The Rev. Dr. R. Lee then said: “I am quite sure that every individual here responds cordially to those sentiments of respect and gratitude towards our honored guest which have been so well expressed by the Lord Provost and the other gentlemen who have addressed us. We think that this lady has not only laid us under a great obligation by giving us one of the most delightful books in the English language, but that she has improved us as men and as Christians, that she has taught us the value of our privileges, and made us more sensible than we were before of the obligation which lies upon us to promote every good work. I have been requested to say a few words on the degradation of American slavery; but I feel, in the presence of the gentleman who last addressed you, and of those who are still to address you, that it would be almost presumption in me to enter on such a subject. It is impossible to speak or to think of the subject of slavery without feeling that there is a double degradation in the matter; for, in the first place, the slave is a man made in the image of God — God’s image cut in ebony, as old Thomas Fuller quaintly but beautifully said; and what right have we to reduce him to the image of a brute, and make property of him? We esteem drunkenness as a sin. Why is it a sin? Because it reduces that which was made in the image of God to the image of a brute. We say to the drunkard, ‘You are guilty of a sacrilege, because you reduce that which God made in his own image “into the image of an irrational creature.”’ Slavery does the very same. But there is not only a degradation committed as regards the slave — there is a degradation also committed against himself by him who makes him a slave, and who retains him in the position of a slave; for is it not one of the most commonplace of truths that we cannot do a wrong to a neighbor without doing a greater wrong to ourselves? — that we cannot injure him without also injuring ourselves yet more? I observe there is a certain class of writers in America who are fond of representing the feeling of this country towards America as one of jealousy, if not of hatred.. I think, my lord, that no American ever travelled in this country without being conscious at once that this is a total mistake — that this is a total misapprehension. I venture to say that there is no nation on the face of the earth in which we feel half so much interest, or towards which we feel the tenth part of the affection, which we do towards our brethren in the United States of America. And what is more than that — there is no nation towards which we feel one half so much admiration, and for which we feel half so much respect, as we do for the people of the United States of America. [Cheers.] Why, sir, how can it be otherwise? How is it possible that it should be the reverse? Are they not our bone and our flesh? and their character, whatever it is, is it any thing more than our own, a little exaggerated, perhaps? Their virtues and their vices, their faults and their excellences, are just the virtues and the vices, the faults and the excellences, of that old respectable freeholder, John Bull, from whom they are descended. We are not much surprised that a nation which are slaves themselves should make other men slaves. This cannot very much surprise us: but we are both surprised and we are deeply grieved, that a nation which has conceived so well the idea of freedom — a nation which has preached the doctrines of freedom with such boldness and such fulness — a nation which has so boldly and perfectly realized its idea of freedom in every other respect — should in this only instance have sunk so completely below its own idea, and forgetting the rights of one class of their fellow-creatures, should have deprived them of freedom altogether. I say that our grief and our disapprobation of this in the case of our brethren in America arises very much from this, that in other respects we admire them so much, we are sorry that so noble a nation should allow a blot like this to remain upon its escutcheon. I am not ignorant — nobody can be ignorant — of the great difficulties which encompass the solution of this question in America. It is vain for us to shut our eyes to it. There can be no doubt whatever that great sacrifices will require to be made in order to get rid of this great evil. But the Americans are a most ingenious people; they are full of inventions of all sorts, from the invention of a machine for protecting our feet from the water, to a machine for making ships go by means of heated air; from the one to the other the whole field of discovery is occupied by their inventive genius. There is not an article in common use among us but bears some stamp of America. We rise in the morning, and before we are dressed we have had half a dozen American articles in our hands. And during the day, as we pass through the streets, articles of American invention meet us every where. In short, the ingenuity of the people is proclaimed all over the world. And there can be no doubt that the moment this great, this ingenious people finds that slavery is both an evil and a sin, their ingenuity will be successfully exerted in discovering some invention for preventing its abolition from ruining them altogether. [Cheers.] No doubt their ingenuity will be equal to the occasion; and I may take the liberty of adding, that their ingenuity in that case will find even a richer reward than it has done in those other inventions which have done them so much honor, and been productive of so much profit. I say, that sacrifices must be made; there can be no doubt about that; but I would also observe, that the longer the evil is permitted to continue, the greater and more tremendous will become the sacrifice which will be needed to put an end to it; for all history proves that a nation encumbered, with slavery is surrounded with danger. [Applause.] Has the history of antiquity been written in vain? Does it not teach us that not only domestic and social pollutions are the inevitable results, but does it not teach us also that political insecurity and political revolutions as certainly slumber beneath the institution of slavery as fireworks at the basis of Mount Ætna? [Cheers.] It cannot but be so. Men no more than steam can be compressed without a tremendous revulsion; and let our brethren in America be sure of this, that the longer the day of reckoning is put off by them, the more tremendous at last that reckoning will Be.” [Loud, applause.]
