,

  although according to principles of national comity “contracts

  are to be construed according to the laws of the country or

  State where they are made,” yet these principles are not to be

  followed when they lead to conclusions in conflict with “the

  great and fundamental policy of the State.” What this “great

  and fundamental policy” is, in Mississippi, may be gathered

  from the remainder of the decision, which we give in full.

  Let us apply these principles to the deed of emancipation. To give it validity

  would be, in the first place, a violation of the declared policy, and contrary to a

  positive law of the State.

  The policy of a State is indicated by the general course of legislation on a given

  subject; and we find that free negroes are deemed offensive, because they are not

  permitted to emigrate to or remain in the State. They are allowed few privileges,

  and subject to heavy penalties for offences. They are required to leave the State

  within thirty days after notice, and in the meantime give security for good

  behaviour; and those of them who can lawfully remain must register and carry

  with them their certificates, or they may be committed to jail. It would also

  violate a positive law, passed by the legislature, expressly to maintain this settled

  policy, and to prevent emancipation. No owner can emancipate his slave, but

  by deed or will properly attested, or acknowledged in Court, and proof to the

  legislature that such slave has performed some meritorious act for the benefit of

  the master, or some distinguished service for the State; and the deed or will can

  have no validity until ratified by special act of legislature. It is believed that

  this law and policy are too essentially important to the interests of our citizens to

  permit them to be evaded.

  The state of the case shows conclusively that the contract had its origin in

  an offence against morality, pernicious and detestable as an example. But, above

  all, it seems to have been planned and executed with a fixed design to evade the

  rigour of the laws of the State. The acts of the party in going to Ohio with the

  slaves, and there executing the deed, and his immediate return with them to this

  State, point with unerring certainty to his purpose and object. The laws of this

  State cannot be thus defrauded of their operation by one of our own citizens. If

  we could have any doubts about the principle, the case reported in 1 Randolph,

  15, would remove them.

  As we think the validity of the deed must depend upon the laws of this State,

  it becomes unnecessary to inquire whether it could have any force by the laws of

  Ohio. If it were even valid there, it can have no force here. The consequence

  is, that the negroes, John Monroe and his mother, are still slaves, and a part of

  the estate of Elisha Brazealle. They have not acquired a right to their freedom

  under the will; for, even if the clause in the will were sufficient for that purpose,

  their emancipation has not been consummated by an act of the legislature.

  John Monroe, being a slave, cannot take the property as devisee; and I appre-

  hend it is equally clear that it cannot be held in trust for him. 4 Desans. Rep.

  266. Independent of the principles laid down in adjudicated cases, our statute

  law prohibits slaves from owning certain kinds of property; and it may be

  inferred that the legislature supposed they were extending the act as far as it

  could be necessary to exclude them from owning any property, as the prohibition

  includes that kind of property which they would most likely be permitted to own

  without interruption, to wit, hogs, horses, cattle, &c. They cannot be prohibited

  from holding such property in consequence of its being of a dangerous or offen-

  sive character, but because it was deemed impolitic for them to hold property of

  any description. It follows, therefore, that his heirs are entitled to the property.

  As the deed was void, and the devisee could not take u
nder the will, the heirs

  might, perhaps, have had a remedy at law; but, as an account must be taken for

  the rents and profits, and for the final settlement of the estate, I see no good

  reason why they should be sent back to law. The remedy is, doubtless,

  more full and complete than it could be at law. The decree of the Chancellor

  overruling the demurrer must be affirmed, and the cause remanded for further

  proceedings.

  The Chief Justice Sharkey who pronounced this decision is

  stated by the Evening Post to have been a principal agent in the

  passage of the severe law under which this horrible inhumanity

  was perpetrated.

  Nothing more forcibly shows the absolute despotism of the

  slave-law over all the kindest feelings and intentions of the master,

  and the determination of courts to carry these severities to their

  full length, than this cruel deed, which precipitated a young

  man who had been educated to consider himself free, and his

  mother, an educated woman, back into the bottomless abyss of

  slavery. Had this case been chosen for the theme of a novel, or a

  tragedy, the world would have cried out upon it as a plot of

  monstrous improbability. As it stands in the law-book, it is

  only a specimen of that awful kind of truth, stranger than

  fiction, which is all the time evolving, in one form or another,

  from the workings of this anomalous system.

  This view of the subject is a very important one, and ought

  to be earnestly and gravely pondered by those in foreign

  countries, who are too apt to fasten their condemnation and

  opprobrium rather on the person of the slave-holder than on

  the horrors of the legal system. In some slave States it

  seems as if there was very little that the benevolent owner

  could do which should permanently benefit his slave, unless

  he should seek to alter the laws. Here it is that the highest

  obligation of the Southern Christian lies. Nor will the world

  or God hold them guiltless who, with the elective franchise in

  their hands, and the full power to speak, write, and discuss,

  suffer this monstrous system of legalised cruelty to go on

  from age to age.

  * In and after the reign of Augustus, certain restrictive regulations were passed,

  designed to prevent an increase of unworthy citizens by emancipation. They had,

  however, nothing like the stringent force of American laws.

  * I. e., Porigua.

  CHAPTER XIV.

  THE HEBREW SLAVE-LAW COMPARED WITH THE AMERICAN

  SLAVE-LAW.

  Having compared the American law with the Roman, we

  will now compare it with one other code of slave-laws, to wit,

  the Hebrew.

