The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Your own poor circumstances in this life ought to put you particularly upon this,

  and taking care of your souls, for you cannot have the pleasures and enjoyments

  of this life like rich free people, who have estates and money to lay out as they

  think fit. If others will run the hazard of their souls, they have a chance of

  getting wealth and power, of heaping up riches, and enjoying all the ease, luxury,

  and pleasure their hearts should long after; but you can have none of these things,

  so that, if you sell your souls for the sake of what poor matters you can get in this

  world, you have made a very foolish bargain indeed.

  This information is certainly very explicit and to the point.

  He continues:--

  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.

  Mr. Jones, in that part of the work where he is obviating

  the objections of masters to the Christian instruction of their

  slaves, supposes the master to object thus:--

  You teach them that “God is no respecter of persons;” that “He hath made

  of one blood all nations of men,” “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself;”

  “All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so

  to them;” what use, let me ask, would they make of these sentences from the

  gospel?

  Mr. Jones says:--

  Let it be replied that the effect urged in the objection might result from im-

  perfect and injudicious religious instruction; indeed, religious instruction may

  be communicated with the express design, on the part of the instructor, to produce

  the effect referred to, instances of which have occurred.

  But you will say that neglect of duty and insubordination are legitimate effects

  of the gospel, purely and sincerely imparted to servants? Has it not in all ages

  been viewed as the greatest civiliser of the human race?

  How Mr. Jones would interpret the golden rule to the slave,

  so as to justify the slave-system, we cannot possibly tell. We

  can, however, give a specimen of the manner in which it has been

  interpreted in Bishop Meade's Sermons, p. 116. (Brooke's

  Slavery, &c., pp. 32, 33.)

  “All things whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so

  unto them;” that is, do by all mankind just as you would desire they should do

  by you, if you were in their place and they in yours.

  Now, to suit this rule to your particular circumstances, suppose you were

  masters and mistresses, and had servants under you; would you not desire that

  your servants should do their business faithfully and honestly, as well when your

  back was turned as while you were looking over them? Would you not expect

  that they should take notice of what you said to them? that they should behave

  themselves with respect towards you and yours, and be as careful of everything

  belonging to you as you would be yourselves? You are servants; do, therefore,

  as you would wish to be done by, and you will be both good servants to your

  masters and good servants to God, who requires this of you, and will reward you

  well for it, if you do it for the sake of conscience, in obedience to his commands.

  The reverend teachers of such expositions of Scripture do great

  injustice to the natural sense of their sable catechumens, if they

  suppose them incapable of detecting such very shallow sophistry,

  and of proving conclusively that “it is a poor rule that won't work

  both ways.” Some shrewd old patriarch, of the stamp of those

  who rose up and went out at the exposition of the Epistle to

  Philemon, and who show such great acuteness in bringing up

  objections against the truth of God, such as would be thought

  peculiar to cultivated minds, might perhaps, if he dared, reply to

  such an exposition of Scripture in this way: “Suppose you were

  a slave--could not have a cent of your own earnings during your

  whole life, could have no legal right to your wife and children,

  could never send your children to school, and had, as you have

  told us, nothing but labour and poverty in this life--how would

  you like it? Would you not wish your Christian master to set

  you free from this condition?” We submit it to everyone who is

  no respecter of persons, whether this interpretation of Sambo's is

  not as good as the bishop's. And if not, why not?

  To us, with our feelings and associations, such discourses as

  these of Bishop Meade appear hard-hearted and unfeeling to the

  last degree. We should, however, do great injustice to the cha-

  racter of the man, if we supposed that they prove him to have

  been such. They merely go to show how perfectly use may

  familiarise amiable and estimable men with a system of oppression,

  till they shall have lost all consciousness of the wrong which it

  involves.

  That Bishop Meade's reasonings did not thoroughly convince

  himself is evident from the fact that, after all his representations

  of the superior advantages of slavery as a means of religious

  improvement, he did, at last, emancipate his own slaves.

