It may be said that it was the duty of St. Clare to emancipate Uncle Tom,
but the wealth of the Rothschilds would not enable a man to act out his benevo-
lent instincts at such a price; and if such was his duty, it is not equally the duty
of every monied man in the free States to attend the New Orleans slave-mart
with the same benevolent purpose in view? It seems to me that to purchase a
slave with the purpose of saving him for a hard and cruel fate, and without any
view to emancipation, is itself a good action. If the slave should subsequently
become able to redeem himself, it would doubtless be the duty of the owner to
emancipate him, and it would be but even-handed justice to set down every dollar
of the slave's earnings, above the expense of his maintenance, to his credit, until
the price paid for him should be fully restored. This is all that justice could
exact of the slave-holder.
Those who have railed against “Uncle Tom's Cabin” as an incendiary publica-
tion, have singularly (supposing that they have read the book) overlooked the
moral of the hero's life. Uncle Tom is the most faithful of servants. He
literally “obeyed in all things” his “masters according to the flesh; not with
eye-service, as men-pleasers, but in singleness of heart, fearing God.” If his
conduct exhibits the slightest departure from a literal fulfilment of this injunction
of Scripture, it is in a case which must command the approbation of the most
rigid casuist, for the injunction of obedience extends, of course, only to lawful
commands. It is only when the monster Legree commands him to inflict unde-
served chastisement upon his fellow-servants that Uncle Tom refuses obedience.
He would not listen to a proposition of escaping into Ohio with the young
woman Eliza, on the night after they were sold by Mr. Shelby to the trader
Haley. He thought it would be bad faith to his late master, whom he had
nursed in his arms, and might be the means of bringing him into difficulty. He
offered no resistance to Haley, and obeyed even Legree in every legitimate com-
mand; but when he was required to be the instrument of his master's cruelty, he
chose rather to die, with the courage and resolution of a Christian martyr, than
to save his life by a guilty compliance. Such was Uncle Tom--not a bad
example for the imitation of man or master.
I am, sir, very respectfully,
Your ob't serv't,
Daniel R. Goodloe.
A. M. Gangewer, Esq.,
Washington, D. C.
The writer has received permission to publish the following
extract from a letter received by a lady at the North from the
editor of a Southern paper. The mind and character of the
author will speak for themselves, in the reading of it:
Charleston, Sunday, 25th July, 1852.
* * * The books, I infer, are Mrs. Beecher Stowe's “Uncle Tom's
Cabin.” The book was furnished me by-- --, about a fortnight ago,
and you may be assured I read it with an attentive interest. “Now, what is your
opinion of it?” you will ask; and, knowing my preconceived opinions upon the
question of slavery, and the embodiment of my principles, which I have so long
supported, in regard to that peculiar institution, you may be prepared to meet
an indirect answer. This my own consciousness of truth would not allow in the
present instance. The book is a truthful picture of life, with the dark outlines
beautifully portrayed. The life (the characteristics, incidents, and the dialogues)
is life itself reduced to paper. In her Appendix she rather evades the question
whether it was taken from actual scenes, but says there are many counterparts.
In this she is correct beyond doubt. Had she changed the picture of Legree, on
Red River, for-- --, on--Island, South Carolina, she could not have
drawn a more admirable portrait. I am led to question whether she had not some
knowledge of this beast, as he is known to be, and made the transposition for
effect.
My position in connexion with the extreme party, both in Georgia and South
Carolina, would constitute a restraint to the full expression of my feelings upon
several of the governing principles of the institution. I have studied slavery in
all its different phases--have been thrown in contact with the negro in different
parts of the world, and made it my aim to study his nature, so far as my limited
abilities would give me light--and, whatever my opinions have been, they were
based upon what I supposed to be honest convictions.
During the last three years you well know what my opportunities have been
to examine all the sectional bearings of an institution which now holds the
great and most momentous question of our federal well-being. These oppor-
tunities I have not let pass, but have given myself, body and soul, to a know-
ledge of its vast intricacies--to its constitutional compact and its individual
hardships. Its wrongs are in the constituted rights of the master, and the
blank letter of those laws which pretend to govern the bondman's rights. What
legislative act, based upon the construction of self-protection for the very men who
contemplate the laws--even though their intention was amelioration--could be
enforced, when the legislated object is held as the bond property of the legislator?
The very fact of constituting a law for the amelioration of property becomes an
absurdity so far as carrying it out is concerned. A law which is intended to
govern, and gives the governed no means of seeking its protection, is like the
clustering together of so many useless words for vain show. But why talk of law?
