The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

question of slavery, as they subsequently did, into Northern and

  Southern Conferences. Both Northern and Southern members

  voted for this resolution.

  After this was passed, the conscience of many Northern minis-

  ters was aroused, and they called for a reconsideration. The

  Southern members imperiously demanded that it should remain

  as a compromise and test of union. The spirit of the discussion

  may be inferred from one extract.

  Mr. Peck, of New York, who moved the reconsideration of the

  resolution, thus expressed himself:--

  That resolution (said he) was introduced under peculiar circumstances, during

  considerable excitement, and he went for it as a peace-offering to the South, with-

  out sufficiently reflecting upon the precise import of its phraseology; but, after a

  little deliberation, he was sorry; and he had been sorry but once, and that was all

  the time; he was convinced that, if that resolution remain upon the journal, it

  would be disastrous to the whole Northern church.

  Rev. Dr. A. J. Few, of Georgia, the mover of the original

  resolution, then rose. The following are extracts from his

  speech. The italics are my own:--

  Look at it! What do you declare to us, in taking this course? Why, simply, as

  much as to say, “We cannot sustain you in the condition which you cannot

  avoid!” We cannot sustain you in the necessary conditions of slaveholding;

  one of its necessary conditions being the rejection of negro testimony! If it is

  not sinful to hold slaves, under all circumstances, it is not sinful to hold them in

  the only condition, and under the only circumstances, which they can be held. The

  rejection of negro testimony is one of the necessary circumstances under which

  slaveholding can exist--indeed, it is utterly impossible for it to exist without it;

  therefore it is not sinful to hold slaves in the condition and under the circum-

  stances which they are held at the South, inasmuch as they can be held under no

  other circumstances.* * * If you believe that slaveholding is necessarily sinful,

  come out with the abolitionists, and honestly say so. If you believe that slave-

  holding is necessarily sinful, you believe we are necessarily sinners; and, if so,

  come out and honestly declare it, and let us leave you. * * * We want to

  know distinctly, precisely and honestly, the position which you take. We cannot

  be tampered with by you any longer. We have had enough of it. We are

  tired of your sickly sympathies. * * * If you are not opposed to the prin-

  ciples which it involves, unite with us, like honest men, and go home, and boldly

  meet the consequences. We say again, you are responsible for this state of things;

  for it is you who have driven us to the alarming point where we find ourselves.

  * * * You have made that resolution absolutely necessary to the quiet of the

  South! But you now revoke that resolution! And you pass the Rubicon!

  Let me not be misunderstood. I say, you pass the Rubicon! If you revoke,

  you revoke the principle which that resolution involves, and you array the

  whole South against you, and we must separate! * * * If you accord

  to the principles which it involves, arising from the necessity of the case,

  stick by it, “though the heavens perish!” But if you persist on reconsideration,

  I ask in what light will your course be regarded in the South? What will be the

  conclusion, there, in reference to it? Why, that you cannot sustain us as long as

  we hold slaves! It will declare, in the face of the sun, “We cannot sustain you,

  gentlemen, while you retain your slaves!” Your opposition to the resolution is

  based upon your opposition to slavery; you cannot, therefore, maintain your con-

  sistency unless you come out with the abolitionists, and condemn us at once and

  for ever, or else refuse to reconsider.

  The resolution was, therefore, left in force, with another reso-

  lution appended to it, expressing the undiminished regard of the

  General Conference for the coloured population.

  It is quite evident that it was undiminished, for the best

  of reasons. That the coloured population were not properly

  impressed with this last act of condescension, appears from the

  fact that “the official members of the Sharp-street and Ashby

  Coloured Methodist Church in Baltimore” protested and

  petitioned against the motion. The following is a passage from

  their address:--

  The adoption of such a resolution, by our highest ecclesiastical judicatory--a judi-

  catory composed of the most experienced and wisest brethren in the church, the

  choice selection of twenty-eight Annual Conferences--has inflicted, we fear, an

  irreparable injury upon 80,000 souls for whom Christ died--souls, who, by this

  act of your body, have been stripped of the dignity of Christians, degraded in the

  scale of humanity, and treated as criminals, for no other reason than the colour of

  their skin! Your resolution has, in our humble opinion, virtually declared that a

  mere physical peculiarity, the handiwork of our all-wise and benevolent Creator, is

  primá facie evidence of incompetency to tell the truth, or is an unerring indication

  of unworthiness to bear testimony against a fellow-being whose skin is denominated

  white: * * * Brethren, out of the abundance of the heart we have spoken. Our

  grievance is before you! If you have any regard for the salvation of the 80,000

  immortal souls committed to your care; if you would not thrust beyond the pale

  of the church twenty-five hundred souls in this city, who have felt determined

  never to leave the church that has nourished and brought them up; if you regard

  us as children of one common Father, and can, upon reflection, sympathise with us

  as members of the body of Christ--if you would not incur the fearful, the tremen-

  dous responsibility of offending not only one, but many thousands of his “little

  ones,” we conjure you to wipe from your journal the odious resolution which is

  ruining our people.