  This comparison is the more important, because American

  slavery has been defended on the ground of God's permitting

  Hebrew slavery.

  The inquiry now arises, What kind of slavery was it that

  was permitted among the Hebrews? for in different nations

  very different systems have been called by the general name of

  slavery.

  That the patriarchal state of servitude which existed in the

  time of Abraham was a very different thing from American

  slavery, a few graphic incidents in the Scripture narrative

  show; for we read that when the angels came to visit Abraham,

  although he had three hundred servants born in his house, it

  is said that Abraham hasted, and took a calf, and killed it,

  and gave it to a young man to dress; and that he told Sarah to take three measures of meal and knead it into cakes; and

  that when all was done, he himself set it before his guests.

  From various other incidents which appear in the patri-

  archal narrative, it would seem that these servants bore more

  the relation of the members of a Scotch clan to their feudal

  lord than that of an American slave to his master; thus it

  seems that if Abraham had died without children his head

  servant would have been his heir.--Gen. xv. 3.

  Of what species, then, was the slavery which God permitted

  among the Hebrews? By what laws was it regulated?

  In the New Testament the whole Hebrew system of adminis-

  tration is spoken of as a relatively imperfect one, and as super-

  seded by the Christian dispensation.--Heb. viii. 13.

  We are taught thus to regard the Hebrew system as an

  educational system, by which a debased, half-civilised race,

  which had been degraded by slavery in its worst form among the

  Egyptians, was gradually elevated to refinement and humanity.

  As they went from the land of Egypt, it would appear that

  the most disgusting personal habits, the most unheard-of and

  unnatural impurities, prevailed among them; so that it was

  necessary to make laws with relations to things of which Chris-

  tianity has banished the very name from the earth.

  Beside all this, polygamy, war, and slavery, were the universal

  custom of nations.

  It is represented in the New Testament that God, in educating

  this people, proceeded in the same gradual manner in which a

  wise father would proceed with a family of children.

  He selected a few of the most vital points of evil practice, and

  forbade them by positive statute, under rigorous penalties.

  The worship of any other god was, by the Jewish law, con-

  stituted high treason, and rigorously punished with death.

  As the knowledge of the true God and religious instruction

  could not then, as now, be afforded by printing and books, one

  day in the week had to be set apart for preserving in the minds

  of the people a sense of His being, and their obligations to Him.

  The devoting of this day to any other purpose was also punished

  with death; and the reason is obvious, that its sacredness was

  the principal means relied on for preserving the allegiance of

  the nation to their king and God, and its desecration, of course,

  led directly to high treason against the head of the State.

  With regard to many other practices which prevailed among

  the Jews, as among other heathen nations, we find the Divine

  Being taking the same course which wise human legislators have

  taken.

  When Lycurgus wished to banish money and its attendant

  luxuries from Sparta, he did not forbid it by direct statute-law,

  but he instituted a currency so clumsy and uncomfortable that,

  as we are informed by Rollin, it took a cart and pair of oxen

  to carry home the price of a very moderate estate.

  In the same manner the Divine Being surrounded the customs

  of polygamy, war, blood-revenge, and slavery, with regulations

  which gradually and certainly tended to abolish them entirely.

  No one would pretend that the laws which God established in

  relation to polygamy, cities of refuge, &c., have any application

  to Christian nations now.

  The following summary of some of these laws of the Mosaic

  code is given by Dr. C. E. Stowe, Professor of Biblical Literature

  in Andover Theological Seminary:--

  1. It commanded a Hebrew, even though a married man, with wife and children

  living, to take the childless widow of a deceased brother, and beget ch
ildren with

  her.--Deut. xxv. 5-10.

  2. The Hebrews, under certain restrictions, were allowed to make concubines,

  or wives for a limited time, of women taken in war.--Deut. xxi. 10-19.

  3. A Hebrew who already had a wife was allowed to take another also, provided

  he still continued his intercourse with the first as her husband, and treated her

  kindly and affectionately.--Exodus xxi. 9-11.

  4. By the Mosaic law, the nearest relative of a murdered Hebrew could pursue

  and slay the murderer, unless he could escape to the city of refuge; and the same

  permission was given in case of accidental homicide.--Num. xxxv. 9-39.

  5. The Israelites were commanded to exterminate the Canaanites, men, women,

  and children.--Deut. ix. 12; xx. 16-18.

  Any one, or all, of the above practices, can be justified by the Mosaic Iaw, as

  well as the practice of slaveholding.Each of these laws, although in its time it was an ameliorating law, designed

  to take the place of some barbarous abuse, and to be a connecting link by which

  some higher state of society might be introduced, belongs confessedly to that

  system which St. Paul says made nothing perfect. They are a part of the com-

  mandment which he says was annulled for the weakness and unprofitableness

  thereof, and which, in the time which he wrote, was waxing old, and ready to vanish

  away. And Christ himself says, with regard to certain permissions of this system,

  that they were given on account of the “hardness of their hearts”--because the

  attempt to enforce a more stringent system at that time, owing to human depravity,

  would have only produced greater abuses.

  The following view of the Hebrew laws of slavery is compiled

  from Barnes' work on slavery, and from Professor Stowe's manu-

  script lectures.

  The legislation commenced by making the great and common

  source of slavery--kidnapping--a capital crime.

  The enactment is as follows: “He that stealeth a man and

  selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put

  to death.”--Exodus xxi. 16.

  The sources from which slaves were to be obtained were thus