In regard to this meeting at Edinburgh, there was a ridiculous story circulated and variously commented on in certain newspapers of the United States, that the American flag was there exhibited, insulted, torn, and mutilated. Certain religious papers took the lead in propagating the slander, which, so for as I know or can learn, had no foundation, unless it be that, in the arranging of the flag around its staff, the stars might have been more distinctly visible than the stripes. The walls were profusely adorned with drapery, and there were numerous flags disposed in festoons. Truly a wonderful thing to make a story of, and then parade it in the newspapers from Maine to Texas, beginning in Philadelphia!
Public Meeting In Aberdeen — April 21.
Address Of The Citizens.
Mrs H. Beecher Stowe.
Madam: The citizens of Aberdeen have much pleasure in embracing the opportunity now afforded them of expressing at once their esteem for yourself personally, and their interest in the cause of which you have been the distinguished advocate.
While they would, not render a blind homage to mere genius, however exalted, they consider genius such as yours, directed by Christian principle, as that which, for the welfare of humanity, cannot be too highly or too fervently honored.
Without depreciating the labors of the various advocates of slave emancipation who have appeared from time to time on both sides of the Atlantic, they may conscientiously award to you the praise of having brought about the present universal and enthusiastic sentiment in regard to the slavery which exists in America.
The galvanic battery may be arranged and charged, every plate, wire, and fluid being in its appropriate place; but, until some hand shall bring together the extremities of the conducting medium, in vain might we expect to elicit the latent fire.
Every heart may throb with the feeling of benevolence, and every mind respond to the sentiment that man, in regard to man, should be free and equal; but it is the province of genius such as yours to give unity to the universal, and find utterance for the felt.
When society has been prepared for some momentous movement or moral reformation, so that the hidden thoughts o
f the people want only an interpreter, the thinking community an organ, and suffering humanity a champion, distinguished is the honor belonging to the individual in whom all these requisites are found combined.
To you has been assigned by Providence the important task of educing the latent emotions of humanity, and waking the music that slumbered in the chords of the universal human heart, till it has pealed forth in one deep far rolling and harmonious anthem, of which the heavenly burden is, “Liberty to the captive, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound!”
The production of your accomplished pen, which has already called forth such unqualified eulogy from almost every land where Anglo-Saxon literature finds access, and created so sudden and fervent an excitement on the momentous subject of American slavery, has nowhere been hailed with a more cordial welcome, or produced more salutary effects, than in the city of Aberdeen.
Though long ago imbued, with antislavery principles and interested in the progress of liberty in every part of the world, our community, like many others, required such information, suggestions, and appeals as your valuable work contains in one great department of slavery, in order that their interest might be turned into a specific direction, and their principles reduced, to combined practical effort.
Already they have esteemed it a privilege to engage with some activity in the promotion of the interests of the fugitive slave; and they shall henceforth regard with a deeper interest than ever the movements of their American brethren in this matter, until there exists among them no slavery from which to flee.
While they participate in your abhorrence of slavery in the American states, they trust they need scarcely assure you that they participate also in your love for the American people.
It is in proportion as they love that nation, attached to them by so many ties, that they lament the existence of a system which, so long as it exists, must bring odium upon the national character, as it cannot fail to enfeeble and impair their best social institutions.
They believe it to be a maxim that man cannot hold his fellow-man in slavery without being himself to some extent enslaved. And of this the censorship of the press, together with the expurgatorial indices of various religious societies in the Southern States of America, furnish ample corroboration.
It is hoped that your own nation may speedily be directed to recognize you as its best friend, for having stood forth in the spirit of true patriotism to advocate the claims of a large portion of your countrymen, and to seek the removal of an evil which has done much to neutralize the moral influence of your country’s best (and otherwise free) institutions.
Accept, then, from the community of Aberdeen their congratulations on the high literary fame which you have by a single effort so deservedly acquired, and their grateful acknowledgments for your advocacy of a cause in which the best interests of humanity are involved.
Signed in name and by appointment of a public meeting of the citizens of Aberdeen within the County Buildings, this 21st April, 1853, A.D.
Geo. Hessay,
Provost of Aberdeen.
Public Meeting In Dundee — April 22.
