The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  a free citizen of Boston, where he can find an abundance of

  vouchers for his character.

  I belonged to the Rev. Adam Runkin, a Presbyterian minister in Lexington,

  Kentucky.

  My mother was of mixed blood--white and Indian. She married my father

  when he was working in a bagging factory near by. After a while my father's

  owner moved off and took my father with him, which broke up the marriage. She

  was a very handsome woman. My master kept a large dairy, and she was the

  milk-woman. Lexington was a small town in those days, and the dairy was in

  the town. Back of the college was the masonic lodge. A man who belonged to

  the lodge saw my mother when she was about her work. He made proposals of

  a base nature to her. When she would have nothing to say to him, he told her

  that she need not be so independent, for if money could buy her, he wonld have

  her. My mother told old mistress, and begged that master might not sell her.

  But he did sell her. My mother had a high spirit, being part Indian. She

  would not consent to live with this man, as he wished; and he sent her to prison,

  and had her flogged, and punished her in various ways, so that at last she began

  to have crazy turns. When I read in “Uncle Tom's Cabin” about Cassy, it put me

  in mind of my mother, and I wanted to tell Mrs. S--about her. She tried to

  kill herself several times, once with a knife and once by hanging. She had long,

  straight black hair, but after this it all turned white, like an old person's. When

  she had her raving turns, she always talked about her children. The jailer told

  the owner that if he would let her go to her children, perhaps she would get quiet.

  They let her out one time, and she came to the place where we were. I might have

  been seven or eight years old--don't know my age exactly. I was not at home when

  she came. I came in and found her in one of the cabins near the kitchen. She

  sprung and caught my arms, and seemed going to break them, and then said, “I'll

  fix you so they'll never get you!” I screamed, for I thought she was going to

  kill me; they came in and took me away. They tied her, and carried her off.

  Sometimes, when she was in her right mind, she used to tell me what things they

  had done to her. At last her owner sold her, for a small sum, to a man named

  Lackey. While with him she had another husband and several children. After a

  while this husband either died or was sold, I do not remember which. The man

  then sold her to another person, named Bryant. My own father's owner now

  came and lived in the neighbourhood of this man, and brought my mother with

  him. He had had another wife and family of children where he had been living.

  He and my mother came together again, and finished their days together. My

  mother almost recovered her mind in her last days.

  I never saw anything in Kentucky which made me suppose that ministers or

  professors of religion considered it any more wrong to separate the families of

  slaves by sale than to separate any domestic animals.

  There may be ministers and professors of religion who think it is wrong, but I

  never met with them. My master was a minister, and yet he sold my mother, as I

  have related.

  When he was going to leave Kentucky for Pennsylvania, he sold all my brothers

  and sisters at auction. I stood by and saw them sold. When I was just going up

  on to the block, he swapped me off for a pair of carriage-horses. I looked at

  those horses with strange feelings. I had indulged hopes that master would take

  me into Pennsylvania with him, and I should get free. How I looked at those

  horses, and walked round them, and thought for them I was sold!

  It was commonly reported that my master had said in the pulpit that there was

  no more harm in separating a family of slaves than a litter of pigs. I did not hear

  him say it, and so cannot say whether this is true or not.

  It may seem strange, but it is a fact. I had more sympathy and kind advice, in

  my efforts to get my freedom, from gamblers and such sort of men, than Christians.

  Some of the gamblers were very kind to me.

  I never knew a slave-trader that did not seem to think, in his heart, that the

  trade was a bad one. I knew a great many of them, such as Neal, McAnn, Cobb,

  Stone, Pulliam, and Davis, &c. They were like Haley--they meant to repent when

  they got through.

  Intelligent coloured people in my circle of acquaintance, as a general thing, felt

  no security whatever for their family ties. Some, it is true, who belonged to rich

  families, felt some security; but those of us who looked deeper, and knew how

  many were not rich that seemed so, and saw how fast money slipped away,

  were always miserable. The trader was all around, the slave-pen at hand, and we

  did not know what time any of us might be in it. Then there were the rice-swamps,

  and the sugar and cotton plantations; we had had them held before us as terrors,

  by our masters and mistresses, all our lives. We knew about them all; and when

  a friend was carried off, why, it was the same as death, for we could not write or

  hear, and never expected to see them again.

  I have one child who is buried in Kentucky, and that grave is pleasant to think

  of. I've got another that is sold nobody knows where, and that I never can bear

  to think of.

  Lewis Hayden. The next history is a long one, and part of it transpired in a

  most public manner, in the face of our whole community.

  The history includes in it the whole account of that memo-

  rable capture of the Pearl, which produced such a sensation in

  Washington in the year 1848. The author, however, will

  preface it with a short history of a slave-woman who had six

  children embarked in that ill-fated enterprise.