  But, in addition to what has been said, this whole system of

  religious instruction is darkened by one hideous shadow--the

  Slave-trade. What does the Southern Church do with her

  catechumens and communicants? Read the advertisements of

  Southern newspapers, and see. In every city in the slave-raising

  States behold the depôts, kept constantly full of assorted negroes

  from the ages of ten to thirty! In every slave-consuming State

  see the receiving-houses, whither these poor wrecks and remnants

  of families are constantly borne! Who preaches the gospel to

  the slave-coffles? Who preaches the gospel in the slave-prisons?

  If we consider the tremendous extent of this internal trade--if

  we read papers with columns of auction advertisements of human

  beings, changing hands as freely as if they were dollar-bills

  instead of human creatures--we shall then realise how utterly

  all those i
nfluences of religious instruction must be nullified by

  leaving the subjects of them exposed “to all the vicissitudes of

  property.”

  CHAPTER X.

  WHAT IS TO BE DONE?

  The thing to be done, of which I shall chiefly speak, is, that

  the whole American Church, of all denominations, should unitedly

  come up, not in form, but in fact, to the noble purpose avowed

  by the Presbyterian Assembly of 1818, to seek the entire aboli-

  tion of slavery throughout America and throughout Christendom.

  To this noble course the united voice of Christians in all other

  countries is urgently calling the American Church. Expressions

  of this feeling have come from Christians of all denominations in

  England, in Scotland, in Ireland, in France, in Switzerland, in

  Germany, in Persia, in the Sandwich Islands, and in China.

  All seem to be animated by one spirit. They have loved and

  honoured this American Church. They have rejoiced in the

  brightness of her rising. Her prosperity and success have been

  to them as their own, and they have had hopes that God meant

  to confer inestimable blessings through her upon all nations. The

  American Church has been to them like the rising of a glorious

  sun, shedding healing from his wings, dispersing mists and fogs,

  and bringing songs of birds and voices of cheerful industry, and

  sounds of gladness, contentment, and peace. But lo! in this

  beautiful orb is seen a disastrous spot of dim eclipse, whose

  gradually widening shadow threatens a total darkness. Can we

  wonder that the voice of remonstrance comes to us from those

  who have so much at stake in our prosperity and success? We

  have sent out our missionaries to all quarters of the globe; but how

  shall they tell their heathen converts the things that are done in

  Christianised America? How shall our missionaries in Maho-

  metan countries hold up their heads, and proclaim the superiority

  of our religion, when we tolerate barbarities which they have

  repudiated?

  A missionary among the Karens, in Asia, writes back that

  his course is much embarrassed by a suspicion that is afloat

  among the Karens that the Americans intend to steal and sell

  them. He says:--

  I dread the time when these Karens will be able to read our books, and get a

  full knowledge of all that is going on in our country. Many of them are very

  inquisitive now, and often ask me questions that I find it very difficult to answer.

  No, there is no resource. The Church of the United States

  is shut up, in the providence of God, to one work. She can

  never fulfil her mission till this is done. So long as she

  neglects this, it will lie in the way of everything else which

  she attempts to do.

  She must undertake it for another reason--because she

  alone can perform the work peaceably. If this fearful problem

  is left to take its course as a mere political question, to be

  ground out between the upper and nether millstones of political

  parties, then what will avert agitation, angry collisions, and the

  desperate rending of the Union? No, there is no safety but in

  making it a religious enterprise, and pursuing it in a Christian

  spirit, and by religious means.

  If it now be asked what means shall the Church employ,

  we answer, this evil must be abolished by the same means

  which the apostles first used for the spread of Christianity, and

  the extermination of all the social evils which then filled a

  world lying in wickedness. Hear the apostle enumerate them:

  “By pureuess, by knowledge, by long-suffering, by the Holy

  Ghost, by love unfeigned, by the armour of righteousness on the

  right hand and on the left.”

  We will briefly consider each of these means.

  First, “by Pureness.” Christians in the Northern free States

  must endeavour to purify themselves and the country from various

  malignant results of the system of slavery; and, in particular,

  they must endeavour to abolish that which is the most sinful--

  the unchristian prejudice of caste.