Mr. Gilfillan, who was received with great applause, said he had been intrusted by the Committee of the Ladies’ Antislavery Association to present the following address to Mrs. Stowe, which he would read to the meeting: —
“Madam: We, the ladies of the Dundee Antislavery Association, desire to add our feeble voices to the acclamations of a world, conscious that your fame and character need no testimony from us. We are less anxious to honor you than to prove that our appreciation and respect are no less sincere and no less profound than those of the millions in other places and other lands, whom you have instructed, improved, delighted, and thrilled. We beg permission to lay before you the expressions of a gratitude and an enthusiasm in some measure commensurate with your transcendent literary merit and moral worth. We congratulate you on the success of the chef-d’oeuvre of your genius, a success altogether unparalleled, and in all probability never to be paralleled in the history of literature. We congratulate you still more warmly on that nobility and benevolence of nature which made you from childhood the friend of the unhappy slave, and led you to accumulate unconsciously the materials for the immortal tale of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. We congratulate you in having in that tale supported with matchless eloquence and pathos the cause of the crushed, the forgotten, the injured, of those who had no help of man at all, and who had even been blasphemously taught by professed ministers of the gospel of mercy that Heaven too was opposed to their liberation, and had blotted them out from the catalogue of man. We recognize, too, with delight, the spirit of enlightened and evangelical piety which breathes through your work, and serves to confute the calumny that none but infidels are interested in the cause of abolition — a calumny which cuts at Christianity with a yet sharper edge than at abolition, but which you have proved to be a foul and malignant falsehood. We congratulate you not only on the richness of the laurels which you have won, but on the dignity, the meekness, and the magnanimity with which these laurels have been worn. We hail in you our most gifted sister in the great cause of liberty — we bid you warmly welcome to our city, and we pray Almighty God, the God of the oppressed, to pour his selectest blessings on your head, and to spare your invaluable life, till yours, and ours, and others’ efforts for the cause of abolition are crowned with success, and till the shouts of a universal jubilee shall proclaim that in all quarters of the globe the African is free.”
The address was handed to Mrs. Stowe amid great applause. MR. GILFILLAN continued: “In addition to the address which I have now read, I have been requested to add a few remarks; and in making these I cannot but congratulate Dundee on the fact that Mrs. Stowe has visited it, and that she has had a reception worthy of her distinguished merits. [Applause.] It is not Dundee alone that is present here to-night: it is Forfarshire, Fifeshire, and I may also add, Perthshire: — that are here to do honor to themselves in doing honor to our illustrious guest. [Cheers.] There are assembled here representatives of the general feeling that boils in the whole land — not from our streets alone, but from our country valleys — from our glens and our mountains O! I wish that Mrs. Stowe would but spare time to go herself and study that enthusiasm amid its own mountain recesses, amid the uplands and the friths, and the wild solitudes of our own unconquered and unconquerable land. She would see scenery there worthy of that pencil which has painted so powerfully the glories of the Mississippi; ay, and she would find her name known and reverenced in every hamlet, and see copies of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the shepherd’s shieling, beside Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, the Life of Sir William Wallace, Rob Roy, and the Gaelic Bible. I saw copies of it carried by travellers last autumn among the gloomy grandeurs of Glencoe, and, as Coleridge once said when he saw Thomson’s Seasons lying in a Welsh wayside inn, ‘That is true fame,’ I thought this was fame truer still. [Applause.] It is too late in the day to criticize Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or to speculate on its unprecedented history — a history which seems absolutely magical. Why, you are reminded of Aladdin’s lamp, and of the palace that was reared by genii in one night. Mrs. Stowe’s genius has done a greater wonder than this — it has reared in a marvellously short time a structure which, unlike that Arabian fabric, is a reality, and shall last forever. [Applause.] She must not be allowed, to depreciate herself, and to call her glorious book a mere ‘bubble.’ Such a bubble there never was before. I wish we had ten thousand such bubbles. [Applause.] If it had been a bubble it would have broken long ago. ‘Man,’ says Jeremy Taylor, ‘is a bubble.’ Yea, but he is an immortal one. And such an immortal bubble is Uncle Tom’s Cabin; it can only with man expire; and yet a year ago not ten individuals in this vast assembly had ever heard of its author’s name. [Applause.] At its artistic merits we may well marvel — to find in a small volume the descriptive power of a Scott, the humor of a Dickens, the keen, observing glance of a Thackeray, the pathos of a Richardson or Mackenzie, combined with qua
lities of earnestness, simplicity, humanity, and womanhood peculiar to the author herself. But there are three things which, strike me as peculiarly remarkable about Uncle Tom’s Cabin: it is the work of an American — of a woman — and of an evangelical Christian. [Cheers.] We have long been accustomed to despise American literature — I mean as compared with our own. I have heard eminent litterateurs say, ‘Pshaw! the Americans have no national literature.’ It was thought that they lived entirely on plunder — the plunder of poor slaves, and of poor British authors. [Loud cheers.] Their own works, when, they came among us, were treated either with contempt or with patronizing wonder — yes, the ‘Sketch Book’ was a very good book to be an American’s. To parody two lines of Pope, we
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