  “A Coloured Baltimorean,” writing to the editor of Zion's

  Watchman, says:--

  The address was presented to one of the secretaries, a delegate of the Baltimore

  Conference, and subsequently given by him to the bishops. How many of the

  members of the Conference saw it, I know not. One thing is certain, it was not

  read to the Conference.

  With regard to the second head--of defending the laws which

  prevent the slave from being taught to read and write--we have

  the following instance:--

  In the year 1835, the Chillicothe Presbytery, Ohio, addressed

  a Christian remonstrance to the presbytery of Mississippi on the

  subject of slavery, in which they specifically enumerated the

  respects in which they considered it to be unchristian. The

  eighth resolution was as follows:--

  That any member of our church, who shall advocate or speak in favour of such

  laws as have been or may yet be enacted, for the purpose of keeping the slaves in

  ignorance, and preventing them from learning to read the Word of God, is guilty

  of a great sin, and ought to be dealt with as for other scandalous crimes.

  This remonstrance was answered by Rev. James Smylie, stated

  clerk o
f the Mississippi Presbytery, and afterwards of the Amity

  Presbytery of Louisiana, in a pamphlet of eighty-seven pages, in

  which he defended slavery generally and particularly, in the

  same manner in which all other abuses have always been de-

  fended--by the word of God. The tenth section of this

  pamphlet is devoted to the defence of this law. He devotes

  seven pages of fine print to this object. He says (p. 63):--

  There are laws existing in both States, Mississippi and Louisiana, accompanied

  with heavy penal sanctions, prohibiting the teaching of the slaves to read, and

  meeting the approbation of the religious part of the reflecting community.

  * * * * *

  He adds, still further:

  The laws preventing the slaves from learning to read are a fruitful source of

  much ignorance and immorality among the slaves. The printing, publishing, and

  circulating of abolition and emancipatory principles in those States, was the cause

  He then goes on to say that the ignorance and vice which are

  the consequence of those laws do not properly belong to those

  who made the laws, but to those whose emancipating doctrines

  rendered them necessary. Speaking of these consequences of

  ignorance and vice, he says:--

  Upon whom must they be saddled? If you will allow me to answer the

  question, I will answer by saying, Upon such great and good men as John Wesley,

  Jonathan Edwards, Bishop Porteus, Paley, Horsley, Scott, Clark, Wilberforce,

  Sharpe, Clarkson, Fox, Johnson, Burke, and other great and good men, who, with-

  out examining the Word of God, have concluded that it is a true maxim that

  slavery is in itself sinful.

  He then illustrates the necessity of these laws by the following

  simile. He supposes that the doctrine had been promulgated

  that the authority of parents was an unjust usurpation, and that

  it was getting a general hold of society; that societies were

  being formed for the emancipation of children from the control

  of their parents; that all books were beginning to be pervaded

  by this sentiment; and that, under all these influences, children

  were becoming restless and fractious. He supposes that,

  under these circumstances, parents meet and refer the subject to

  legislators. He thus describes the dilemma of the legislators:--

  These meet, and they take the subject seriously and solemnly into consideration.

  On the one hand, they perceive that, if their children had access to these doctrines,

  they were ruined for ever. To let them have access to them was unavoidable, if they

  taught them to read. To prevent their being taught to read was cruel, and would

  prevent them from obtaining as much knowledge of the laws of Heaven as otherwise

  they might enjoy. In this sad dilemma, sitting and consulting in a legislative capa-

  city, they must, of two evils, choose the least. With indignant feelings towards

  those who, under the influence of “seducing spirits,” had sent, and were sending

  among them, “doctrines of devils,” but with aching hearts towards their children,

  they resolved that their children should not be taught to read, until the storm

  should be overblown; hoping that Satan's being let loose will be but for a little

  season. And during this season they will have to teach them orally, and thereby

  guard against their being contaminated by these wicked doctrines.

  So much for that law.

  Now, as for the internal slave-trade. The very essence of

  that trade is the buying and selling of human beings for the

  mere purposes of gain.

  A master who has slaves transmitted to him, or a master who

  buys slaves with the purpose of retaining them on his plantation

  or in his family, can be supposed to have some object in it

  besides the mere purpose of gain. He may be supposed, in

  certain cases, to have some regard to the happiness or well-being

  of the slave. The trader buys and sells for the mere purpose of

  gain.