  * Right smart of--that is, a great many of--an idiom of Anglo-Ethiopia.

  CHAPTER VI.

  Milly Edmondson is an aged woman, now upwards of

  seventy. She has received the slave's inheritance of entire

  ignorance. She cannot read a letter of a book, nor write her

  own name; but the writer must say that she was never so im-

  pressed with any representation of the Christian religion as that

  which was made to her in the language and appearance of this

  woman during the few interviews that she had with her. The

  circumstances of the interviews will be detailed at length in the

  course of the story.

  Milly is above the middle height, of a large, full figure.

  She dresses with the greatest attention to neatness. A plain

  Methodist cap shades her face, and the plain white Methodist

  handkerchief is folded across the bosom. A well-preserved

  stuff gown, and clean white apron, with a white pocket-hand-

  kerchief pinned to her side, completes the inventory of the

  costume in which the writer usually saw her. She is a mulatto,

  and must once have been a very handsome one. Her eyes and

  smile are still uncommonly beautiful, but there are deep-wrought

  lines of patient sorrow and weary endurance on her face, which

  tell that this lovely and noble-hearted woman has been all her

  life a slave.

  Milly Edmondson was kept by her owners and allowed to live

  with her hus
band, with the express understanding and agree-

  ment that her service and value was to consist in bringing up

  her own children to be sold in the slave-market. Her legal

  owner was a maiden lady of feeble capacity, who was set aside

  by the decision of Court as incompetent to manage her affairs.

  The estate--that is to say, Milly Edmondson and her children

  --was placed in the care of a guardian. It appears that Milly's

  poor, infirm mistress was fond of her, and that Milly exercised

  over her much of that ascendancy which a strong mind holds

  over a weak one. Milly's husband, Paul Edmondson, was a

  free man. A little of her history, as she related it to the writer,

  will now be given in her own words:

  “Her mistress,” she said, “was always kind to her, `poor

  thing!' but then she hadn't speret ever to speak for herself, and

  her friends wouldn't let her have her own way. It always laid

  on my mind,” she said, “that I was a slave. When I wan't

  more than fourteen years old, Missis was doing some work one

  day that she thought she couldn't trust me with, and she says to

  me, `Milly, now you see it's I that am the slave, and not you.'

  I says to her, `Ah, Missis, I am a poor slave for all that.' I's

  sorry afterwards I said it, for I thought it seemed to hurt her

  feelings.

  “Well, after a while, when I got engaged to Paul, I loved

  Paul very much; but I thought it wan't right to bring children

  into the world to be slaves, and I told our folks that I was never

  going to marry, though I did love Paul. But that wan't to be

  allowed,” she said, with a mysterious air.

  “What do you mean?” said I.

  “Well, they told me I must marry, or I should be turned out

  of the church--so it was,” she added, with a significant nod.

  “Well, Paul and me, we was married, and we was happy

  enough, if it hadn't been for that; but when our first child was

  born, I says to him, `There 'tis, now, Paul, our troubles is

  begun; this child isn't ours. And every child I had, it grew

  worse and worse. `Oh, Paul,' says I, `what a thing it is to

  have children that isn't ours!' Paul he says to me, `Milly, my

  dear, if they be God's children, it an't so much matter whether

  they be ours or no; they may be heirs of the kingdom, Milly,

  for all that.' Well, when Paul's mistress died, she set him free,

  and he got him a little place out about fourteen miles from

  Washington; and they let me live out there with him, and take

  home my tasks; for they had that confidence in me that they

  always know'd that what I said I'd do was as good done as if

  they'd seen it done. I had mostly sewing; sometimes a shirt

  to make in a day--it was coarse like, you know--or a pair of

  sheets, or some such; but, whatever 'twas, I always got it done.

  Then I had all my house-work and babies to take care of; and

  many's the time, after ten o'clock, I've took my children's clothes

  and washed 'em all out and ironed 'em late in the night, 'cause

  I couldn't never bear to see my children dirty--always wanted

  to see 'em sweet and clean, and I brought 'em up and taught

  'em the very best ways I was able. But nobody knows what I

  suffered. I never see a white man come on to the place that I

  didn't think, `There, now, he's coming to look at my children;'

  and when I saw any white man going by, I've called in my chil-

  dren and hid 'em, for fear he'd see 'em and want to buy 'em.

  Oh, ma'am, mine's been a long sorrow, a long sorrow! I've

  borne this heavy cross a great many years!”

  “But,” said I, “the Lord has been with you.”

  She answered, with very strong emphasis, “Ma'am, if the

  Lord hadn't held me up, I shouldn't have been alive this day.