That which is considered the popular rights of a people, and every tenacious pre-
judice set forth to protect its property interest, creates its own power against every
weaker vessel. Laws which interfere with this become unpopular, repugnant to a
forcible will, and a dead letter in effect. So long as the voice of the governed
cannot be heard, and his wrongs are felt beyond the jurisdiction or domain of the
law, as nine-tenths are, where is the hope of redress? The master is the powerful
vessel; the negro feels his dependence, and, fearing the consequences of an appeal
for his rights, submits to the cruelty of his master in preference to the dread of
something more cruel. It is in those dissected cases of cruelty we find the wrongs
of slavery, and in those governing laws which give power to bad Northern men to
become the most cruel task-masters. Do not judge from my observations that I
am seeking consolation for the Abolitionists. Such is not my intention; but
truth to a cause which calls loudly for reformation constrains me to say that
humanity calls for some law to govern the force and absolute will of the master,
and to reform no part is more requisite than that which regards the slave's food
and raiment. A person must live years at the South before he can become fully
acquainted with the many workings of slavery. A Northern man, not prominently
interested in the political and social weal of the South, may live for years, in it, and
pass from town to town in his every-day pursuits, and yet see but the polished
side of slavery. With me it has been different. Its effect upon
the negro him-
self, and its effect upon the social and commercial well-being of Southern society
has been laid broadly open to me, and I have seen more of its workings within
the past year than was disclosed to me all the time before. It is with these feel-
ings that I am constrained to do credit to Mrs. Stowe's book, which I consider
must have been written by one who derived the materials, from a thorough
acquaintance with the subject. The character of the slave-dealer, the bankrupt
owner in Kentucky, and the New Orleans merchant, are simple every-day occur-
rences in these parts. Editors may speak of the dramatic effect as they please;
the tale is not told them, and the occurrences of common reality would form a
picture more glaring. I could write a work, with date and incontrovertible facts,
of abuses which stand recorded in the knowledge of the community in which they
were transacted, that would need no dramatic effect, and would stand out ten-fold
more horrible than anything Mrs. Stowe has described.
I have read two columns in the Southern Press of Mrs. Eastman's “Aunt
Phillis's Cabin, or Southern Life as It is,” with the remarks of the editor. I have
no comments to make upon it, that being done by itself. The editor might have
saved himself being writ down an ass by the public if he had withheld his non-
sense. If the two columns are a specimen of Mrs. Eastman's book, I pity her
attempt and her name as an author.
PART II.
CHAPTER I.
The New York Courier and Inquirer, of November 5th, con-
tained an article which has been quite valuable to the author,
as summing up, in a clear, concise, and intelligible form, the
principal objections which may be urged to “Uncle Tom's
Cabin.” It is here quoted in full, as the foundation of the re-
marks in the following pages.
The author of “Uncle Tom's Cabin,” that writer states, has
committed false witness against thousands and millions of her
fellow-men.
She has done it [he says] by attaching to them as slaveholders, in the eyes of
the world, the guilt of the abuses of an institution of which they are absolutely
guiltless. Her story is so devised as to present slavery in three dark aspects:
first, the cruel treatment of the slaves; second, the separation of families; and,
third, their want of religious instruction.
To show the first, she causes a reward to be offered for the recovery of a run-
away slave, “dead or alive,” when no reward with such an alternative was ever
heard of, or dreamed of, south of Mason and Dixon's line, and it has been decided
over the over again in Southern courts that “a slave who is merely flying away
cannot be killed.” She puts such language as this into the mouth of one of her
speakers:--“The master who goes furthest and does the worst only uses within
limits the power that the law gives him;” when, in fact, the civil code of the
very State where it is represented the language was uttered--Louisiana--de-
clares that--
“The slave is entirely subject to the will of his master, who may correct and
chastise him, though not with unusual rigour, nor so as to maim or mutilate him,
on to expose him to the danger of loss of life, or to cause his death.”
And provides for a compulsory sale--
“When the master shall be convicted of cruel treatment of his slaves, and the
judge shall deem proper to pronounce, besides the penalty established for such
cases, that the slave be sold at public auction, in order to place him out of the
reach of the power which the master has abused.”
“If any person whatsoever shall wilfully kill his slave, or the slave of another
person, the said person, being convicted thereof, shall be tried and condemned
agreeably to the laws.”
