The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  statute by any State would be a practical abolition of slavery in

  that State.

  But it is said that St. Paul sent Onesimus back to his master.

  Indeed! but how? When, to our eternal shame and disgrace,

  the horrors of the Fugitive Slave Law were being enacted in

  Boston, and the very Cradle of Liberty resounded with the

  groans of the slave, and men harder-hearted than Saul of Tarsus

  made havoc of the Church, entering into every house, haling men

  and women, committing them to prison; when whole Churches

  of humble Christians were broken up and scattered like flocks

  of trembling sheep; when husbands and fathers were torn from

  their families, and mothers, with poor, helpless children, fled at

  midnight, with bleeding feet, through snow and ice, towards

  Canada; in the midst of these scenes, which have made America

  a by-word, and a hissing, and an astonishment among all nations,

  there were found men, Christian men, ministers of the gospel of

  Jesus, even--alas that this should ever be written!--who,

  standing in the pulpit, in the name, and by the authority of

  Christ, justified and sanctioned these enormities, and used this

  most loving and simple-hearted letter of the martyr Paul to

  justify these unheard-of atrocities!

  He who said, “Who is weak and I am not weak? Who is

  offended and I burn not?”--he who called the converted slave

  his own body, the son begotten in his bonds, and who sent him

  to the brother of his soul with the direction, “Receive him as

  myself, not now as a slave, but above a slave, a brother beloved”

  --this beautiful letter, this outgush of tenderness and love

  passing the love of a woman, was held up to be pawed over by

  the polluted hobgoblin fingers of slave-dealers and slave-whip-

  pers as their lettre de cachet, signed and sealed in the name

  of Christ and his apostles, giving full authority to carry back

  slaves to be tortured and whipped, and sold in perpetual

  bondage, as were Henry Long and Thomas Sims! Just as

  well might a mother's letter, when, with prayers and tears, she

  commits her first and only child to the cherishing love and

  sympathy of some trusted friend, be used as an inquisitor's war-

  rant for inflicting imprisonment and torture upon that child.

  Had not every fragment of the apostle's body long since moul-

  dered to dust, his very bones would have moved in their grave,

  in protest against such slander on the Christian name and faith.

  And is it to come to this, O Jesus Christ! have such things

  been done in thy name, and art thou silent yet? Verily, thou

  art a God that bidest thyself O God of Israel the Saviour!

  CHAPTER V.

  But why did not the apostles preach against the legal

  relation of slavery, and seek its overthrow in the State? This

  question is often argued as if the apostles were in the same con-

  dition with the clergy of Southern churches, members of repub-

  lican institutions, law-makers, and possessed of all republican

  powers to agitate for the repeal of unjust laws.

  Contrary to all this, a little reading of the New Testament

  will show us that the apostles were almost in the condition of

  outlaws, under a severe and despotic government, whose spirit

  and laws they reprobated as unchristian, and to which they

  submitted, just as they exhorted the slave to submit, as to a

  necessary evil.

  Hear the apostle Paul thus enumerating the political privileges

  incident to the ministry of Christ. Some false teachers had

  risen in the Church at Corinth, and controverted his teachings,

  asserting that they had greater pretensions to authority in the

  Christian ministry than he. St. Paul, defending his apostolic

  position, thus speaks: “Are they ministers of Christ? (I speak

  as a fool,) I am more; in labours more abundant, in stripes

  above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft. Of the

  Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I

  beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck,

  a night and a day have I been in the deep; in journeyings

  often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine

  own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city,

  in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among

  false brethren; in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often,

  in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness.”

  What enumeration of the hardships of an American slave can

  more than equal the hardships of the great apostle to the Gen-

  tiles? He had nothing to do with laws except to suffer their

  penalties. They were made and kept in operation without

  asking him, and the slave did not suffer any more from them

  than he did.

  It would appear that the clergymen of the South, when they

  imitate the example of Paul, in letting entirely alone the civil

  relation of the slave, have left wholly out of their account how

  different is the position of an American clergyman, in a republi-

  can government, where he himself helps to make and sustain the

  laws, from the condition of the apostles, under a heathen

  despotism, with whose laws he could have nothing to do.

  It is very proper for an outlawed slave to address to other

  outlawed slaves exhortations to submit to a government which

  neither he nor they have any power to alter.