  In Hindostan there is a class called the Pariahs, with which

  no other class will associate, eat, or drink. Our missionaries tell

  the converted Hindoo that this prejudice is unchristian; for God

  hath made of one blood all who dwell on the face of the earth, and

  all mankind are brethren in Christ. With what face shall they

  tell this to the Hindoo, if he is able to reply, “In your own Chris-

  tian country there is a class of Pariahs who are treated no better

  than we treat ours. You do not yourselves believe the things

  you teach us.”

  Let us look at the treatment of the free negro at the North.

  In the States of Indiana and Illinois, the most oppressive and

  unrighteous laws have been passed with regard to him. No law

  of any slave State could be more cruel in its spirit than that

  recently passed Illinois by which every free negro coming into

  the State is taken up and sold for a certain time, and then, if he

  do not leave the State, is sold again.

  With what face can we exhort our Southern brethren to eman-

  cipate their slaves, if we do not set the whole moral power of the

  Church at the North against such abuses as this? Is this course

  justified by saying that the negro is vicious and idle? This is

  adding insult to injury.

  What is it these Christian States do? To a great extent

  they exclude the coloured population from their schools; they

  discourage them from attending their churches by invidious dis-

  tinctions; as a general fact, they exclude them from their shops,

  where they might learn useful arts and trades; they crowd

  them out of the better callings where they might earn an honour-

  able livelihood; and having thus discouraged every elevated

  aspiration, and reduced them to almost inevitable ignorance,

  idleness, and vice, they fill up the measure of iniquity by making

  cruel laws to expel them from their States, thus heaping up wrath

  against the day of wrath.

  If we say that every Christian at the South who does not use

  his utmost influence against the iniquitous slave-laws is guilty,

  as a republican citizen, of sustaining those laws, it is no less true

  that every Christian at the North who does not do what in him

  lies to procure the repeal of such laws in the free States, is, so

  far, guilty for their existence. Of late years we have had

  abundant quotations from the Old Testament to justify all manner

  of oppression. A Hindoo, who knew nothing of this generous

  and beautiful book, except from such pamphlets as Mr. Smylie's,

  might possibly think it was a treatise on piracy, and a general

  justification of robbery. But let us quote from it the directions

  which God gives for the treatment of the stranger: “If a

  stranger sojourn with you in your land, ye shall not vex him.

  But the stranger that dwelleth among you shall be as one born

  among you; thou shalt love him as thyself.” How much more

  does this apply when the stranger has been brought into our

  land
by the injustice and cruelty of our fathers!

  We are happy to say, however, that the number of States in

  which such oppressive legislation exists is small. It is also

  matter of encouragement and hope that the unphilosophical and

  unchristian prejudice of caste is materially giving way, in many

  parts of our country, before a kinder and more Christian spirit.

  Many of our schools and colleges are willing to receive the

  coloured applicant on equal terms with the white. Some of the

  Northern free States accord to the coloured freeman full political

  equality and privileges. people, under this

  encouragement, have, in many parts of our country, become rich

  and intelligent. A very fair proportion of educated men is rising

  among them. There are among them respectable editors, eloquent

  orators, and laborious and well-instructed clergymen. It gives

  us pleasure to say that, among intelligent and Christian people,

  these men are treated with the consideration they deserve; and,

  if they meet with insult and ill-treatment, it is commonly from

  the less-educated class, who, being less enlightened, are always

  longer under the influence of prejudice. At a recent ordination

  at one of the largest and most respectable churches in New York,

  the moderator of the Presbytery was a black man, who began

  life as a slave; and it was undoubtedly a source of gratification

  to all his Christian brethren to see him presiding in this capacity.

  He put the questions to the candidates in the German language,

  the church being in part composed of Germans. Our Christian

  friends in Europe may, at least, infer from this that, if we have

  had our faults in times past, we have, some of us, seen and are

  endeavouring to correct them.

  To bring this head at once to a practical conclusion, the

  writer will say to every individual Christian, who wishes to do

  something for the abolition of slavery, Begin by doing what lies

  in your power for the coloured people in your vicinity. Are

  there children excluded from schools by unchristian prejudice?

  Seek to combat that prejudice by fair arguments, presented in a

  right spirit. If you cannot succeed, then endeavour to provide

  for the education of these children in some other manner. As