In the General Court of Virginia, last year, in the case of Souther v. Common-
wealth, it was held that the killing of a slave by his master and owner, by wilful
and excessive whipping, is murder in the first degree, though it may not have been
the purpose of the master and owner to kill the slave! And it is not six months
since Governor Johnson, of Virginia, pardoned a slave who killed his master, who
was beating him with brutal severity.
And yet, in the face of such laws and decisions as these, Mrs. Stowe winds up a
ong series of cruelties upon her other black personages, by causing her faultless
hero, Tom, to be literally whipped to death in Louisiana, by his master, Legree;
and these acts, which the laws make criminal, and punish as such, she sets forth
in the most repulsive colours, to illustrate the institution of slavery.
So, too, in reference to the separation of children from their parents. A con-
siderable part of the plot is made to hinge upon the selling, in Louisiana, of the
child Eliza, “eight or nine years old,” away from her mother; when, had its in-
ventor looked in the statute-book of Louisiana, she would have found the following
language:--
“Every person is expressly prohibited from selling separately from their mothers
the children who shall not have attained the full age of ten years.
“Be it further enacted, That if any person or persons shall sell the mother of
children, or shall, the mother living, sell any slave child or children of ten years of
age, or under, separate from said mother, said person or persons shall be fined not
less than one thousand nor more than two thousand dollars, and be imprisoned
in the public jail for a period of not less than six months nor more than one
year.”
The privation of religious instruction, as represented by Mrs. Stowe, is utterly
unfounded in fact. The largest churches in the Union consist entirely of slaves.
The first African church in Louisville, which numbers fifteen hundred persons,
and the first African church in Augusta, which numbers thirteen hundred, are
specimens. On multitudes of large plantations in the different parts of the
South, the ordinances of the gospel are as regularly maintained, by competent
ministers, as in any other communities, north or south. A larger proportion of
the slave population are in communion with some Christian church than of the
white population in any part of the country. A very considerable portion of
every Southern congregation, either in city or country, is sure to consist of blacks;
whereas, of our Northern churches, not a coloured person is to be seen in one out
of fifty.
The peculiar falsity of this whole book consists in making exceptional or
impossible cases the representatives of the system. By the same process which
she has used, it would not be difficult to frame a fatal argument against the rela-
tion of husband and wife, or parent and child, or of guardian and ward; for thou-
sands of wives and children, and wards, have been maltreated, and even murdered.
It is wrong, unpardonably wrong, to impute to any relation of life those enormities
which spring only out of the worst depravity of human nature. A ridiculously
extravagant spirit of generalisation pervades this fiction from beginning to end.
The U
ncle Tom of the authoress is a perfect angel, and her blacks generally are
half angels; her Simon Legree is a perfect demon, and her whites generally are
half demons. She has quite a peculiar spite against the clergy; and, of the many
she introduces at different times into the scenes, all, save an insignificant exception,
are Pharisees or hypocrites. One who could know nothing of the United States
and its people, except by what he might gather from this book, would judge that
it was some region just on the confines of the infernal world. We do not say that
Mrs. Stowe was actuated by wrong motives in the preparation of this work, but
we do say that she has done a wrong which no ignorance can excuse, and no
penance can expiate.
A much valued correspondent of the author, writing from
Richmond, Virginia, also uses the following language:--
I will venture this morning to make a few suggestions which have occurred to
me in regard to future editions of your work, “Uncle Tom's Cabin,” which I desire
should have all the influence of which your genius renders it capable, not only
abroad, but in the local sphere of slavery, where it has been hitherto repudiated.
Possessing already the great requisites of artistic beauty and of sympathetic
affection, it may yet be improved in regard to accuracy of statement, without being
at all enfeebled. For example, you do less than justice to the formalised laws of
the Southern States, while you give more credit than is due to the virtue of public
or private sentiment in restricting the evil which the laws permit.
I enclose the following extracts from a Southern paper:--
“ `I'll manage that ar; they's young in the business, and must 'spect to work
cheap,' said Marks, as he continued to read. `Thar's three on 'em easy cases,
'cause all you've got to do is to shoot 'em, or swear they is shot; they couldn't, of
course, charge much for that.'
“The reader will observe that two charges against the South are involved
in this precious discourse; one, that it is the habit of Southern masters to
offer a reward, with the alternative of `dead or alive,' for their fugitive slaves;
and the other, that it is usual for pursuers to shoot them. Indeed, we are led