  We read, in sermons which clergymen at the South have

  addressed to slaves, exhortations to submission, and patience,

  and humility, in their enslaved condition, which would be ex-

  ceedingly proper in the mouth of an apostle, where he and the

  slaves were alike fellow-sufferers under a despotism whose laws

  they could not alter, but which assume quite another character

  when addressed to the slave by the very men who make the laws

  that enslave them.

  If a man has been waylaid and robbed of all his property, it

  would be very becoming and proper for his clergyman to endea-

  vour to reconcile him to his condition, as, in some sense, a dis-

  pensation of Providence; but if the man who robs him should

  come to him, and address to him the same exhortations, he cer-

  tainly will think that that is quite another phase of the matter.

  A clergyman of high rank in the Church, in a sermon to the

  negroes, thus addresses them:--

  Almighty God hath been pleased to make you slaves here, and to give you

  nothing but labour and poverty in this world, which you are obliged to submit to,

  as it is his will that it should be so. And think within yourselves what a terrible

  thing it would be, after all your labours and sufferings in this life, to be turned into

  hell in the next life; and after wearing out your bodies in service here, to go into

  a far worse slavery when this is over, and your poor souls be delivered over into

  the possession of the devil, to become his slaves for ever in hell, without any hope

  of ever getting free from it. If, therefore, you would be God's freemen in heaven,

  you must strive to be good and serve him here on earth. Your bodies
, you know,

  are not your own; they are at the disposal of those you belong to; but your

  precious souls are still your own, which nothing can take from you if it be not your

  own fault. Consider well, then, that if you lose your souls by leading idle wicked

  lives here, you have got nothing by it in this world, and you have lost your all in

  the next; for your idleness and wickedness is generally found out, and your

  bodies suffer for it here; and, what is far worse, if you do not repent and amend,

  your unhappy souls will suffer for it hereafter.

  Now, this clergyman was a man of undoubted sincerity. He

  had read the New Testament, and observed that St. Paul

  addressed exhortations something like this to slaves in his day.

  But he entirely forgot to consider that Paul had not the rights

  of a republican clergyman; that he was not a maker and sus-

  tainer of those laws by which the slaves were reduced to their

  condition, but only a fellow-sufferer under them. A case may

  be supposed which would illustrate this principle to the clergy-

  man. Suppose that he were travelling along the highway, with

  all his worldly property about him, in the shape of bank-bills.

  An association of highwaymen seize him, bind him to a tree, and

  take away the whole of his worldly estate. This they would have

  precisely the same right to do that the clergyman and his brother

  republicans have to take all the earnings and possessions of their

  slaves. The property would belong to these highwaymen by

  exactly the same kind of title--not because they have earned it,

  but simply because they have got it and are able to keep it.

  The head of this confederation, observing some dissatisfaction

  upon the face of the clergyman, proceeds to address him a reli-

  gious exhortation to patience and submission, in much the same

  terms as he had before addressed to the slaves. “Almighty

  God has been pleased to take away your entire property, and to

  give you nothing but labour and poverty in this world, which

  you are obliged to submit to, as it is his will that it should be

  so. Now, think within yourself what a terrible thing it would

  be, if, having lost all your worldly property, you should, by dis-

  content and want of resignation, lose also your soul; and, having

  been robbed of all your property here, to have your poor soul

  delivered over to the possession of the devil, to become his pro-

  perty for ever in hell, without any hope of ever getting free from

  it. Your property now is no longer your own; we have taken

  possession of it; but your precious soul is still your own, and

  nothing can take it from you but your own fault. Consider well,

  then, that if you lose your soul by rebellion and murmuring

  against this dispensation of Providence, you will get nothing by

  it in this world, and will lose your all in the next.”

  Now, should this clergyman say, as he might very properly,

  to these robbers, “There is no necessity for my being poor in

  this world, if you will only give me back my property which you

  have taken from me,” he is only saying precisely what the slaves,

  to whom he has been preaching, might say to him and his fellow-

  republicans.

  CHAPTER VI.

  But it may still be said that the apostles might have com-

  manded Christian masters to perform the act of legal emancipa-

  tion in all cases. Certainly they might, and it is quite evident

  that they did not.

  The professing primitive Christian regarded and treated his

  slave as a brother; but in the eye of the law he was still his

  chattel personal--a thing, and not a man. Why did not the

  apostles, then, strike at the legal relation? Why did they not

  command every Christian convert to sunder that chain at once?

  In answer, we say that every attempt at reform which comes

  from God has proceeded uniformly in this manner--to destroy

  the spirit of an abuse first, and leave the form of it to drop away

  of itself afterwards--to girdle the poisonous tree, and leave it to

  take its own time for dying.

