The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  We do not ask it. Ourselves weak, irresolute, and worldly,

  shall we ask you to do what perhaps we ourselves should not

  dare? But we will beseech Him to speak to you, who dared

  and endured more than this for your sake, and who can strengthen

  you to dare and endure for His. He can raise you above all

  temporary and worldly considerations. He can inspire you with

  that love to himself which will make you willing to leave father

  and mother, and wife and child, yea, to give up life itself, for his

  sake. And if ever he brings you to that place where you and

  this world take a final farewell of each other, where you make up

  your mind solemnly to give all up for his cause, where neither

  life nor death, nor things present, nor things to come, can move

  you from this purpose--then will you know a joy which is above

  all other joy, a peace constant and unchanging as the eternal

  God from whom it springs.

  Dear brethren, is this system to go on for ever in your land?

  Can you think these slave-laws anything but an abomination to

  a just God? Can you think this internal slave-trade to be any-

  thing but an abomination in his sight?

  Look, we beseech you, into those awful slave-prisons which

  are in your cities. Do the groans and prayers which go up from

  those dreary mansions promise well for the prosperity of our

  country?

  Look, we beseech you, at the mournful march of the slave-

  coffles; follow the bloody course of the slave-ships on your coast.

  What, suppose you, does the Lamb of God think of all these

  things? He whose heart was so tender that he wept, at the

  grave of Lazarus, over a sorrow that he was so soon to turn into

  joy--what does he think of this constant, heart-breaking, yearly-

  repeated anguish? What does he think of Christian wives

  forced from their husbands, and husbands from their wives?

  What does he think of Christian daughters, whom his Church

  first educates, indoctrinates, and baptises, and then leaves to be

  sold as merchandise?

  Think you such prayers as poor Paul Edmondson's, such

  death-bed scenes as Emily Russell's, are witnessed without

  emotion by that generous Saviour, who regards what is done to

  his meanest servant as done to himself?

  Did it never seem to you, O Christian! when you have read

  the sufferings of Jesus, that you would gladly have suffered with

  him? Does it never seem almost ungenerous to accept eternal

  life as the price of such anguish on his part, while you bear no

  cross for him? Have you ever wished you could have watched

  with him in that bitter conflict at Gethsemane, when even his

  chosen slept? Have you ever wished that you could have stood

  by him when all forsook him and fled--that you could have

  owned when Peter denied--that you could have honoured him

  when buffeted and spit upon? Would you think it too much

  honour? Could you, like Mary, have followed him to the cross,

  and stood a patient sharer of that despised, unpitied agony?

  That you cannot do. That hour is over. Christ now is ex-

  alted, crowned, glorified; all men speak well of him, rich

  Churches rise to him, and costly sacrifice goes up to him. What

  chance have you, among the multitude, to prove your love--to

  show that you would stand by him discrowned, dishonoured,

  tempted, betrayed, and suffering? Can you show it in any way

  but by espousing the cause of his suffering poor? Is there a

  people among you despised and rejected of men, heavy with

  oppression, acquainted with grief, with all the power of wealth

  and fashion, of political and worldly influence, arrayed against

  their cause? Christian, you can acknowledge Christ in them!

  If you turn away indifferent from this cause--“if thou for-

  bear to deliver them that are drawn unto death, and those that

  be ready to be slain; if thou sayest, Behold, we knew it not,

  doth not he that pondereth the heart consider it? and he that

  keepeth the soul, doth he not know it? Shall he not render to

  every man according to his works?”

  In the last judgment will he not say to you, “I have been in

  the slave-prison--in the slave-coffle; I have been sold in your

  markets; I have toiled for naught in your fields; I have been

  smitten on the mouth in your courts of justice; I have been

  denied a hearing in my own Church, and ye cared not for it.

  Ye went, one to his farm, and another to his merchandise.”

  And if ye shall answer, “When, Lord?” He shall say unto you,

  “Inasmuch as ye have done it to the least of these my brethren,

  ye have done it unto me.”