  Concerning this abuse the Chillicothe Presbytery, in the

  document to which we have alluded, passed the following

  resolution:--

  Resolved, That the buying, selling, or holding of a slave, for the sake of gain, is a

  heinous sin and scandal, requiring the cognisance of the judicatories of the church.

  In the reply from which we have already quoted, Mr. Smylie

  says (p. 13):--

  If the buying, selling, and holding of a slave for the sake of gain, is, as you say, a

  heinous sin and scandal, then verily three-fourths of all Episcopalians, Methodists,

  Baptists, and Presbyterians, in the eleven States of the Union, are of the devil.

  * * * * * * * *

  Again:--

  To question whether slaveholders or slave-buyers are of the devil, seems to me

  like calling in question whether God is or is not a true witness; that is, provided it

  is God's testimony, and not merely the testimony of the Chillicothe Presbytery, that

  it is a “heinous sin and scandal” to buy, sell, and hold slaves.

  Again (p. 21):--

  If language can convey a clear and definite meaning at all, I know not how it

  can more plainly or unequivocally present to the mind any thought or idea, than

  the twenty-fifth chapter of Leviticus clearly and unequivocally establishes the fact

  that slavery was sanctioned by God himself, and that buying, selling, holding, and

  bequeathing slaves, as property, are regulations which are established by himself.

  * * * * * *

  What language can more explicitly show, not that God winked at slavery merely,

  but that, to say the least, he gave a written permit to the Hebrews, then the best

  people in the world, to buy, hold, and bequeath, men and women, to perpetual ser-

  vitude? What, now, becomes of the position of the Chillicothe Presbytery?

  * * * Is it, indeed, a fact that God once gave a written permission to his

  own dear people [“ye shall buy”] to do that which is in itself sinful? Nay, to do

  that which the Chillicothe Presbytery says “is a heinous sin and scandal?”

  * * * * * *

  God resolves that his own children may, or rather “shall,” “buy, possess, and

  hold,” bond-men and bond-women, in bondage, for ever. But the Chillicothe

  Presbytery resolves that “buying, selling, or holding slaves, for the sake of gain,

  is a heinous sin and scandal.”

  We do not mean to say that Mr. Smylie had the internal

  slave-trade directly in his mind in writing these sentences; but

  we do say that no slave-trader would ask for a more explict

  justification of his trade than this.

  Lastly, in regard to that dissolution of the marriage relation,

  which is the necessary consequence of this kind of trade, the

  following decisions have been made by judicatories of the

  church.

  The Savannah River (Baptist) Association, in 1835, in reply

  to the question--

  Whether, in a case of involuntary separation of such a character as to pre-

  clude all prospect of future intercourse, the parties ought to be allowed to

  marry again?

  answered, That such a separation, among persons situated as our slaves are, is civilly a

  separation by death, and they believe that, in the sight of God, it would be so


  viewed. To forbid second marriages, in such cases, would be to expose the

  parties, not only to stronger hardships and strong temptation, but to church cen-

  sure, for acting in obedience to their masters, who cannot be expected to ac-

  quiesce in a regulation at variance with justice to the slaves, and to the spirit of

  that command which regulates marriage among Christians. The slaves are not

  free agents, and a dissolution by death is not more entirely without their consent,

  and beyond their control, than by such separation.

  At the Shiloh Baptist Association, which met at Gourdvine,

  a few years since, the following query, says the “Religious

  Herald,” was presented from Hedgman church, viz.:

  Is a servant, whose husband or wife has been sold by his or her master, into

  a distant country, to be permitted to marry again?

  The query was referred to a committee, who made the fol-

  lowing report; which, after discussion, was adopted:

  That, in view of the circumstances in which servants in this country are placed,

  the committee are unanimous in the opinion that it is better to permit servants

  thns circumstanced to take another husband or wife.

  The Reverend Charles C. Jones, who was an earnest and

  indefatigable labourer for the good of the slave, and one who, it

  would be supposed, would be likely to feel strongly on this

  subject, if any one would, simply remarks, in estimating the

  moral condition of the negroes, that, as husband and wife are

  subject to all the vicissitudes of property, and may be separated

  by division of estate, debts, sales, or removals, &c., &c., the

  marriage relation naturally loses much of its sacredness; and

  says:

  It is a contract of convenience, profit or pleasure, that may be entered into and

  dissolved at the will of the parties, and that without heinous sin, or injury to the

  property interests of any one.

  In this sentence he is expressing, as we suppose, the common idea of slaves and masters of the nature of this institution, and

  not his own. We infer this from the fact that he endeavours in

  his catechism to impress on the slave the sacredness and