  This mode of dealing with abuses has this advantage, that it

  is compendious and universal, and can apply to that particular

  abuse in all ages, and under all shades and modifications. If

  the apostle, in that outward and physical age, had merely attacked

  the legal relation, and had rested the whole burden of obligation

  on dissolving that, the corrupt and selfish principle might have

  run into other forms of oppression equally bad, and sheltered

  itself under the technicality of avoiding legal slavery. God,

  therefore, dealt a surer blow at the monster, by singling out the

  precise spot where his heart beat, and saying to his apostles,

  “Strike there!”

  Instead of saying to the slaveholder, “Manumit your slave,”

  it said to him, “Treat him as your brother,” and left to the

  slaveholder's conscience to say how much was implied in this

  command.

  In the directions which Paul gave about slavery, it is evident

  that he considered the legal relation with the same indifference

  with which a gardener treats a piece of unsightly bark, which he

  perceives the growing vigour of a young tree is about to throw

  off by its own vital force. He looked upon it as a part of an old

  effete system of heathenism, belonging to a set of laws and usages

  which were waxing old and ready to vanish away.

  There is an argument which has been much employed on this

  subject, and which is specious. It is this. That the apostles

  treated slavery as one of the lawful relations of life, like that of

  parent and child, husband and wife.

  The argument is thus stated: The apostles found all the rela-

  tions of life much corrupted by various abuses.

  They did not attack the relations, but reformed the abuses, and thus restored the relations to a healthy state.

  The mistake here lies in assuming that slavery is the lawful

  relation. Slavery is the corruption of a lawful relation. The

  lawful relation is servitude, and slavery is the corruption of ser-

  vitude.

  When the apostles came, all the relations of life in the Roman

  Empire were thoroughly permeated with the principle of slavery.

  The relation of child to parent was slavery. The relation of wife

  to husband was slavery. The relation of servant to master was

  slavery.

  The power of the father over his son, by Roman law, was very

  much the same with the power of the master over his slave.*

  He could, at his pleasure, scourge, imprison, or put him to death.

  The son could possess nothing but what was the property of his

  father; and this unlimited control extended through the whole

  lifetime of the father, unless the son were formally liberated by

  an act of manumission three times repeated, while the slave could

  be manumitted by performing the act only once. Neither was

  there any law obliging the father to manumit; he could retain

  this power, if he chose, during his whole life.

  Very similar was the situation of the Roman wife. In case

  she were accu
sed of crime, her husband assembled a meeting of

  her relations, and in their presence sat in judgment upon her,

  awarding such punishment as he thought proper.

  For unfaithfulness to her marriage-vow, or for drinking wine,

  Romulus allowed her husband to put her to death.† From

  this slavery, unlike the son, the wife could never be manumitted;

  no legal forms were provided. It was lasting as her life.

  The same spirit of force and slavery pervaded the relation of

  master and servant, giving rise to that severe code of slave-law,

  which, with a few features of added cruelty, Christian America,

  in the nineteenth century, has re-enacted.

  With regard, now, to all these abuses of proper relations, the

  gospel pursued one uniform course. It did not command the

  Christian father to perform the legal act of emancipation to his

  son; but it infused such a divine spirit into the paternal rela-

  tion, by assimilating it to the relation of the heavenly Father,

  that the Christianised Roman would regard any use of his bar-

  barous and oppressive legal powers as entirely inconsistent with

  his Christian profession. So it ennobled the marriage relation

  by comparing it to the relation between Christ and his Church;

  commanding the husband to love his wife, even as Christ loved

  the Church, and gave himself for it. It is said of him, “No

  man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth

  it, even as the Lord the Church;” “so ought everyone to love

  his wife, even as himself.” Not an allusion is made to the bar-

  barous, unjust power which the law gave the husband. It was

  perfectly understood that a Christian husband could not make

  use of it in conformity with these directions.

  In the same manner Christian masters were exhorted to give

  to their servants that which is just and equitable; and, so far

  from coercing their services by force, to forbear even threaten-

  ings. The Christian master was directed to receive his Chris-

  tianised slave, “not now as a slave, but above a slave, a brother

  beloved;” and, as in all these other cases, nothing was said to

  him about the barbarous powers which the Roman law gave

  him, since it was perfectly understood that he could not at the

  same time treat him as a brother beloved and as a slave in the