  Oh, sometimes my heart's been so heavy, it seemed as if I must die; and then I've been to the throne of grace, and when I'd

  poured out all my sorrows there, I came away light, and felt

  that I could live a little longer!”

  This language is exactly her own. She had often a forcible

  and peculiarly beautiful manner of expressing herself, which

  impressed what she said strongly.

  Paul and Milly Edmondson were both devout communicants

  in the Methodist Episcopal Church at Washington, and the

  testimony to their blamelessness of life and the consistence of

  their piety is unanimous from all who know them. In their

  simple cottage, made respectable by neatness and order, and

  hallowed by morning and evening prayer, they trained up their

  children, to the best of their poor ability, in the nurture and

  admonition of the Lord, to be sold in the slave-market. They

  thought themselves only too happy, as one after another arrived

  at the age when they were to be sold, that they were hired to

  families in their vicinity, and not thrown into the trader's pen

  to be drafted for the dreaded Southern market!

  The mother, feeling with a constant but repressed anguish

  the weary burden of slavery which lay upon her, was accus-

  tomed, as she told the writer, thus to warn her daughters:--

  “Now, girls, don't you never come to the sorrows that I have.

  Don't you never marry till you get your liberty. Don't you

  marry to be mothers to children that an't your own.”

  As a result of this education, some of her older daughters, in

  connexion with the young men to whom they were engaged,

  raised the sum necessary to pay for their freedom before they

  were married. One of these young women, at the time that she

  paid for her freedom, was in such feeble health that the physician

  told her that she could not live many months, and advised her

  to keep the money, and apply it to making herself as comfortable

  as she could.

  She answered, “If I had only two hours to live, I would

  pay down that money to die free.”

  If this was setting an extravagant value on liberty, it is not

  for an American to say so.

  All the sons and daughters of this family were distinguished

  both for their physical and mental developments, and therefore

  were priced exceedingly high in the market. The whole family,

  rated by the market prices which have been paid for certain

  members of it, might be estimated as an estate of 15,000 dollars.

  They were distinguished for intelligence, honesty, and faithful-

  ness, but, above all, for the most devoted attachment to each

  other. These children, thus intelligent, were all held as slaves

  in the city of Washington, the very capital where our national

  government is conducted. Of course, the high estimate which

  their own mother taught them to place upon liberty was in the

  way of being constantly strengthened and reinforced by such

  addresses, celebrations, and speeches, on the subject of liberty,

  as every one knows are constantly being made, on one occasion

  or another, in our national capital.

  On the 13th day of April, the little schooner “Pearl,” com-

  manded by Daniel Drayton, came to anchor in the Potomac

  River, at Washington.

  The news had just arrived of a revolution in Franc
e, and

  the establishment of a democratic Government, and all Wash-

  ington was turning out to celebrate the triumph of Liberty.

  The trees in the avenue were fancifully hung with many-

  coloured lanterns--drums beat, bands of music played, the

  houses of the President and other high officials were illumi-

  nated, and men, women, and children were all turned out to

  see the procession, and to join in the shouts of liberty that rent

  the air. Of course, all the slaves of the city, lively, fanciful,

  and sympathetic, most excitable as they are by music and by

  dazzling spectacles, were everywhere listening, seeing, and re-

  joicing, in ignorant joy. All the heads of departments, senators,

  representatives, and dignitaries of all kinds, marched in pro-

  cession to an open space on Pennsylvania Avenue, and there

  delivered congratulatory addresses on the progress of universal

  freedom. With unheard-of imprudence, the most earnest de-

  fenders of slave-holding institutions poured down on the

  listening crowd both of black and white, bond and free, the

  most inflammatory and incendiary sentiments. Such, for

  example, as the following language of Hon. Frederick P.

  Stanton, of Tennessee:--

  We do not, indeed, propagate our principles with the sword of power; but there

  is one sense in which we are propagandists. We cannot help being so. Our

  example is contagious. In the section of this great country where I live, on the

  banks of the mighty Mississippi river, we have the true emblem of the tree of

  liberty. There you may see the giant cotton-wood spreading his branches widely

  to the winds of heaven. Sometimes the current lays bare his roots, and you behold

  them extending far around, and penetrating to an immense depth in the soil.

  When the season of maturity comes, the air is filled with a cotton-like substance,

  which floats in every direction, bearing on its light wings the living seeds of the

  mighty tree. Thus the seeds of freedom have emanated from the tree of our

  liberties; they fill the air; they are wafted to every part of the habitable globe;

  and even in the barren sands of tyranny they are destined to take root. The tree

  of liberty will spring up everywhere, and nations shall recline in its shade.